An innovative new project is announced aimed at supporting hotels in eight African countries in sourcing more through local supply chains.

The project will be run by the Sustainable Hospitality Alliance and aims to increase the hospitality industry’s positive impact in local communities and improve hotels environmental and social sustainability.

The Alliance will work with local Four Seasons, Hilton, Iberostar, IHG Hotels & Resorts, Kerten, Marriott and Wyndham Hotels & Resorts procurement teams and properties on the project. The project will be supported by the Special Initiative "Decent Work for a Just Transition" of the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ), which is implemented by the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH among others and also operates under the Invest for Jobs brand.

Procurement processes are a fundamental part of the Alliance’s work, especially in the developing markets across the globe. Spanning over two years, the project will focus on local supply chains in Ethiopia, Rwanda, Egypt, Tunisia, Morocco, Senegal, Cote D’Ivoire and Ghana. The project will include local supplier training, hotel guidance and impact reporting on fair employment, diversity and environment.

The purpose of this project is to identify and understand the challenges and opportunities in developing holistic local sourcing strategies and to enable and support hospitality businesses to do so. This project will support local suppliers in engaging with hospitality businesses, helping them to grow their customer base and enabling them to create jobs to support this expansion.

It will help local suppliers to respond to the needs of hotel companies (including through aligning their measurement of social and environmental KPIs with what hotels require), while helping hotels to understand and account for how local suppliers may operate differently to their current supply base.

This project is part of the Alliance’s Net Positive Accelerators – one of the new initiatives which are part of the Alliance’s new five-year strategic plan. The strategy, launched earlier this year, promotes Net Positive Hospitality for People and Planet. The accelerator programme aims to inspire the Alliance’s members and leverage their footprints and operations to launch collaborative pilot initiatives targeting systemic issues in specific destinations. The aim is to capture critical learnings and potential for scaling and replication, which will be disseminated to the broader industry.

Sustainable Hospitality Alliance CEO, Glenn Mandziuk, said: “There is tremendous potential for hotels to source more through local supply chains, thereby increasing their positive impact in local communities. We hope this Accelerator project can be fundamental in changing procurement processes in developing markets and beyond, inspiring the hospitality sector to develop more holistic local sourcing strategies.”

Thomas Rolf, Head of Programme at GIZ said: “Our goal is to create decent jobs in our partner countries while contributing to a sustainable transformation of economy and society and at the same time empowering women and girls. I am confident that this cooperation will help us to achieve these goals.”