Anglo American has signed a $100m sustainability-linked loan agreement with the International Finance Corporation (IFC). Linked to the delivery of sustainability goals in the group’s Sustainable Mining Plan, the 10-year loan is the IFC’s first in the mining sector.
Said Stephen Pearce, finance director of Anglo American: “Our Sustainable Mining Plan has a set of ambitious global goals relating to delivering a healthy environment, creating thriving communities, and being recognised as a trusted corporate leader. We designed our goals to challenge us to lead and innovate in how we can best deliver meaningful and enduring value to society, and particularly to those nearest to where we operate. We are delighted to now link some of our education and job creation targets to this loan as an additional demonstration of our commitment to deliver real and tangible benefits for our host communities.”
Anglo American’s Sustainable Mining Plan includes targets to support schools in its host communities to perform within the top 30% of state schools nationally and to create or support three offsite jobs for every onsite job at its operations by 2025.
Strengthening the public education system
Said Jonathan Samuel, Anglo American’s group head of responsible business partnerships: “To achieve our education target, we will aim to strengthen the public education system by training educators, practitioners, and school management teams, and upgrade basic school infrastructure and equipment including providing Wi-Fi and computers at over 100 primary and secondary public schools in South Africa.
“We are already supporting more than 73,000 students from early childhood development centres, primary schools and secondary schools, with more children to benefit in Phase 2 of the programme. To achieve our livelihood target we plan to provide mentorship, capacity building, skills development and access to finance to small businesses in the mining value chain and in other sectors, with a focus on women and young people. Since 2018, we have supported over 13,500 jobs and facilitated R430m of loans to small businesses in South Africa through Anglo American’s Zimele Loan Fund.”
Anglo American has committed to contributing additional funds to agreed social causes if it falls short of fully achieving its education and livelihood targets under the terms of the IFC loan.
