Telkom has emerged as South Africa’s most empowered company in the Financial Mail’s first-ever Top Empowerment Companies (TEC) survey that was released this week.
Launched in Sandton on Wednesday by Johnnic chairperson, Cyril Ramaphosa, TEC 2004 is based on research of all companies listed on the Johannesburg Securities Exchange South Africa.
The research was undertaken in partnership with empowerment rating agency, Empowerdex, and each company was given an estimated empowerment score based on the Department of Trade and Industry’s empowerment scorecard. The scorecard uses seven different factors to calculate a final score — ownership, management, employment equity, skills development, affirmative procurement, enterprise development and social development.
The editor of the Financial Mail, Caroline Southey, said that Telkom achieved its top ranking “with a strong showing in all seven empowerment factors, earning it a final score of 69,78 out of a maximum of 100”.
Telkom also took top place in the empowerment rankings for the telecommunications sector.
“Black economic empowerment will dominate the corporate agenda for the foreseeable future. To date there has been a lack of information in the public domain about the true empowerment status of South Africa’s major companies and TEC is the first major undertaking to address that need,” said Southey.
Telkom’s CEO, Sizwe Nxasana, said that the company was not surprised at its ranking as the most empowered listed company, as Telkom had adopted empowerment as a business imperative several years ago.
“We started with aggressive transformation in 1997, and while Telkom has achieved well across the board, there is still some work to be done,” he said.