Overview of CSI spend on housing and living conditions in 2023

Trialogue conducts annual research into CSI spend on each development sector in South Africa. In 2023, 68 large companies participated in Trialogue’s primary research survey. According to the research, housing and living conditions were supported by 16% of companies and received 4% of average CSI expenditure in 2023.

National context of housing and living conditions in South Africa

• The national budget allocated to human settlement and water and electrification programmes was R61.7 billion in 2023/24, constituting 2.8% of the consolidated government expenditure of R2.24 trillion for the year. The Department of Human Settlements (DHS) was allocated R35 billion.
• The DHS has delivered 4.9 million housing opportunities since 1994 and has issued a total of 1 450 862 title deeds, according to the DHS annual performance plan for 2022/23. According to the National Housing Finance Corporation, South Africa has a housing backlog of over 2.3 million units, with an estimated 13.6 million people living in inadequate housing.
• According to Statistics South Africa (Stats SA) results, the percentage of households residing in formal dwellings increased from 68% in 2001 to 88% in 2022.
• Greenpeace reported in July 2022 that 19% of South Africa’s rural population lack access to a reliable water supply and 33% do not have basic sanitation services. In both rural and urban areas, over 26% of all schools and 45% of clinics have no water access.
• According to Stats SA’s 2022 census, the percentage of households with access to piped water either inside their dwelling or inside their yard increased from 61% to 82% between 2001 and 2022. The percentage of households that were connected to the electricity supply from the mains increased from 76% in 2002 to 94% in 2022.
• The DHS reported that by mid-2022 there were over 2 700 informal settlements in South Africa, and that it plans to upgrade 900 of them across all nine provinces in the 2023 to 2026 period.
• The Social Housing Development Programme began in November 2021 and has since delivered 204 social housing units at the Maitland Mews Social Housing project in Cape Town. The programme gives access to properties in well-located land to low-income households in an effort to address spatial apartheid. The DHS aims to launch nine more projects like this.

Overview of CSI spend

Housing and living conditions were supported by 16% of companies and received 4% of average CSI expenditure.

Type of intervention

Average % CSI housing and living conditions spend 2023 n=10

29% Water and sanitation

20% Building houses

20% Non-specific general donations

10% Energy/energy efficiency initiatives

10% Facilitating house development

10% Materials supply

1% Maintenance

• Water and sanitation continued to receive the largest share of CSI housing and living conditions spend (29%), a decrease from 42% in 2022 and 51% in 2021.
• Building houses and non-specific general donations each received 20% of the average CSI spend in this sector in 2023.
• Three interventions in this sector – energy/energy-efficiency initiatives, facilitating housing development and materials supply – each received an average 10% of the sector spend in 2023.

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Source: The original version of this article was published in the Trialogue Business in Society Handbook 2023 (26th edition).