The 2006 consultancy and training fees illustrated above are 36 per cent lower than the year 2007 in that the
projected operational (administrative) expenditure increased by 116 per cent. This is due to the institute’s new staff
component as it addresses a number of serious challenges. It is expected that the real benefits of the new staff will
only materialise once they have started participating in the expansion of the business activities.

Principal Activities
SAIMED undertakes to develop a critical mass of effective managers in the media through entrepreneurial training
in business management, financial management, and sales and marketing. In addition, the organisation conducts
research into areas of concern to media management, and provides consulting services to all sections of the media. During 2006/2007, these services and products in the reporting year were provided through two main units
– emerging media (normally donor-supported) and market-driven commercial media. These units often worked
closely together to provide syndicated programmes as follows:

Emerging media (donor-supported)
SAIMED recorded three key milestones during the year under review:
• A SAIMED mentorship workbook and toolkit was developed and tested with a selected number of regional
mentors in February 2006, and subsequently put into operation. The workbook is comprehensive, well-structured and has established a firm foundation for the SAIMED mentoring programme.
• SAIMED came full circle in terms of bi-lingual training (English and Portuguese) through the development and
subsequent translation of some training materials into Portuguese. These were also put into operation.
• A total of 13 SAIMED regional consultants convened for the first time to discuss how best the organisation
could improve its training delivery and services.
SAIMED’s programmes caseload analysis March 2006 - March 2007 shows that only eight countries (Botswana,
Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, Swaziland, Zambia and Zimbabwe) benefited from either training or
mentorship compared to 11 in 2005. This was as a result of a shortfall of resources as well as the fact that most of
SAIMED’s trainees had progressed to the mentorship stage by 2005 and 2006.

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Annual Report 2007

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