Community and Human Rights (CAHR) Africa Awards
Business decisions influence employees, customers, suppliers and competitors, while business operations affect communities, government and the environment where they operate. This is more so for companies in the extractive industries.
While companies have contributed towards improved social development through providing jobs, paying taxes, building an industrial base, enhancing efficiency, earning foreign exchange and transferring technology, they have also been linked publicly to deepening disparities in wealth, poor labour conditions, pollution incidents, health and safety failings, forced displacement and other human and civil rights abuses, leading to calls from all over the world for companies to become more accountable.
In actuality, companies do not have any choice but to deliver tangible and sustainable benefits to their access, host and impacted communities. Extractive companies especially face rising expectations to do more than simply mitigate negative impacts, they are expected to be sources of economic opportunity and to be reliable and trustworthy partners and neighbours.
As extractive companies have severe negative impacts on their host communities, they are expected to deliver lasting social and economic benefits to the areas where they have their footprints.
Past Winners
Players across the industries’ value chain have increasingly faced calls to clean up their act and make peace with host communities. Many businesses – big and small – have taken steps to institutionalise processes that would ensure inclusive engagement with communites for equitable outcomes, but so far there is a long way yet to go.
The Community and Human Rights (CAHR) Awards – pronounced “Car Awards” – provides a platform that encourages businesses to take extraneous steps to correct the anomalies of engagement within communities, primarily extractive communities, by acknowledging and appreciating best performing companies.
CAHR Awards Categories

Ken Saro-Wiwa
Environmental Management Award
The company which has had the least negative environmental impact in the last 3 years, and contributed to impact mitigation with state of the art technology, with a proven commitment to managing its environmental footprints.

MKO Abiola
Community Engagement Award
The company with the most amenable relationship with its community and which has a clear process for inclusive engagement and grievance management. These should have yielded positive Impacts within the communities.

Hajiya Gambo Sawaba
Community Impact Award
The company/individual with the most visible impact of community development, including infrastructure, training, growth of women entrepreneurs, youth graduates and other applicable impacts.

Funmilayo Ransome-Kuti
Human Rights Award
This award is annually funded by Global Rights with support from the Open Society Foundation (OSF). It will be given to the company/individual with the best compliance to mainstreaming human rights norms in its operations and with the most significant impact on safeguarding livelihoods.

Mallam Aminu Kano
Award for Leadership
The award would be given to an individual – male or female – who has exhibited exemplary leadership that has a significant and positive impact on advancing and scaling responsible behavior.

Josephine Nkemdilim
Equal Rights Award
This award could go to a company who has exhibited a commitment to gender equality.

Apostle Hayford Alile
Humanitarian Award
This award would be to an individual, and may come with a cash reward. It would be for contributing significantly to alleviating human suffering and improving the quality of life of individuals both in Nigeria and abroad.
They would have demonstrated compelling leadership, a collaborative working style, a profound sense of social responsibility and outstanding humanitarian volunteer accomplishments that bring honor to Africa.
The Award Process
Call for Public Nomination
This is the phase where individuals and organisations are nominated by the general public for suitable award categories.
Internal Review
This is the process of sieving multiple nominations, verification of persons and their qualification for the category entered, and selection of the most impressive/suitable profiles based on available resources online.
Commencement of Voting
Voting portal is opened to the public to allow the selection of deserving recipients of the various categories of the CAHR Awards.
Validation of Nominations
Award nominees will be asked to submit documents, pictures, links and any other form of proof that validate their contributions to the categories for which they have been nominated.
Jury Verification
The CAHR Awards Jury will scrutinise information provided by the award nominees, and will judge based on a set criteria – Authenticity of Project/Activities, Replicability of Projects/Activities, Scale of Impact and Integrity/Personality Check.
Meet our Judges

Ego Boyo

Linda Ofori-Kwafo

Temitayo Ade-Peters
CAHR Awards Partners



