Public-private partnership to better lives

In the bid to deliver on its promise of a better life for all, the Eastern Cape government is grappling with what most public policy experts label as the triple challenge facing SA, namely inequality, poverty and unemployment.

I strongly believe that accomplishing this gargantuan mission of a better life for all will require strong collaboration between government and private sector.

This is the journey that we at Vodacom embarked on some five years ago, and looking back we can attest that public-private partnerships (PPP) built on mutual trust and respect do work.

One of the major themes to come out of Premier Oscar Mabuyane’s state of the province address is the need for partnerships to propel the Eastern Cape forward.

The premier has emphasised that stronger partnerships need to be forged between government and the private sector as part of the plan to improve people’s lives.

One of the greatest advantages of PPP is the access it provides to modern technology, management, skills and innovation from the private sector.

PPPs build in synergies and innovative ways of delivering the infrastructure required to meet the service outcomes and improve the lot of many, especially the poor.

There is growing expectation for big business to serve a social purpose, and to use its resources and core capabilities to make a meaningful contribution to impoverished communities.

In this regard, Vodacom’s strategy continues to help drive impact against the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in areas such as education, youth empowerment and economic inclusion.

As a leading cellphone company, it is our firm belief that we have a significant role to play in contributing to the societies in which we operate, using our core capability, technology, to transform the lives of the people of the Eastern Cape.

For example, SDG 4 aims to “ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all”.

The bulk of our social investment in the Eastern Region is in education.

In partnership with the department of basic education, we have connected and maintained 14 teacher centres and more than 500 schools across the province, benefiting tens of thousands of learners.

We have also trained thousands of teachers on the use of information and communication technology (ICT) in the classroom.

Proper classroom learning can never happen where learners have some of their serious needs unmet, such as an unsafe school environment and physical needs.

Our Adopt-a-School initiative provides children from poor families with full uniform, shoes and stationery.

In 2021, scores of children of Newell High School in Gqeberha and Patensie Agricultural School were beneficiaries.

Beyond the classroom, annually the number of children who die from pit toilets is on the rise.

We adopted a number of schools across the province where we built proper ablution facilities and installed boreholes with storage tanks to schools that had no access to water in areas such as Lusikisiki.

Learning cannot happen optimally where school infrastructure has been vandalised, and to this end, we built proper fencing in a number of schools that had their fencing stripped, to ensure learning happens in a safe environment.

To support efforts in combatting the spread of the coronavirus, we donated thousands of smartphones plus data and voice call minutes to the department of health to be used by front-line health workers to collect and transmit data in real time for resource planning purposes by the government.

We issued more than 20,000 sim cards to assist learners to access education resources on the Vodacom e-School online platform free of charge.

In October 2019, the Eastern Cape province was declared a drought disaster region following pronounced water shortages in many urban and rural areas — the worst in 15 years.

Vodacom donated R3.5m towards the Eastern Cape government’s drought-relief efforts; this followed a productive engagement with Mabuyane.

Critically, we are seized with finding innovative ways to unlock the potential of

SMMEs across the province.

In this regard and as part of our network investment to the tune of more than R500m over the past three years across the province, we enlisted the services of black-owned suppliers and created hundreds of employment opportunities during construction of several base station sites.

Importantly, the broadband infrastructure ensured that people in deep rural communities access the internet for the first time.

These modest contributions position Vodacom as a strategic partner of the government in its work to build a sustainable future for the people of the Eastern Cape.

However, more work still needs to be done.

Given where our country finds itself currently, there is a pressing need to forge meaningful partnerships to deepen and accelerate the impact of our collective programmes and help to move the province forward.

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MPUMELELO KHUMALO