Date of work: 2022 – 2023
Santam’s business strategy provides an internal framework for achieving shared value whereby long-term shareholder value is secured simultaneously with programmes that provide societal value. Santam’s Partnership for Risk and Resilience (P4RR) programme, which aims to increase collaboration between provincial and district disaster management centres and enhance the capacity of local government to deal with fire and flood risk management, is a powerful example of how Santam is seeking and achieving shared value.
The P4RR programme was established in 2012 with the overarching aim of increasing the resilience and safety of citizens in the face of disasters. Santam’s approach has been to forge cross-sectoral partnerships with selected municipalities and to work with these municipalities, civil society organisations and communities to reduce disaster risks associated with floods, fire, drought and other disasters. The programme has supported 82 municipalities since its inception.
In 2022, Trialogue was retained to conduct an evaluation of the P4RR programme. The review consisted of refining and confirming the P4RR theory of change and developing an associated indicator framework; reviewing Santam documentation on P4RR; visiting six district municipalities and meeting with stakeholders in them with additional online interviews. A total of 81 stakeholders were interviewed and/or surveyed.
The evaluation found that P4RR is making a positive contribution to disaster risk management in South Africa and most significantly, it is doing so in areas of systems failures. P4RR is affording municipalities the opportunity to build resilience and mitigate against risk proactively, instead of being focused on disaster response only. In the words of one official, “with government, the priority is not on the side of risk reduction, it is more on the response side. With P4RR we could do the risk reduction to mitigate the impacts.”
The report was shared with the programme oversight committee (including co-funder Emthunzini Community Trust and representatives of Santam) and, since the evaluation, Santam has been implementing the recommendations and refining the programme. Quick wins like addressing faulty equipment have been done and Santam is building the tools to better monitor the programme on an ongoing basis.
“The overall experience of working with Trialogue was very good. Their methods were solid and the skills transfer was good. I was walking this journey for the first time, and at the end of the process I felt more empowered.”
Moses Khangale: Manager Stakeholder Programmes, Santam