Why only 1 in 5 project managers trust Africa's sustainability plans to work

Construction works on the Nairobi Western Bypass Road. New research says organisations are struggling to translate sustainability commitments into measurable project outcomes. [File, Standaerd]

Only 20 pc of project professionals are extremely confident that their organisations can deliver on sustainability commitments, compared with 85 pc of sustainability executives who share this confidence.

A new study by the Project Management Institute (PMI) and Green Project Management (GPM), based on nearly 1,600 professionals across 35 countries, found that the confidence gap extends to Project Management Office leaders, with only 43 pc of whom sharing the executives' optimism.

The report, Executing Sustainability Strategy: When Ambition Meets Reality, also found that 79 pc of respondents consider sustainability important to their organisation's long-term success, but only 41 pc said it was fully integrated into projects and daily operations.

Researchers identified six recurring barriers to execution: difficulty quantifying sustainability benefits in business terms, weak integration into decision-making, unclear goals, competing delivery priorities, limited visibility into outcomes and difficulty tracking results over longer time horizons.

Overall, 59 pc of organisations have not fully embedded sustainability into project delivery and operational decisions, despite the research identifying sustainability as the strongest predictor of project success, ahead of governance structures and delivery methodologies.

The findings come as the United Nations reports that only 35 pc of Sustainable Development Goal targets are on track or making moderate progress, while 18 pc have regressed, according to its Sustainable Development Goals Report 2025.

“A strategy does not build a power station, expand broadband access, or improve water security. Projects do,” observed George Asamani, PMI's Managing Director for Sub-Saharan Africa.

“If sustainability is not embedded into project delivery, organisations will struggle to achieve the outcomes they are aiming for,” he adds.

Asamani warned that sustainability outcomes increasingly determine access to international development finance, ESG-linked investment and climate funding in the region.

Organisations unable to demonstrate measurable sustainability delivery risk being excluded from investment flows shaping Africa's next decade of growth, he argued.

“Too often, sustainability lives in strategy documents and annual reports, but it is less visible where decisions are actually being made,” Asamani noted.

The research found that organisations more successful in delivering sustainability commitments typically have leadership alignment around a clear definition of success and the ability to translate sustainability priorities into project-level decisions and actions.

PMI and GPM have launched the Certified Sustainable Project Professional certification and e-learning programme to help project professionals integrate sustainability into planning, delivery and decision-making.

The programme is built around the PMI GPM P5 Standard for Sustainability in Project Management and aligned with the UN Sustainable Development Goals.

The framework extends project success measures beyond time, cost and scope to include people, planet, prosperity, process and product.

“The next phase of sustainability leadership will be defined by execution. As Africa continues to invest in infrastructure, energy, industrialisation and digital transformation, the demand for professionals who can balance economic, environmental and social outcomes will only grow,” Asamani added.