Coega is the complete solution

The Coega Development Corp (CDC) is most closely associated with the development initiatives taking place in the Coega IDZ. However, the organisation has grown beyond its initial focus to encompass a range of services that offer a complete solution to investors. This makes the CDC a significant investment promotion organisation in the Eastern Cape region.

The organisation now provides programme management services to all spheres of government as well as management consulting services to the public sector as a whole, including public entities.

One such offering is Coega Strategic Solutions (CSS), which consists of three subunits — Consulting Services, the Research Unit and Information & Communications Technology (ICT). Together these subunits provide multidimensional support services to Coega’s clients.

Consulting Services is geared towards the provision of management consulting services to mainly government entities. The core product of the subunit is business advisory services, business strategy operational improvement and the programme management of such initiatives.

The subunit has been awarded a R50m contract by the department of rural development & land reform to drive an Organisational Renewal Strategy Programme.

For the past two years Consulting Services has been working with the Eastern Cape department of economic development, environment affairs & tourism on the innovative Honeybush tea project. This is in line with the development of the agricultural sector in the province for rural communities at a commercial scale. Five co-operatives have been set up to plant and eventually process the honeybush tea for the local and international markets.

The Research Unit provides economic research services by highly qualified economists who perform economic analyses for their clients, mainly government departments and municipalities. The subunit has done work for the Eastern Cape office of the premier, the department of economic development and the Kouga Municipality. It is presently providing advisory and planning services on the roll-out of the Local Economic Development programme for municipalities and metros.

The unit, in conjunction with the department of economic development and the Eastern Cape treasury, publishes the Eastern Cape Socio-Economic Review & Outlook This is a journal that develops and records an impartial economic state-of-theprovince view of the province in the context of the SA and global economic environment. So far three editions have been published.

The ICT sub-unit provides all the IT and telecommunications infrastructure and services for the CDC and its clients, as well as develops and operates the enterprise IT systems of the organisation. It also provides data (Internet) and telephony systems for the IDZ tenants and the Nelson Mandela Bay municipality. The subunit runs two state-of-the-art data centres for the CDC — one based at the CDC head office as well as the data centre situated at the Business Process Outsourcing Park.

The data centres provide hosting services for a variety of clients, including PetroSA and Freeworld. ICT also holds the private electronic communications network licence to be able to operate the telecommunications services under its auspices.

“The major challenge the business unit has faced is to define a viable product/service offering that is commercially viable and meets the development objectives of the CDC. The unit’s strategy is evolving to refine its product offering, and it is now a profitable unit,” says Coega chief information officer Monde Mawasha.

He says the unit needs to ensure that it is able to meet the needs of the growing Coega IDZ. “It must be able to adapt to the fast-paced changes of the IDZ and continue to offer a relevant service for a diverse range of clients, both international and local,” he says, adding that the service offering must be world-class. In addition, it needs to ensure that the telecommunications infrastructure is “ready for plug-and-play” and at the same time ensuring that it is customisable for the needs of each client. The current edition was established in April, and is available on the Coega website.