De Beers will deliver this goal in part through the expansion and scaling of the AWOME (Accelerating Women-Owned Micro-Enterprises) programme, which it has been implementing in Botswana, Namibia and South Africa since 2018 in partnership with UN Women.
Despite the challenges of various lockdowns, the programme continued to support women to build their businesses throughout 2021, with more than 1,800 women micro-entrepreneurs having been reached to date. The focus during 2021 was on the immediate need to support businesses impacted by the pandemic and help them gain necessary support.
New offerings were also introduced, including a training course to support women as they look to start their own businesses, new digital literacy training courses to enable entrepreneurs to thrive in a digital world, and tailored training for entrepreneurs in certain sectors, such as the appointment of an Agriculture Specialist to support more than 132 women farmers participating in the programme in South Africa.
Building Forever goal: By 2030, we will achieve equal opportunity, including gender parity, for employees across our workforce
De Beers has had a deliberate and focused effort to improve inclusion and diversity across the business, including through the launch of reciprocal mentoring, a focus on talent development and succession planning, unconscious bias training, an Inclusion & Diversity steering group and an all-employee education campaign.
