[1]
South African rural areas are often neglected or completely ignored by the rest of the country despite a significant portion of SA’s population still residing in these areas. Statistics South Africa, reported recently that slightly over four-fifths (80.1%) of South African households lived in formal dwellings, followed by 13.6% in informal dwellings, and 5.5% in traditional dwellings [2].
Rural address allocation is in the midst of being completed for large portions of the country by the South African Post office and its partners. This includes location details, registering villages within areas, identifying sections and dwellings in villages, capturing resident details such as the head of each dwelling, and postal details (post office, routing, postcode).
Here are three important reasons why the accurate addressing of these rural areas are so critically important for South African citizens living in these areas:
- Firstly, its voting season and voter registration took place in January with general elections expected to take place in May 2019. Without an accurate SA address, voters cannot register on the voter’s roll. To complicate addressing efforts, many voting districts change shape due to various geographical, population and political changes that take place between elections [3]. Voting districts must also be aligned to new boundaries determined by the Municipal Demarcation Board [4].
- Secondly, an address provides the basic tool in planning for municipalities. Without this basic data point, municipalities struggle to align budgeting and project implementation with strategic priorities affecting much-needed infrastructure development and basic service delivery.
- Lastly, residents residing in rural areas are becoming increasingly more important as recipients of eCommerce deliveries and remittances (money transfers between family/friends), and as beneficiaries of various financial services (banking, insurance, funeral, retirement products) [5, 6].
At IDATA, we are constantly working with our clients and partners to improve their products and services offerings by keeping their customers at the centre of everything they do. Contact us to find out how we can be of service to your company.
(1) https://binged.it/2RVnxRK
(2) http://www.statssa.gov.za/?p=11241
(3) http://www.elections.org.za/content/Voters-Roll/About-voting-districts-and-stations/
(4) http://www.demarcation.org.za/site/
(5) https://nexusfulfilment.co.za/distribution-difficulties-in-rural-south-africa/
(6) https://www.technoserve.org/files/downloads/South-Africa-domestic-remittances-report.pdf