Vodacom Integrated Report 2016

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We have also tightened efficiencies in our customer engagements
and across our retail and distribution operations, renegotiating key
agreements, consolidating media spend, achieving better leverage in
our sponsorship activities, and reducing the number of calls to the
call centre by 14% through improved self-service facilities, such as
the MyVodacom App and web-chat, as well as process improvement.
Delivering societal value
Providing access to reliable and affordable voice and data is a key
enabler of socioeconomic development, and has been shown to
make a material contribution to GDP growth and job creation.
Through our continuing leadership in infrastructure investment
and the provision of low cost devices and mobile data services –
in inclusive finance, education, agriculture and health – we are
making a meaningful impact on individuals and communities in
each of our markets.
The societal value of our core activities is enhanced through
the work of the Vodacom foundation. Our social investment
expenditure this year was R106 million, focusing on three
key areas: using technology to improve access to education,
addressing community health challenges, and combating
gender-based violence.
Given the critical role of education, I’m particularly proud of our
work with the Vodacom e-school platform, which provides around
105 000 students with free access to online learning materials.
Vodacom e-school is zero rated for all Vodacom customers on a
mobile device. We have connected 3 087 schools with data access,
and exceeded our target for our universal service obligations. Each
school receives free Internet connectivity as part of this project.
In addition to this, we also donated 26 tablets, a laptop, an interactive
whiteboard, a data projector, a printer and educational aids.
Through our Mobile Education initiative – built on a successful
partnership with the South African Department of Basic Education,
Microsoft, Cisco and Mindset – we have connected 81 regional ICT
resource centres. This has enabled us to train teachers on how to
use ICT to improve their teaching in maths and science and
integrate ICT in the classroom. We are running similar education
programmes in our International operations, partnering with
Samsung on the Smart Schools initiative in Tanzania, piloting an
iSchool programme in Lesotho, and providing online educational
content via tablets in the DRC.
Our health projects are similarly delivering valuable benefits.
In South Africa, our partnership with the National Department of
Health on a mobile-based stock visibility solution is now active in
1 600 clinics. The immediate and accurate reporting of stock levels
using mobile phones is contributing to avoiding shortages of
chronic medication at clinics. Together with our partners, we have
continued with a nationwide awareness campaign using Vodacom
technology in the ‘text-to-treatment’ approach to get the message
on treatment to as many affected people as possible. In Lesotho, we
have progressed in our goal of ensuring that 40 000 children are on
continuous HIV treatment by 2017, using text-to-treatment to
support patients’ adherence to antiretroviral therapy. We use a
similar model in Mozambique, sending text messages to encourage
patients to take their medication and attend their appointments
while our Girls Empowerment project in Tanzania has benefited over
10 200 girls with education on reproductive health.
The Vodacom foundation funded the development of the
technology used by the national gender-based violence command
centre in South Africa, which has been recognised globally and
awarded highly acclaimed service awards. The centre provides
support and counselling to victims of gender-based violence.
For our sustainability report 2016 (Delivering
social value) go to vodacom
Looking ahead
We anticipate a weaker outlook for consumers in the year ahead
in most of our markets, due to the depressed levels of economic
growth, interest rate increases, inflation and the impact of the
drought on food prices and disposable incomes. While we
haven’t yet seen a large deterioration in customer spend, we
believe that this will be more progressive as consumers come
under pressure. Given this context, our strategy of taking a
segmented consumer view, personalising consumer offers
through ‘Just 4 You’, and offering smaller-sized ‘hand-to-mouth’
bundles, is particularly relevant.
Despite the tough macroeconomic pressures, we will continue to
make the investments needed to diversify our revenue streams and
achieve our ambitious revenue growth targets for data, enterprise,
fibre and new services. We will be increasing our rollout of fibre,
driving demand for our enterprise and content services, and
maintaining a strong focus on pricing transformation, data
monetisation and the customer CARE initiative, while at the same
time ensuring further progress in cost efficiencies.
A priority focus will be on securing access to spectrum across our
markets, which is critical to delivering value for all our stakeholder
groups. The lack of access to spectrum in South Africa is hindering
our rollout of LTE/4G and LTE-Advanced over wider areas, and
preventing us from delivering on Government’s broadband
performance targets and delivering on the full developmental
potential of enhanced connectivity. We welcome ICASA’s recent
proposal on how spectrum should be allocated, and hope to see
clear direction soon from government so that we can make our
longer-term investment decisions.
I remain confident that our substantial investment in our network
and in maximising the customer experience will continue to
differentiate us from our competitors, and will translate into
sustained growth and added-value for all our stakeholders.
Shameel Aziz Joosub
Chief Executive Officer
3 June 2016
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