by Andy Minnaar
28. January 2010 12:53
For those that do not know, BBBEE stands for Broad Based Black Economic Empowerment. An important topic if you are trying to do business in South Africa.
What is this all about?
In a nutshell BBBEE was introduced during the mid 90's after the appointment of a democratic government in South Africa. It stems back to the release of Nelson Mandela and the African National Congress coming into power. It is about the upliftment of PDI's (previously disadvantaged individuals).
The South African government launched a program based on a set of tenets designed to create opportunity for PDI's and foster entrepreneurship. A scoring system was introduced and companies are required to score at various levels, depending on turnover, to qualify for doing business with state entities and large South African companies. Companies that receive high scores get price advantages in state tender evaluations. In other words those contributing to uplift get favourable consideration.
BBBEE is taken very seriously in South Africa, to the extent that state and large companies will not do business with local companies that are not compliant and a companies own ratings are affected negatively if they do not award business to BBBEE complaint partners.
For Movius, we have achieved a level 2 AAA rating. This is a great achievement and very difficult to obtain especially since Movius South Africa is a subsidiary of Movius Interactive Corporation headquartered in the United States.
To do business with top South African operators such as MTN, Vodacom, Cell C, Telkom and Neotel, the BBBEE rating is now mandatory. The fact that Movius achieved such a high rating is significant! It opens doors to do business with any South African based operator and to be favoured in their procurement processes, because we are regarded as contributors giving back to the development of our great country.
For more details on Movius' achievement read our press release.