Development Projects

Media Alert Service
This project is supported by the Open Society Foundation of South Africa. Through the project members of the media are invited to enroll online onto an electronic mailing list. Every report authored by the Institute is then sent to them allowing them access to some of the best data and analysis on South Africa. On a monthly basis they receive an electronic newsletter from the Institute updating contact details of the Institute’s research experts. They are encouraged to consult these researchers for data or comment on South Africa. Also through the project the media are invited to attend all Institute events and breakfast briefings. The purpose of the project is to support short staffed news rooms with good research and thereby improve the quality of media reporting on South Africa. Click here to send an enquiry about this project.

Municipal Outreach Project
This project is funded jointly by the Institute, the Friedrich Naumann Foundation for Liberty, and the European Union. It is a three year investigation into poverty trends in South Africa’s local authorities. It is tasked with conceiving a series of practical policy interventions through which local authorities can tackle the manifestations of poverty. Click here to send an enquiry about this project.
Click here to visit the Project’s dedicated website.

Parliamentary Information Service
This project is funded jointly by the Institute and the Royal Danish Embassy. The project is tasked with ensuring that all members of Parliament receive access to the same research services, publications, and expertise as made available to the Institute’s corporate subscribers. This is done to assist parliamentarians, their staff, and political parties with understanding complex social, economic, and political trends and developments in South Africa. The Project is based on the principle that if policy makers in government have access to independently research information on South Africa they will be able to make more effective economic and development policy for the country and thereby ensure the most effective expenditure of public money. Through the project the Institute visits parliament at least once a year to conduct meetings with MP’s and provide MP’s with briefings giving an overview of economic, political, and social trends in South Africa. Click here to send an enquiry about this project.

Provincial Information Service
Funded by the Irish Embassy this project is built on the model of the Parliamentary Information Service. As with the Parliamentary project, this project is tasked with ensuring that members of provincial legislatures receive access to the same research services, publications, and expertise as made available to the Institute’s corporate subscribers. This is done to assist them with understanding complex social, economic, and political trends and developments in South Africa. The Project is based on the principle that if policy makers in government have access to independently research information on South Africa they will be able to make more effective economic and development policy for the country and thereby ensure the most effective expenditure of public money. Click here to send an enquiry about this project.

The project team visits each provincial legislature twice a year to conduct briefings and meetings with members of those legislatures.

South African Development Index

The South African Development Index (SADI) is an initiative by the South African Institute of Race Relations and the Government of the Kingdom of the Netherlands. The index aims to track development trends in the country. It assigns a score to the level of overall human and economic development in South Africa based on 27 indicators across six policy areas.  The index is updated every three months.

Please click here to read more about the index.