At DPI, our purpose is to facilitate alignment on how mining creates a better world - underpinned by the principles of the Development Partner Framework. Through our Deep Learnings series, we’re taking a closer look at development partnerships in practice, in an effort to glean insights and learnings to share with a wider audience.
Earlier this year, we sat down with the seven partners of The Impact Catalyst – a cross-sectoral development initiative founded by Anglo American, the South African Council of Scientific & Industrial Research (CSIR), Exxaro, Zutari and World Vision South Africa in 2019.
The Impact Catalyst designs and delivers large-scale socio-economic development projects in three provinces of South Africa: Limpopo, Mpumalanga and the Northern Cape.
It's an important and innovative example of a development initiative that started as an idea in the minds of a group of like-minded people facing similar organisational challenges, and has evolved to become a multi-partner, purpose-driven development effort with real impact.
Based on the interviews with the Impact Catalyst partners, we’ve grouped our Learnings into three core categories:
- Ambition and Partnership
- Ideation, Delivery and Impact
- Governance and Inclusion
In this document, we’ll expand further on these categories and how they apply in the context of a development partnership.
Through our conversations, we sought to capture some of the group’s key practical learnings, alongside the story of how the Impact Catalyst was formed and the progress it has made to date.
While not a comprehensive report on all that makes up the Impact Catalyst, we hope the insights presented here will help to guide anyone considering a development partnership now or in the future.