Our Projects

Having just recently sent this blog to several co-workers, I thought it might be worthwhile to explain in more detail the nature of the projects that we're working on here. As I've mentioned, there are 14 IBMers here, and we're split up into 3 teams.

One of the teams is working with the Mpumalanga Parks and Tourism Agency, which is then subdivided into two sub-teams. One of these groups is working on a marketing strategy to better show the potential destinations both in Nelspruit and the neighboring countries, Mozambique (talk about a challenge), and Swaziland. Their research involves meeting with the tourism reps in each of the countries and in generla understanding the tourism strategy of each of the countries and why people would want to go there. The idea is that the Mpumalanga area is uniquely positioned as a gateway to these two countries, and capitalizing on that is key. The other piece of the MPTA team is working on air routes, in particular charter flights from countries in Europe and possibly Asia. This then becomes a question of building up the airport infrastructure and partnering with charter airlines and then ensuring that there is existing infrastructure in the city and tourism industry to support large groups, e.g. there may not be a single hotel that can hold a charter group of 100 europeans or something.

Our Second team is only three people and working with the Business Against Crime organization. My understanding is that this is an alliance of prominent business and business people in cooperation with the police forces and private security forces to combat crime. The private security firms are something unique to South Africa that we don't really have in the US. There are armed and unarmed guards not part of the police force everywhere here. Parking lots are guarded by men standing in them looking to protect your car. You pay them 3 or 4 rand, roughly 50 cents and they guarantee that your car won't be robbed while you're in the store. (No guarantee that if you don't pay them that their buddies don't come break into your car). The largest security firm here employes 35,000 people. Another example of a private security company is the guy that sits out in front of our hotel from 6pm to 6am. Sometimes he patrols the grounds, sometime he just sits in a chair at the entrance, sometimes he steals Ethan's backpack. (This was eventually recovered at the cost of the security guy's job (Why Malvin? Why?!?)). Anyways, these guys are working some kind of content delivery/text messaging system that is able to get information to tourist via mobile networks regarding safety tips and messages. For example, it could be location based, where you walk into a market area and you're reminded by your cellphone that purse stealings are a problem here and that you should double check that you're holding your purse securely.

Finally we come to our team of five people: Zach (India), Chris (US), Veronica aka Vero-chan (Uruguay), Carolina aka Caro-chan (Mexico/Columbia), and myself working for the Mpumalanga Economic Growth Agency (MEGA). The five of us are further divided into two teams. The first team, Caro, Vero, and Zach are working with a local paint company called Cosmic Paint, doing essentially a consulting engagement. They've been tasked with improving the business and making it profitable through whatever strategies they can, be it marketing, supply chain improvement, operational improvements or who knows what. This paint company makes four colors of paint I'm told, Green, Terracotta, and White. The fourth color is a mystery that we're still trying to figure out. They drive out to the factory each day and work with the owners and employees to better their processes. I'm hoping to be able to go out there later this week to work with them on their finances which seem in desperate need of help. This leaves Chris and myself who are working on foreign investment into Mpumalanga. Chris is working on sizing the citrus industry and creating a market/business analysis in the hopes that by defining the environment and infrastructure that exists supporting the seed to feed citrus and all by products, that some overseas citrus company may look to enter the Southern African market through acquisition. My piece is different still in that I'm looking from a country basis, which countries are most likely to invest in South Africa, and again in particular in the province in which we're working.

To do this, we've come up with several criteria to be used for evaluating the other countries including detailed product import export analysis (their key products are citrus/agro, steel, coal, and avacados of all things). This certainly plays into a delightful excel spreadsheet which of course puts me in my environment and scoring the countries will be fun to do. The ultimate goal of this project will be to assign a score to each country representing the likelihood of foreign investement from that country into Mpumalanga. The MEGA team can then use this to better target their foreign investment roadshows to maximize their budget efficiency and hopefully bring in some big dollars.

So that's that, we are working down here, rest assured. It's just one of those things where you don't post about what you do in the office because you don't think that other people will find it interesting. And really, jumping off a cliff or economic import indicators, which do you think is more fun to write about? I know, I know, me too, I love economic data, but it doesn't photograph well, as you'll note there is not a single photo in this post.