Levelling the Playing Field for Women
Odunayo Sanya
The Executive Secretary of MTN Foundation, Odunayo Sanya, is a woman driven by purpose. Since she assumed her role in 2021, she’s been at the forefront of driving impact interventions in different areas for the foundation. With the International Women’s Day global celebration, marked every March 8, focusing on going beyond equality and embracing equity, Sanya tells Vanessa Obioha how the foundation is prioritising women’s needs through its recent initiative – Y’ellopreneur
fifty is the milestone age for many people. It is that age that screams your achievement and the legacy you want to leave behind. For Odunayo Sanya who turned 50 last year, it is about embracing her purpose.
“I keep asking myself where the time went,” she said in mock amazement during a recent interview.
To be sure, Sanya’s looks do not in any way betray her age. Whether in weaves, braids, or cropped hair, her calm demeanour exudes a youthful aura that is even more complemented by her winsome smile.
As she embraces her new age, the MTN Foundation’s Executive Secretary is all about trying to find meaning in her now.
By her ‘now’, she meant being intentional to “deliver impact to myself, more people and my environment. Bottom line, do everything, align my resources, my abilities, and my capacity in such a way that I become a better version of myself and I become useful to other people and enable them whether as an individual, in my career, just anywhere I find myself.”
Sanya grew up in a home that is built on virtues and values. Her parents treated her and her siblings as one. There was no special entitlement given to a particular gender. In her parents’ eyes, particularly her late Dad, they were all first human beings. The values instilled by her parents still guide her today in every decision she makes, be it career, spiritual life or family.
“My dad taught me to be open-minded,” she said. “He believed that we were all human beings. So for us growing up at home, it wasn’t about if this is a son or a daughter. My dad never referred to any one of us in that regard and I tried to be intentional about observing this. I never heard him say my son, my daughter. No, it was my child, my children. It was so much about being open-minded to the possibilities of a human being first. The fault lines of old are he is male, she’s female, he’s from here, she’s from there and all of that. My father’s position has really stayed with me and I think it helps to get the best out of people, out of relationships and generally, to be able to have desired outcomes.”
Indeed, these values have played out in the way she handles the affairs of the foundation since she assumed her current position in 2021. Having joined MTN Nigeria in 2005 as a Manager in Customer Management, she has climbed the rungs of the ladder steadily and shown efficiency to steer MTN Foundation in achieving its set goals which are aligned with the UN Sustainable Development Goals and national priorities.
“The goal of the foundation has always been to improve the quality of life of Nigerians, in the communities that we operate as MTN. And we achieve this through various interventions in the areas of health, education, youth development and other national priorities and initiatives. Of course, all of these are done on a sustainable basis.”
Founded in 2004, the MTN Foundation was set up to manage CSR initiatives for MTN Nigeria. It kicked off operations in 2005, the same year Sanya joined the parent company, MTN Nigeria. The interventions of the foundation cut across two major portfolios which are youth development and national priorities.
Over the years, the foundation has embarked on various projects that speak to its target mission. From Y’ello Doctor, a health-related initiative that brings health care closer to the people in the hinterlands, providing state-of-the-art equipment to hospitals, supporting the art community as well as creating platforms for youth development.
“I always say that it is not rocket science why we must focus on the youth. That’s the largest demographic of our population. For us, we focus on upskilling them, providing them with tools, access, knowledge and opportunities such that they can become economically active citizens, either through the route of entrepreneurship or through the route of employment. But the bottom line is that they must be better off and be in a position to contribute to the socio-economic development of our country.”
Under the Y’ello Doctor project, Sanya revealed that about 52,000 people have been reached in the communities visited.
To carry out its mission effectively and efficiently, the foundation’s choice of projects implemented is informed by data. Before moving into any community, as explained by Sanya, they carry out a baseline assessment to be sure that the intervention is right for the community.
“Governance is not negotiable at MTN Foundation. All our selection and approval processes for projects are conducted in a manner that emphasises transparency.”
Likewise, the foundation measures impact via monitoring and evaluation. They also carry out assessments on the field and engage members of the community. By doing so, the foundation is able to drive out the negative indicators as well as modify and make better interventions.
Women are not neglected in the mix, be it through the Y’ello Doctor project or other mother and child health programmes, the foundation prioritises the needs of the female gender. Last year, it embarked on an audacious project to equip female entrepreneurs called Y’ellopreneur.
“It was discovered in 2019 that only two per cent of female-founded businesses were able to access venture capital globally.”
Given the low turnout of women, the foundation created Y’ellopreneur to solve some of the setbacks that female entrepreneurs face.
“The first thing is capacity. So the question for us was how do we build capacity? It wasn’t just about throwing grants or loans at women but how do we build the capacity in such a way that these things we do will have a multiplier effect.”
Apart from capacity, Sanya identified access to funding as another setback for female entrepreneurs.
When the foundation finally rolled out Y’ellopreneur last year, it received about 40,000 applications. Only 500 were trained out of which 150 women were to receive funding in form of loans to the tune of N2 million with about a 2.5% interest rate.
To help in the capacity building of the women, MTN Foundation partnered with the Enterprise Development Centre of Pan-Atlantic University.
“At the end of the day, every woman that completed the training came out with a business plan. And that is one thing women have struggled with in the past. How do you come up with a bankable business plan? They all have their business plans and we have been receiving testimonials from them.
“This is a milestone for us at the foundation. So, we are done with the capacity building and we believe we have contributed to moving these women to a point where they are skilled, the gap has been closed a bit.”
Recently, about 200 out of the 500 women pitched their business plans to the foundation for equipment loans. The foundation partnered with the Bank of Industry to implement this section of the programme.
Sanya also pointed out that the foundation is deliberate about the kind of businesses they support.
“We really want to contribute to the real economy. We are funding women in the value chain of agriculture, circular economy; women in recycling and processing who source their raw materials locally because we are very particular about that, considering the rate of inflation.”
Given the cultural challenges that still relegate women and silence their voices, Sanya believes that women should not relent in shattering glass ceilings.
“We have seen an upsurge in the number of female executives that now sit in the boardrooms. Are we there yet? No. But we have moved from where we used to be. I brought it home to MTN. There is a deep-seated commitment at the group level and at the upper level in this case, Nigeria, where we say that we want to have a 50-50 representation across management and we are almost there. And so things have moved for women and it can only get better with women.”
She continued: “In terms of shattering the glass ceiling, I think we need to continue to push that narrative of self-authorship. At the end of the day, it’s down to the individual, make yourself count. Be more than just a number in the statistics of the world. That’s it. So, a lot of confidence building in women, we put the girls back in school, beaming the light intentionally on women knowing fully that when you train a woman, you train a nation,” she argued.
Success for today’s woman today to Sanya is not a linear definition.
“I think success is relative and I believe that women really should define what success means to them. We’re both women, but you’ll be shocked that your definition of success is different from mine. That is where authenticity comes in, the originality and the ability to own your path, own your story, and stay on your lane. You know, those cliches that people use, but I think it starts with every woman defining what success means to them and what it is for them. What is their picture of success, and it could be family, relationships, personal achievements, income, or corporate accolades. I think the most important thing is that as a woman you’re in control of your success parameters. You own your journey, and you are authoring yourself. Every woman has to define what success means to them.”
As March 8 is globally celebrated as International Women’s Day, this year’s focus is on going beyond equality and embracing equity. Equality and equity are two terms that are often used interchangeably but have different meanings. Sanya shared her thoughts on what this year’s theme means to her and how MTN Foundation is implementing it in its projects.
“I like to use this analogy of equality as giving the tall and the short man a ladder with the same number of rungs to reach a height, but equity is actually giving the shorter person, a taller ladder,” she said.
“It is this thinking around equity that drove the foundation towards these gender-based programmes because, for us, we needed to target resources at women such that they can close the gap with other people in society. At MTN and the foundation, we’re focused on as much as we can to level the playing field for women through our interventions and programmes. We will continue to provide equity-based solutions, pushing this narrative of equity across our various initiatives, and hopefully, we believe that we will see the desired outcomes in good time.”
