Tourism investors, developers and ESG experts have raised concerns that global Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) standards often fail to capture Southern Africa’s local realities.
From left to right: Simon Stobbs, Managing Director – Wilderness South Africa; Sthembiso Dlamini, CEO Gauteng Tourism Authority; Lopang Rapodile, ESG Manager – Kasada; Olivier Perillat-Piratoine, Managing Director – Club Med South Africa
The SADC Tourism Alliance’s closed-door Think Tank, Profit, Planet, People: How Global Hospitality is Scaling in Southern Africa Responsibly, convened industry leaders to discuss the relevance of ESG frameworks in emerging markets.
"We should stop treating ESG as a certificate on the wall," says Olivier Perillat‑Piratoine, managing director for Club Med South Africa. "In our business, it has to be the operating system — the way we design, source, and develop people."
Club Med’s northern KwaZulu-Natal coastal safari resort, set to open in 2026, has already created 800 direct jobs, over 1,600 in the value chain, and contributed to a 60% drop in local crime — achievements not captured by typical ESG scorecards.
Social impact over scale bias
"Globally, the centre of gravity is the ‘E’," said Lopang Rapodile, ESG Manager at Kasada. "Here, the 'S' — jobs, skills, women in leadership, township inclusion — is often the licence to operate. If we don't elevate that, we miss what sustains hospitality in this region."
"You can count diesel consumption. You can’t count the pride of a parent with a stable job, or the resilience a community builds when its farms supply a lodge year‑round. Those intangibles are the foundation for everything else,” says Simon Stobbs, managing director South Africa at Wilderness.
Small and township-based suppliers, especially women-led businesses, are often excluded from procurement due to documentation and capacity requirements. "The scale bias is real," says Rapodile. "We want to localise procurement, but consistency and volume expectations lock out smaller vendors. That's solvable — with aggregated orders, practical QA support, and faster payments — but it requires design choices, not just intent."
Path to change
The Think Tank called for ESG reform that recognises context-relevant social indicators, enables small supplier inclusion, balances environmental standards with local economic realities, and shifts reporting from template-based compliance to performance-based impact.
"Conversations like this show why the SADC Tourism Alliance exists. Our role is to connect the tourism eco-system across 16 member states so that global frameworks translate into regional realities. ESG in Southern Africa cannot be a tick-box exercise — it must recognise the value of jobs, skills and inclusive growth alongside environmental priorities.
"By convening the sector, we ensure that the issues that matter most to our region are heard, debated, and translated into solutions that strengthen both our tourism industry and the communities it supports," says Natalia Rosa, tourism project lead for the SADC Tourism Alliance.
