Ethics 1st

Empowers and incentivizes businesses across Africa to comply with anti-corruption laws and standards

Ethics 1st is an integrated solution that empowers and responsibly incentivizes businesses across Africa - majority of which are small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) - to comply with anti-corruption laws and standards by eliminating four well-known barriers to compliance:

1. High Cost of Compliance. Ethics 1st offers free customized compliance evaluation including step by step guide to enhancing compliance systems. The evaluation indicators are benchmarked by internationally recognized and contextually appropriate standards.
2. Growing Risk of Compliance Fabrication. Referring to the tendency for smaller companies to fabricate proof of compliance for business expediency. Ethics 1st is designed to enable appropriate risk assessments then independent verification of compliance, the depth and scope of which limits risk of fabrication of compliance information.
3. Under Capacity. To support SMEs at scale, Ethics 1st offers online modules with localized content that allows users progressively develop their compliance capacity from zero to 100. The process includes mandatory high quality yet affordable training and mentorship.
4. Incentivizing business integrity. Through collaboration and leveraging technology, Ethics 1st is enabled to list companies making progress in enhancing their compliance systems on a database that is available to support third party due diligence. It avails procurement professionals, companies, banks, and investors to encourage a culture of business integrity in any industry or business environment and is ready solution for third party due diligence.

Since the launch of Ethics 1st in September 2021, even without active promotional effort, it has recorded 135 business users across 18 countries in Africa and key strategic partners like the Nigeria and Nairobi stock exchanges. Five MNCs have indicated interest in utilizing Ethic 1st in their third-party due diligence framework even thought this phase has not launched yet.