IMPROVING LIVES THROUGH DATA ECOSYSTEMS

Naledi Local Municipality is a host to all district government sector departments and a host of NGOs, the municipality is therefore has a different set-up as far as population race distribution is concerned as compared to all other four local municipalities, where high percentage (over 90%) of the population classify themselves as black African and the most spoken language (90% plus) is Setswana. The most spoken language within the municipality is still Setswana (69,7%), followed by Afrikaans (24%) and English (3,4%). A total of 74% of the municipal population classify themselves as black Africans, while 14,7%, 9,5% and 1,1% classify themselves as coloured people, white people and Asian/Indians respectively. Of the 66 781 population, about 49,83% is female, while 50,17% is male..  Also, a high proportion of the municipal population, 64%, has never married; with only 19% married and 12,1% not married but living together like married partners

A greater proportion of the municipality is aged 15–34 years (34%), followed by population aged 0–14 years(31%), population aged 35–64 years accounts for 30% and those aged 65 years and above accounts for 5% of the entire municipal population. From the stats above, population aged 15–64 years accounts for 64% of the entire population.

The municipality’s unemployment rate stands at 26,4% (2011), the lowest municipal unemployment rate within the district. This could be attributed to the fact that the municipality is a host to all district sector government departmental offices, and that Vryburg town is home to major retail sector chain stores that also contribute to employment within the district.

It should be noted that even thought the unemployment rate in 2011 stood at 26%, there has been an improvement as compared to the year 2001, where the municipal unemployment rate stood at 32%.

.This low percentage is attributed to a booming growth of informal settlement type along Taung road at Huhudi location. For all with access to electricity, 77% use it for lighting, 50,7% use it for heating and 64,5% for cooking.

69% of households within the municipality has access to a flush toilet, of which 65,4% thereof is a flush toilet connected to a sewage system and 3,6% is flush toilet with septic tank. 5,7% using a pit toilet with ventilation and 6,1% using pit toilet without ventilation. 4,5% of households use the bucket toilet system.

69,7% of the municipal households have their refuse disposal removed by the municipality, whereas only 20,5% use own refuse dump.

97% of households have access to piped (tap) water. From this percentage, 40,9% has access inside their dwelling units, 37% inside their yards, 14% access tap water on a community stand that is a distance of less than 200m from their yards, 3% travel between 200m and 500m to access tap water.

Naledi Local Municipality, with Vryburg town known as The Texas of South Africa, is an agriculture-based municipality, mainly live stock. Most of its income is derived from the agricultural sector. Formal employment, with government being the main employer, followed by private sector business (banks, retail-trade, hospitality) play a significant role as employer and source of income.