SASOL Inzalo Foundation

On Tuesday this week, Karien Bezuidenhout and myself had the pleasure of meeting Mpho Letlape, Managing Director of the SASOL Inzalo Foundation.

The Inzalo Foundation is part of the R25.9B black economic empowerment (BEE) transaction approved by the shareholders. I found one SASOL media presentation explaining the scope of the transaction which has four major parts, one of which is the Inzalo Foundation. The Inzalo Foundation is funded by the dividends from a 1.5% share of SASOL (valued at R3.9B at the time of the media presentation).

Mpho is spending her first few months understanding the lay of the land, getting to know the full spectrum of players in the educational space and identifying possible projects and partnerships. The plan (and website) for the Inzalo Foundation will only emerge around October this year but I’m feeling very positive about it. She comes across as pragmatic and direct but with an innovative edge. Many of the discussion points that were raised during the meeting really resonated:

• importance of foundation phase,
• partnerships,
• vocational training,
• sustainability, and
• scalability.

I think the Inzalo Foundation has a superb opportunity to bring some fresh cohesion and coordination to the space and to build on many learnings from successful and unsuccessful projects. There have been so many independent projects and so many unshared learnings that a new player has an opportunity to gain fresh insight if they’re able to talk to everyone without any preconceived ideas as well as better identify the overlaps and cohesion.