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Gqeberha, South Africa – The Mandela Bay Development Agency, an entity owned by the Nelson Mandela Bay Municipality, closes 2024 with big lessons learnt, significant gains made, and - most importantly - purposeful forward momentum into 2025.

In January 2024, we were already experiencing a six month delay in grant payments from the parent municipality, however, we had a strong conviction that the situation would improve - and it did in March 2024. Management has already developed a recovery and acceleration plan. Part of the acceleration plan focused on improving the central business districts’ operating environment in terms of security and cleansing of those core precincts, Gqeberha, Kariega CBDs and NMB Stadium / North End Precinct.

The adjustments process also allowed us to reset our goals as articulated in the Institutional Scorecard to 25 strategic Key Performance Indicators. In May 2023 the entity had adopted a new five-year strategic plan and in March 2024 a new organisational structure was approved for implementation. The restructuring was geared towards aligning human resources placement with the strategic and annual goals of the entity. The restructuring process had two key objectives:
(1) to develop a lean and agile entity, and
(2) to align resources to strategy for improved performance outcomes.

Guided by the entity’s policies and procedures, an ambitious recruitment programme followed from April 2024, and, with funding secured, the programme and project acceleration implementation plan were put into action. Despite the short timeframe, we achieved 52% of our KPI targets, utilized 50% of our Capital Budget, and spent 87% of our Operating Budget. These achievements were no easy feat, considering the limited time available between 20 March and 30 June 2024.