Income trends Measured in millions

Grant-in-aid and overall income for the region has remained steady. Increasingly Southern Africa and East and West Africa are working together on programmes across sub-Saharan Africa and this will lead to a further redistribution of grant-in-aid in the next year.

Country share of income Measured in millions
Country in bold denotes head office
Audience engagement Measured in millions

The 50 per cent fall in engagement is primarily the result of changes in our delivery of information services. Last year’s enquiry numbers were more than halved from 280,000 to 129,000. We have reduced the number of public enquiries in favour of information services more carefully aligned with our target groups. This was part of our regional approach to reaching influential young people.

Audience reach Measured in millions

We are increasingly working with East and West Africa on joint sub-Saharan projects. One of our priorities for 2008–09 is to replicate East and West Africa’s success in increasing audience reach through online and broadcast products for wider audiences.

Customer satisfaction scores Measured in millions

Our customer satisfaction score (83) was two points lower than last year’s. We attribute this to inconsistent standards across our information operations (including a particular problem with the South Africa call centre) and lower scores in the Botswana, Malawi and Zambia examinations programmes. We are undertaking a review of these operations in order to identify issues and improve customer perceptions.

Performance impact and looking aheadThe evaluation of long-term outcomes survey took place in Zimbabwe, South Africa and Zambia. Overall, scores were in a similar statistical range to last year, with a notably strong score for increased links with the UK.

Results for impact in the region (already at high levels) were extremely positive with only self-development falling a little behind last year’s results. Two regional projects – Connecting Classrooms and Africa Dreams + Teams – supported a high score for internationalism (87), and in the case of positive partnership (86), the principal contribution came from the all-Africa InterAction young leadership programme. This is in line with results in East and West Africa, and generally high results for Connecting Classrooms in all parts of the world where the programme is being delivered.