Sustainability reporting: The skin in the game, butter on bread

By Joshua Massawe

When I was in primary school, my mornings began with a ritual: two slices of bread, wrapped in yesterday’s newspaper, tucked into my school bag.

Most days, there was butter just enough to melt into the warm crevices, turning humble bread into something golden, rich, and full of promise.

But once or twice a month, I’d unwrap it and find… dry bread.

“Mom, no butter today?” I’d ask, trying not to sound disappointed.

She’d look up from the stove, tired but tender. “I’m sorry, mwanangu. I didn’t wake up early enough.” Or sometimes: “The butter ran out. But don’t worry, I’ll sell the avocados at the market today. Tomorrow, your bread will have double butter.” And from that promise I would smirk knowing that better days are ahead of me.

I didn’t know it then, but those mornings taught me a quiet truth: the best things, the things that truly nourish, often come from someone’s extra effort, sacrifice, or early rising.

Fast forward to 2025. In boardrooms across Tanzania, a different kind of “butter” is being prepared, “the sustainability agenda, culminating in sustainability reporting” and it’s demanding the same kind of early rising, extra effort, and skin in the game.

The National Board of Accountants and Auditors (NBAA) has mandated that Public Interest Entities (PIEs) must include sustainability disclosures in their financial reports for periods beginning on or after 1 January 2025.

While that deadline feels like a sprint, it’s more accurate to view it as a sprint to the starting line of a marathon. The question of whether this timeline is realistic is valid, as the efforts required are immense.

Crucially, the standards themselves acknowledge this challenge by providing temporary transition reliefs such as allowing companies to disclose only climate-related information in the first year to help them build momentum.

This pragmatism makes the initial steps achievable. However, the deadline's true purpose remains: to act as a catalyst that launches what is fundamentally a long-term journey, embedding sustainability into the day-to-day operations and strategy of an organisation.

Sustainability reporting isn’t just a checkbox. It’s a transformation. It begins with a gap assessment, honestly asking, “Where are we?” Then a materiality assessment, where companies identify which environmental and social risks truly impact their business (and which stakeholders care most).

Next comes capacity building: training procurement officers, credit analysts, risk managers, many of whom will be unfamiliar with “Scope 3 emissions”, to understand why their data now matters. And finally, the data collection: the heartbeat of the whole exercise. Without clean, consistent, verified data, there’s nothing to report.

This is the “skin in the game.” Finance teams are reworking calendars. Risk departments are mapping climate scenarios. Risk departments are assessing a full range of sustainability-related risks and opportunities from physical and transition climate risks to social factors such as workforce engagement, diversity, and community relations.

Executive committees are establishing governance structures to oversee how these issues are integrated into strategy and decision-making.

Across the organisation, people are investing time, budget, and mental bandwidth not because they want to, but because sustainability is now part of financial reality.

But here’s the beautiful part: to investors, this effort is the butter on the bread.

Global capital is shifting. Investors aren’t just looking at Earnings Before Interest, Taxes, Depreciation, and Amortization (EBITDA) or Return on Equity (ROE) anymore.

They’re asking: How resilient is this bank to flood risk? Does this insurer have a credible transition plan for a low carbon economy? Is this company treating its employees and communities with dignity?

A credible sustainability report answers those questions and builds trust, access to green finance, and long-term investor loyalty.

Conversely, PIE entities that treat this as mere compliance or worse, ignore it will find their bread going dry. Investors with sustainability mandates will walk away. Partnerships will stall. Reputations will fade.

This isn’t just about reporting. It’s about rewiring how Tanzanian businesses operate, embedding sustainability into strategy, not just spreadsheets.  And just like my mom’s butter, the payoff isn’t just symbolic. It’s real. It’s nourishing. It makes the whole day better for the company, its stakeholders, and the nation.

So to all of us, let’s wake up early, sell the avocados if we must. Because the world isn’t just watching numbers anymore, but also our values. Our stakeholders are hungry for butter.

Joshua Massawe is an Associate, Capital Markets Accounting and Advisory Services (CMAAS) at PwC Tanzania. The views expressed do not necessarily represent those of PwC.