Gender Equality: Guinness Nigeria to Empower 200,000 Females By 2030

Temitope Adebayo

In a bid to achieve inclusivity and diversity in the workplace, Guinness Nigeria is set to empower 200,000 females across the country by 2030, as the firm is prepared to collaborate with Government to review laws that limit women from achieving their goals.

The Managing Director/CEO, Mr Baker Magunda, Guinness Nigeria, told newsmen at a press briefing held recently in Lagos.

The MD explained that the firm as an organization has decided to empower 200,000 females in Nigeria to have access to business opportunities through multiple interventions of training, giving females real skills and creating a start-up business that will help them reach their height.

According to him, if you walk around the country, you realise that most of the small businesses are run by females whether in markets, bars, or as frontline workers but do not have opportunities like their male counterparts.

“Our goal is that all people who work at Guinness feel truly expressed value, equal chance to progress in their careers. We have committed that by 2030, we would have a 50-50 workforce of both males and females including people living with disability at Guinness.

And we want to start at the top and to do that, our board, the leadership team is almost 50/50 female and men.”

In his word” At Guinness, we are committed to creating the most inclusive and diverse culture anywhere in Nigeria and to do that we will lead policy changes in this country.”

He added that we started the policy and I am delighted that many organisations came after us and started copying what we did. What we are trying to create here is to embrace and cultivate a mindset to access the full potentials of individuals, remove inhibitions that could stop people from expressing their potentials.

According to him, gender is still in Africa and is inhibition and you have to confront it, therefore, we are trying to remove any inhibition from gender and we are on the journey to do that.

Also speaking, the director of human resources, Ayodeji Ajibola, said the company is focused on creating the most inclusive and diverse culture that ensures people thrive while shaping market leading policies and practices.

Ajibola added that at Guinness Nigeria we give six months of paid maternity leaves for our female workers and 4 weeks for males. To create more familiarity between mother and child and vice visa

“We want to achieve gender representation and promote gender parity at all levels, and to create a culture where increasing diversity is led from the top but the responsibility for change is felt across the board,” Ajibola added.