From Creamer Media in Johannesburg, this is the Real Economy Report. Consumer electronics producer Samsung Electronics is providing African communities with much needed education and health services not affected by the availability of electricity through its Digital Village programme. Leandi Kolver has the story.

Leandi Kolver:
Samsung earlier this month handed over its first multi-billion dollar Digital Village to the community of Malibongwe Ridge in Gauteng, providing the community with reliable services.

Samsung Africa head of public affairs and corporate citizenship Ntutule Tshenye tells us more about this first Digital Village.

Samsung Africa head of public affairs and corporate citizenship Ntutule Tshenye:
The digital village is an amazing passion of ours as Samsung Electronics Africa. The Digital Village provides a number of services, critical to those is, of course, education services as well as health services. We have added other community services – entrepreneurship and so on to also help small businesses in the area.

So the facility that are here, if I have to numerate them, we have the solar powered internet school, that provides state-of-the art educational facilities for out of school kids but also for school-going kids that will come for the afternoon classrooms.

We also have the solar powered generator, which basically generates clean energy that then powers the administration block, which is where the NGO that we partner with would manage the facilities from.

We also have the solar power telemedical centre where we do diagnosis, more than treatment because we also have the solar powered health centre, which is the mobile truck, where we actually now offer actual treatment.

We have partnered with the Gauteng Provincial Government represented by the Department of Economic Development especially on the green technology, green economy side of things because of the solar energy component of the work that we do.

We also partner NGO’s that are providing various services here.

Leandi Kolver:
However, the Digital Village programme goes much further than Malibongwe Ridge.

Tshenye elaborates.

Samsung Africa head of public affairs and corporate citizenship Ntutule Tshenye:
We are obviously planning for expansion. The response from the communities where we have rolled out these villages have just been amazing – and we are not surprised about that, because when you think about it, these are the basic services that people need, especially in underserved communities.

Leandi Kolver:
This initiative would also not be restricted to South Africa, as Samsung was planning to have 10 Digital Villages operational in 10 separate African countries by the end of the year.

Samsung Africa head of public affairs and corporate citizenship Ntutule Tshenye:
Within that ten, we have started with the first three countries which is South Africa, which is this handover today. We are now shipping equipment as we talk to Ethiopia, we are also shipping to Gabon.

Those are the three countries where we have already completed doing the facilities, the digital villages and we are now shipping them for commissioning in those countries.

And then we have also now started engaging with the governments for MoUs with other countries. Four countries in west Africa, including Nigeria and Ghana among the four. And then three countries in east Africa, which includes among them Kenya and Tanzania.

So by the end of 2014 we would have rolled out then of these facilities on the continent.

Shannon de Ryhove:
Other news making headlines this week: Rebosis Property Fund reports a 9% distribution growth; and Customer-focused engineers are key to tackling South Africa’s poverty problem.

JSE-listed real estate investment trust Rebosis Property Fund increased its distribution growth by 9% as a result of better portfolio fundamentals and a decrease in the overall cost of funding, said CEO Sisa Ngebulana.

Rebosis CEO Sisa Ngebulana

South Africa has an opportunity to achieve a similar result to that of China, which has lifted hundreds of millions of its citizens from poverty to prosperity, but the challenge is to develop world-class customer-focused engineers.

SAIEE president Pat Naidoo

That’s Creamer Media’s Real Economy Report. Join us again next week for more news and insight into South Africa’s real economy.