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vital voices of Africa: pan-African summit for women and girls
Remarks by Roberta Luxbacher
Director, Europe Gas & Power Marketing
January 18, 2007
Good afternoon. My name is Robbi Luxbacher. I am Director, Europe Gas & Power Marketing for ExxonMobil.
I was honored to be asked to represent ExxonMobil at the first Vital Voices Pan-African Summit for Women and Girls. As a company that values diversity among its employees, and which is active in many parts of the developing world, ExxonMobil has a deep and real interest in the mission of Vital Voices. On a personal level, I am delighted to be here with you today.
A year ago, this Summit was just an idea. Now, thanks to the vision and determination of Vital Voices, we are finally here and what an incredible week it has been. Please, take a moment and help me thank Vital Voices.
I have been inspired — but also humbled — to be part of such a wonderful, diverse collection of leaders from across the continent. You are already doing so much to improve your communities — and in the face of such huge challenges. Look around! In this room alone, there are more than 270 lifetimes worth of ideas, actions and inspiration — and you are going to help shape the future of Africa.
ExxonMobil is proud to be an underwriting sponsor of this event, and we are delighted to join the other funders who are also investing in the future of women and girls in Africa.
I was honored to be able to spend time with — and to be energized by — some of the participants ExxonMobil sponsored to attend this Summit. Let me thank them, and all of you, for taking time out of your busy schedules and away from your important work to come here.
I’d like to take a few minutes to talk about why we are deeply committed to this issue. And, how we plan to increase our investments this year through our Foundation’s Educating Women and Girls Initiative.
The world is increasingly dependent on new energy sources. This continent is critical to meeting the world’s growing energy needs. Africa provides much-needed crude oil supplies for world markets, and it benefits from the investments brought by the industry.
Our business, by its very nature, contributes in many ways: we create jobs and pay wages; we use local suppliers, stimulating local economies; we transfer technology and we pay taxes which can be used by governments to build schools, roads and hospitals.
In fact, ExxonMobil is one of the largest private foreign investors in Africa and the continent is an area of significant growth for our company. Over the last five years, Africa has grown to account for more than 25 percent of our net liquids production, one of the largest growth areas in our production portfolio.
So, as you can see, we are not a newcomer to Africa. ExxonMobil has a long history on the continent and thousands of our employees call Africa home. We know first hand the potential of the communities in which we operate, and also the challenges they face.
I want to emphasize something here: we recognize there are other ways we can contribute to the region that also have a direct link to our business. We have a long tradition of social contributions and investments in the communities where we operate. Since 2000, we have invested nearly $100M in community and social development programs, including grants to organizations working in Africa.
In this sense, we found that we can most effectively contribute to building stronger societies by targeting barriers to development. We focus our social investments in Africa on accelerating the region’s progress toward meeting the U.N. Millennium Development Goals. Let me give you some examples of this.
Some of you may know about our Africa Health Initiative, which is directed at the fight against malaria. By listening to local needs, and by funding local community programs, scientific research and global advocacy, we are working with partners to save lives. As a business with operations in Africa, we cannot accept the loss of productivity and potential that comes with one million pregnant women and children dying every year from this disease.
And, our work in this area continues to grow. Just last month at the White House Summit on Malaria, we announced an additional round of grants for 2007 that we are making available to front-line health care workers and researchers combating malaria and other diseases in Africa.
After seeing the success of our Africa Health Initiative, we decided to target another barrier to development — one that touches almost all of the MDGs. We didn’t have a pre-determined outcome in mind. So, we researched the best area in which to focus our financial support, and looked for one that would have considerable and sustainable impact, at both the individual and societal levels.
As a global company, we have seen the unique challenges that so many women and girls face around the world. We have also seen that when women and girls are educated: their families, their communities and their countries prosper.
Despite the enormous constraints women face, millions already run formal and informal economic enterprises, and make a crucial contribution to household earnings, community development, education and health, and conflict resolution and prevention.
Failing to boost education rates for girls means squandering the opportunity to raise women’s future wages and family income levels. As we have learned from the UN Population Fund 2000, increasing the share of women with a secondary education by one percent boosts annual per capita income growth by 0.3 percentage points. That’s a huge effect.
Therefore, in 2005, ExxonMobil Foundation launched its Educating Women and Girls Initiative. We have focused this grant-making program directly on helping communities improve opportunities for women and girls.
We know that just as the opportunities are vast, so too are the needs enormous.
However, we know we cannot do it alone. The key to our success is working in partnership with NGOs, local communities and governments. Our partners in these initiatives are working hard to make a difference through projects in Angola, Cameroon, Chad, Equatorial Guinea, and Nigeria — as well as in Latin America, the Middle East and Asia.
Taking on the biggest challenges facing Africa requires us to engage with the people who understand these issues best: the visionaries and practitioners who know the needs and challenges of their own communities — and who can help address those in the best way possible.
Let me take a few minutes to give you some examples of the work we and our partners are engaged in.
Many of our current projects in Africa address girls’ access to education and ways to encourage them to stay in school. Our efforts range from constructing schools; and improving facilities; to providing safety to girls in school; engaging community and family members to support girls’ education; and helping girls understand their options.
For example, in Nigeria, we are partners in a project called Better Life Options that will benefit as many as 2,000 teenage girls in Akwa Ibom State, in southern Nigeria, who are at risk of dropping out of school. The curriculum helps participants build self-confidence by teaching them life skills as well as general health, nutrition and hygiene.
In Equatorial Guinea, we are supporting a project to improve water and sanitation by constructing latrines and water wells in 20 pre- and primary schools in four districts. This will ultimately benefit 20,000 children.
In Chad, we are helping to support improvements to 36 schools, making them more girl-friendly through high quality teaching and curricula, and creating physically and emotionally healthy environments.
Last year in Angola, ExxonMobil supported the construction of six schools in Kwanza Sul province. Almost 5,000 children attend the schools and half of them are girls. The Angolan government and local communities have been active partners in this project. The pilot phase has been hugely successful, and this year we are supporting the construction of four additional schools and two community health facilities. We are also providing local women and girls with training on health and hygiene practices that will lead to a better quality of life for them and their families.
One last example: we support women like you to attend high-quality residential training and capacity-building courses that we sponsor. At these courses, which have taken place in Washington, DC and in Mexico City, women leaders of community organizations in the developing world improved their skills in running non-governmental organizations. Some of these community organizations have grown sufficiently to be eligible to receive grants for projects in partnership with ExxonMobil.
Our hope is that this week you will return home to train and support others, building capacity at every level. Your potential to affect real change is overwhelming.
We want to help you unleash that potential.
In the past two years, ExxonMobil Foundation has given $6.5M in grants through the Educating Women and Girls Initiative, about half of this funding was directed at Africa.
Today, I am pleased to announce on behalf of the Foundation that it will make an additional $5M in grants available in 2007 to promote the education of women and girls, again with an emphasis on Africa.
Congratulations to Vital Voices and to all of you for making this historic Pan African Leadership Summit For Women and Girls so powerful. I view this week as the beginning of a personal and professional collaboration.
I strongly believe that a powerful network has been formed, capable of producing crucial results in the years ahead. You have the talent and drive — and the heart — to create real change.
Let me close by saying that your personal stories have inspired me. I am in awe of you — and what you do.
Our voices are vital. I know we can unlock the real potential of all African women.
Thank you.
