Naspers

Naspers has initiatives focused on users with disabilities, including accessible apps and training opportunities. The company calculates its indirect economic impact in South Africa, with 16,200 jobs created through its supply chain.

The company has partnered with Stellenbosch University in South Africa to implement WeCode24, which teaches secondary school students computer programming. Naspers Labs teaches digital skills to young unemployed South Africans to help them find employment or start a business in their communities. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Naspers has supported school connectivity by providing free access to educational materials.

Naspers follows leading practice in its senior-level oversight of cybersecurity with a high-level commitment to cybersecurity, a head of cybersecurity and a publicly available report that details how the group handles cybersecurity matters. In addition, the company has a group-level privacy policy and considers cyber-resiliency and data privacy as key topics in its materiality analysis.

The company is a leading supporter of the tech innovation ecosystem in developing countries through its venture capital fund and the Naspers Foundry, an accelerator for South African start-ups. In India, the company is working with partners on a social impact challenge to advance accessibility, providing funding and support for start-ups focused on assistive technologies.

Naspers can consider contributing to universal and affordable access to digital technologies and supporting digital opportunities for women and girls. It should also disclose the number of its employees with disabilities and report income taxes paid and employment in its main markets.

Naspers has programmes for advancing basic and technical digital skills and school connectivity. There is an opportunity for the company to support intermediate digital skills development for vulnerable groups.

Naspers should consider disclosing how it monitors, remedies and reports on security incidents, as well as report on government requests for user information. The company should also make a high-level commitment to child online protection.

Limited evidence was found that Naspers supports open innovation. The company can report on initiatives relating to open source initiatives and standards. It can also demonstrate diversity in innovation by reporting the number of women in technical roles at the company. While Naspers reports that it includes ethical dimensions of artificial intelligence (AI) in its development process, it should also publish the ethical principles it follows.

Naspers commits to respecting human rights and the ILO core labour rights. The company also has a grievance mechanism that is accessible to workers and external stakeholders to raise human rights concerns and complaints. Naspers has included human rights issues in its risk assessment. However, it does not disclose a process to identify, assess and take action on salient human rights risks in its own operations and in its business relationships. Moreover, the company describes the stakeholders it engages with in general, but it does not specify whether it engages with stakeholders whose human rights have been or may be affected by its activities.

Naspers publicly commits to respecting the health and safety of workers and places the same expectation on its business relationships. The company does not disclose a policy commitment stating that it does not require workers to work more than the regular and overtime hours, and it is not explicit that it requires its business relationships to do the same. Furthermore, the company provides no relevant evidence in relation to paying its workers a living wage. It also does not publicly commit to gender equality and women’s empowerment. In relation to workforce diversity, the company provides a breakdown of employees in different employee categories by gender. However, it does not disclose against any other indicators of diversity per employee category.

Naspers has a policy prohibiting bribery and corruption and takes steps to identify and address bribery and corruption. It also has a grievance mechanism for stakeholders to raise concerns and complaints on the topic. Naspers has a global tax strategy but does not disclose income tax payments in individual tax jurisdictions. The company does not disclose its approach to lobbying and political engagement. Specifically, the company has no public statement indicating that it does not make political contributions, and it does not disclose its lobbying expenditures.

The below datasheet disaggregates scores within the three core social measurement areas and by specific indicators.