ABOUT ASK AFRIKA

We believe in selecting a handful of clients and truly becoming partners in their future. Our team becomes involved in areas where we know we can fuse research competency with the strategic business needs of clients and find an optimal fit between the two. This requires us to become an integral part of our clients’ business strategy and processes.

Ask Afrika was founded on a belief in doing something different, doing it well and pulling it off with style. Attention to detail and integrity is key. Starting out as a one-woman operation has led to a staff compliment of over 150 people.

Managed as a matrix organisation, with cross-functional teams collaborating on a project management basis, we are structured in terms of three core business divisions, namely the Fieldwork Centre located in Stellenbosch and the Business Analysis and Research Divisions located in Pretoria where our team of highly competent individuals share the same beliefs and values: in innovative thinking, quality service delivery and above all, passion for what we do.

From recruitment, through reward and recognition, to performance assessment, we use these values to guide our judgement. Decision-making is participative in nature and is governed by regular meetings. Records of meetings are kept and are available to all employees. Our triple bottom line accountability involves financial and social responsibility and responsibility to the environment.

Other core strengths include our ability to communicate well, our good management principles and encouragement of personal involvement in projects, the way in which we maintain communication about the brief, and our attention to detail. We have an excellent reputation for keeping to deadlines, for quality service and innovation.

BEE

At Ask Afrika we believe in a multi-faceted approach to transformation and firmly believe that empowerment should be broad based, not enriching only a chosen few. What this means is that we’ve identified three major groups as the primary focus of our transformation drive.

• The first priority area is equity partners. We’re delighted to be able to report that we have made good progress in our search for a genuine empowerment partner to take a meaningful stake in our business. We are currently in discussions with various parties as we look to sell a minority shareholding to an employee trust for the benefit of all employees as well as an equity partner. The details of these transactions are still to be finalised.
• The second is suppliers. In this regard, we’ve had a preferential procurement and enterprise development programme in place for more than two years. The major portion of our procurement spend goes to black-empowered companies and we are continually evaluating prospective BEE suppliers with whom we can forge mutually beneficial relationships.

Ask Afrika also uses various black empowerment and BEE compliant companies as partners and sub-contractors to conduct fieldwork. We regard this as a valuable tool to facilitate skills transfer.

• The third focus group for our BEE initiatives is our staff, where a comprehensive human resource development and employment equity programme is yielding superb results.
  
  Since the early years, Ask Afrika has offered employment to the previously disadvantaged. In particular, Ask Afrika’s 100 seat call centre in Stellenbosch has led the way. All of the call centre agents, and the management team of eight individuals are from previously disadvantaged backgrounds.
  
  In the past year Ask Afrika’s founder and CEO Andrea Rademeyer undertook a bold new initiative to empower her previously disadvantaged staff. This took the form of a donation of 10% of Ask Afrika’s equity to previously disadvantaged employees. This step not only offered a new beginning to employees, many of whom had never owned shares before; it also improved the culture and climate of the organisation substantially.

Empowerdex, the EE rating agency has awarded Ask Afrika an “AAA” rating (level2). This rating is a significant improvement since last year, when we had merely scored a "BB" rating (level 6).

These ratings are done on an annual basis, with the highest possible rating, being “AAA+”.
Having an “AAA” rating enables our clients to claim 125% (compared to the 60% on our previous rating) of their research expenditure with Ask Afrika, in terms of the Procurement Recognition as per the BEE Codes of Good Practice, gazetted 9 February 2007.
The principles of B-BBEE are aimed at ensuring that empowerment happens at all levels. Ask Afrika is committed to this and will be improving on all these levels.
Although we are known in the field for our quality and turnaround times, it should be stressed to clients that we are actively pursuing to improve in all the areas covered by the code.
We are convinced that the grading received by Ask Afrika, not only reflects our efforts and commitment in terms of the BEE code, but will also bolster our sales effort.