Hi Reader,

I’m proud to let you know of a first for us at Unifi, and as far as we can tell, a first for South Africa: we have partnered with the Johannesburg Stock Exchange on South Africa’s locally built and relevant ESG dataset, which is now live on the JSE Market Data MarketPlace.

The JSE Unifi ESG product suite is a full coverage dataset across the JSE universe (240+ listed companies) with three years of history, which includes nearly 25,000 disclosures spanning about 60 metrics in the set (initially), and a benchmark layer built on at least five denominators that are actually African-centric, not borrowed.

There are many reasons that we did this, but one that is central to who we are as Unifi: it’s rooted in the fact that ESG isn't African-centric enough.

As a regular reader of my newsletter, you’ve heard me reflect on how challenging it is for our clients to respond to investors, customers and regulators. Their data and reporting requests, frameworks and standards are often grounded in topics that aren’t aligned to how a business has to operate sustainably in Africa.

It’s not a complaint, but it is the reason Unifi exists. For our local clients, we aim to make solid businesses more visible. We know there is important data not being seen, because these businesses are being looked at through a keyhole.

Run a JSE-listed company through a standard global ESG framework and you'll get a score. What you won't get however is a signal of relevance and impact, because the frameworks look for what they look for, and not much else outside of it. Social and economic factors are under-weighted and under-valued. The nett result is that everyone clusters in the same unhelpful middle, and the metrics that actually predict risk and reputation here sit outside the framework entirely.

We didn't build this because ESG data is a nice adjacent product line. We built it because solid, well-run businesses in this market deserve to be visible to capital on their own terms, not on terms written somewhere else.

We’ve heard often that data availability is a challenge of asset owners and managers in fulfilling ESG and impact investment mandates – we expect that to change.

As South Africa transitions soon from a voluntary disclosure regime to one that adopts IFRS S1/S2 as the mantle for regulated disclosure, we also hope that this baseline dataset provides the springboard from which listed companies and their investors (and other stakeholders) can engage meaningfully on how to make data more consistent too.

You can find the product suite here on the JSE MarketPlace.

The JSE and Unifi will be hosting a webinar on this product suite on Tuesday 29th September 2026, 3pm SA, so let me know if you'd like an invite to that, or feel free to share the info with your network.

Also happy to demo the dataset if you'd like to know more.

Special shout-out to our awesome partners, Tracenable, who have supported us in this endeavour.