In 2010 we commenced engagement with the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH, to partner on a three-year MTN South Africa e-waste pilot project which formally commenced in mid-2011.

We aim to increase public awareness about the problems generated by e-waste, potential solutions, and assure ourselves that e-waste is being handled appropriately locally in line with acceptable standards and protocols.

In 2011 we reported delays in delivery against our commitments and implementation plans. Further delays continued to be experienced in 2012. The main reasons include the following:

• Although an important project for our operations, delayed allocation of sufficient human and financial resources to implement the solution we jointly defined with our partners impacted rollout in terms of our original timeframes. To some extent, this has been now been addressed, but we will maintain oversight over this risk;
• The country-wide situational analysis undertaken provided insufficient information for us to make decisions on vendor selection criteria, and we undertook further assessments on SME e-waste handlers’ readiness to process higher volumes of e-waste, and their needs for capacity development, resulting in further implementation delays. We have now completed this task; and
• We changed our plans to collect e-waste from school sites; we now plan to focus on collection via MTN stores as part of a broader integration focus. This change in strategy led to delays in implementation but now ensures possible duplication and resource allocation risks across the business are more effectively mitigated.

In our next report, we will present the quantitative impact of our performance including the results of the public awareness campaign, the value and tonnage of collections and recycled items, in addition to our current financial project commitments.