Trialogue estimates that companies in South Africa channelled R5.1 billion into projects targeting beneficiaries in poor communities in 2009. The South African government of course invests almost one hundred times this amount in social development, education, health and housing.

The Social Map is designed to enhance the impact of such social investment by showing the extent of investment in relation to socio economic needs by geographic region and development sector. The map depicts this information in an easily accessible form on a Google Earth platform. Investment can be seen at various geographic levels: project, local municipality, district municipality, province or national. It can also be viewed by sector including health, education, community support and 16 others.

The Social Map was developed by a joint venture of Trialogue and AfricaScope. The first year of development was funded by The Business Trust. The roles of the key parties in this initiative are as follows:

1. Trialogue originated the idea of the Social Map and piloted it with a small number of companies in 2007. It takes responsibility for overall project management. This includes the management of the commercial relationship between itself and the organisations that subscribe for Social Map services.
2. AfricaScope specialises in the mapping of socio economic data and is responsible for the socio-economic data as well as the technical development of the Social Map.
3. The Business Trust has over 140 corporate members and provided funding for the development costs of an extended pilot project for a period of 12 months in 2008/09.
4. Participating organisations provide information to be plotted on the map and subscribe to the ongoing benefits the project will provide.

The Social Map aims to facilitate more effective social investment by providing powerful information for strategic decision-making. It has the potential to enhance the impact of social investment in three ways:

1. For companies participating in the project this will provide powerful information to support their funding and strategy decisions. It will enable them to answer questions such as: What is the profile of the communities in which our projects are being implemented? How does our municipal and sector CSI spend compare to that of other companies? Could we co-fund? Are there major gaps? How does our spending align with poverty indicators and how are these indicators changing over the life of our investment?
2. For those who would like to show the consolidated impact of social investment on different sectors and in different parts of the country this tool could be used to demonstrate the areas in which the overall corporate contribution is most significant; and
3. For those in business and government who have an interest in aligning corporate investment and government programmes this tool could identify areas of potential cooperation.

This initiative has the potential to improve collaboration between civil society, government and the private sector as well as between companies by depicting the extent of social investment and its relation to social needs.

There are different levels of access to the data on the map. Full subscription provides access to all of the following data:

Administrative data

• Borders: Official South African borders for provinces, district municipalities and local municipalities.
• Clinics: Geographic location and name of clinics.
• ECD Centres: Geographic location, contact details and closest school for the 26 000 ECD centres across South Africa. Data is from the Nationwide Audit conducted in 2000 by the National Department of Education.
• Hospices: Geographic location and contact details of hospices.
• Hospitals: Location and name of hospitals.
• Poverty nodes: Shows the borders of the presidential poverty nodes. In the rural areas they are called Integrated Sustainable Rural Development Programme (ISRDP) nodes whilst in the urban areas they are called Urban Renewal Programme (URP) nodes. The data includes detailed reports on each of the nodes that were developed by the Business Trust.
• Schools: Location of the almost 30 000 schools in South Africa with the number of educators and learners, the type of school, grades offered, access to services (e.g. water, electricity, sanitation, ICT) and classroom facilities available.

Socio-economic data

• Demographics: Total population by local municipality broken down by race, gender and age.
• Economic (GGP): Gross Geographic Product (GGP) measures consumption of goods and services, investment and government spending at a local municipality level. The GGP shows which sectors drive the local economy.
• Health expenditure: Statistics at a district municipality level on Primary healthcare expenditure per capita, average cost per patient per day in hospital, percentage of population on medical aid and percentage spent on district management and district hospitals.
• Health facilities: Number of private hospitals, district hospitals, clinics and public usable beds at a district level.
• Health immunisation and disease: Statistics at a district municipality level on child immunisation, antenatal visits and births, HIV, TB, diarrhoea and malnutrition.
• HIV statistics: HIV prevalence by province.
• Human development index: Developed by UNDP in 1990 the HDI is a product of 3 main factors, namely health, education and wealth.
• Malnutrition: Number of people hungry, hunger rank of municipality, rank of municipality for stunted children, number of population impoverished, poverty rank of municipality, rank of municipality for underweight children, and rank of municipality for stunted children.
• Poverty: Percentage of total households living below the poverty line at a local municipality level.
• Service access: This is based on the Multiple Deprivation Index which has 5 main components – income and material, employment, health, education and living environment deprivation.

Development funding data

• Corporate: Contains Trialogue data on the overall distribution of CSI expenditure by province as well as company-specific data including:
  • Details of individual projects of subscribing companies
  • The aggregate CSI spend data of all subscribing companies (total CSI spend by province and development sector)
  • The location and summary details of implementing partners / NGOs of the subscribing companies
• Government: Expanded Public Works Programme (EPWP) data including budget, expenditure and job creation figures. Also includes the Eastern Cape’s Programme of Action. Additional government expenditure data will be added as it is sourced.
• Non-profit: Contains the project and expenditure data of large non-profits with activities around the country. Business Trust data for the past eight years is captured in this layer.
• Other donors: Will contain project and expenditure data for other donors including foundations and multilateral and bilateral donors.
• Total funding: Aggregate social expenditure by geography and development focus area. Sum of the corporate, government and other donor expenditure.

Service provider data

• Children's services directory: Name, location and contact details of organisations providing OVC-related services. This directly was developed by the Department of Social Development and USAID.
• Prodder database of NGOs: Location of over 4 000 NGOs in South Africa with description of services and contact details.

The vision for this social map project is far-reaching. There is the potential to add layers of information that would make it an even more powerful support tool for practitioners - including further data on government spend as well as data on other donor funding.