Naspers

Naspers supports initiatives focused on users with disabilities. In 2020, the company launched the Prosus Social Impact Challenge for Accessibility (SICA) in partnership with Invest India, Startup India, Social Alpha and the World Health Organisation. SICA seeks to enhance technological access for people with disabilities by supporting start-ups focused on developing assistive technologies.

The company actively promotes the development of basic, intermediate and advanced digital skills. In partnership with Stellenbosch University in South Africa, the company has implemented WeCode24, a programme that aims to teach South African youth computer programming. Naspers also worked with UN Women on Prosus FLIGHT, a programme providing education and skills training to marginalised women and girls in India. So far, 750 women and girls from the state of Maharashtra have benefitted from the programme. Furthermore, Naspers Labs is another initiative by the company teaching digital skills to young unemployed South Africans to help them find jobs or start a business in their communities.

Naspers has 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 privacy policy and considers cyber-resiliency and data privacy key topics in its materiality analysis.

Naspers is a leading supporter of the tech start-up ecosystem in developing countries through its venture capital fund and the Naspers Foundry, an accelerator for South African start-ups. The company’s Prosus SICA programme supports start-ups focused on assistive technologies. Naspers also demonstrates commitment to ethical artificial intelligence (AI) principles, having published standalone documents on research ethics and approach to AI.

The company can consider supporting universal and affordable access to digital technologies and digital opportunities for women and girls. It should also disclose the number of people with disabilities it employs and report the income taxes it pays and employment in its main markets.

While Naspers has programmes across different dimensions of digital skills, it can provide greater transparency by reporting participation metrics and commissioning third-party assessments for these programmes. These assessments can help the company and its stakeholders better understand programme outcomes and identify areas of strength and improvements.

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

Limited evidence was found that Naspers supports open innovation. The company can report on its efforts to contribute to open-source initiatives and standards. It can also demonstrate diversity in innovation by reporting the number of women in tech roles at the company.

Naspers commits to respecting human rights and the ILO core labour rights. The company also has a grievance mechanism accessible to workers and external stakeholders to raise human rights concerns and complaints. Although Naspers has included human rights issues in its risk assessment, it does not disclose a process to identify, assess and act on salient human rights risks in its own operations and in its business relationships. The company also does not disclose which stakeholders it engages with on human rights risks and how it engages with them.

Naspers publicly commits to respecting worker health and safety 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 make this commitment. Furthermore, the company provides no relevant evidence in relation to paying its workers a living wage. It also does not publicly commit to promoting 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 employee breakdowns against any other indicators of diversity.

Naspers has anti-bribery and anti-corruption policies but does not describe the steps it takes to identify and address bribery and corruption. It also has a grievance mechanism for stakeholders to raise concerns and complaints on the topic. While Naspers has a global tax strategy, it does not disclose its income tax payments in individual tax jurisdictions. The company also 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.