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16 April 2013

Telkom supports African Daughter initiative

The Telkom Foundation today announced the full sponsorship of the Future of the African Daughter (FOTAD) programme for 20 girls at Bashee High School and 40 girls at Mtshotshisa Junior School in the Eastern Cape village of Nywarha.

FOTAD is a girl-child development project that seeks to change the lives of ordinary girls, aged between 12 and 19 years old, from township and rural areas. The project launched in the Alexandra township in Johannesburg in 2006. Additional FOTAD chapters have been launched in Diepsloot and Midvaal.

The launch of today’s Eastern Cape chapter marks the expansion of the project beyond the Gauteng province. This chapter is wholly sponsored at just over R760 000 by the Telkom Foundation which will cover the costs incurred by the execution of the FOTAD programme for the duration of the 2013 financial year.

The annual FOTAD programme includes the Maths and Science excellence programme; the leadership training, life skills training and ICT literacy. The Programme also offers weekly meetings during the school term and camps and a Youth Performing Arts programme during school holidays. The wider community also stands to benefit from engagements that FOTAD will host during the year.

Head of the Telkom Foundation, Ms Sarah Mthintso said, "The work of FOTAD speaks directly to one of our key focus areas, namely education. We specifically identify and support sustainable education initiatives that seek to improve the quality of teaching and learning in South Africa."

Ms Mthintso noted FOTADs focus on developing maths, science and ICT literacy through the programme. "We bear witness to the increasingly prominent role that ICT, Maths and Science will play in South Africa’s economic well-being."

FOTAD has been particularly successful in executing on this mandate having achieved the first distinctions in Maths and Science achieved by the 2012 group of Matriculants. This group also achieved a 90% university acceptance pass and two full scholarships were secured for girls to study engineering.

"It is an honour to become involved in the Future of the African Daughter initiative. It is our hope that it will grow ever stronger and touch more lives," concluded Ms Mthintso.

For further enquiries, please contact:

Pynee Chetty

Senior Specialist: Media Relations

Group Communication

Tel:+27 12 642 1716

Mobile: +27 81 389 7874

Email: chettpr2@telkom.co.za

OR

Leigh-Ann Francis

Specialist: Media Relations

Group Communication

Tel: +27 12 642 1728

Mobile: +27 81 391 4780

Email: francilm@telkom.co.za

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ABOUT TELKOM:

Telkom is a leading communications services provider in South Africa. We had consolidated operating revenue of R16.8 billion and normalised profit after tax of R1, 683 million for the period ended 30 September 2015. Total assets amounted to R41.9 billion and equity attributable to the owners of Telkom to R23.5 billion as of 30 September 2015. The group generated normalised free cash flow of R1.4 billion for the period ended 30 September 2015.

As of 30 September 2015, we had approximately 3.3 million telephone access lines in service and 1,030,441 ports connected via MSAN access. We offer business, residential and payphone customers a wide range of services and products, including:

  • fixed-line retail voice services using PSTN (Public Switched Telephone Network) lines, including ISDN (Integrated Services Digital Network) lines, and the sale of subscription based value-added voice services and calling plans;
  • fixed-line customer premises equipment rental and sales services both voice and data needs and these include PABX, Computers, Routers, Modems, Telephone handsets and other ancillary equipment;
  • interconnection services, including terminating and transiting traffic from South African mobile operators, as well as from international operators and transiting traffic from mobile to international destinations;
  • fixed-line data services, including domestic and international data transmission services, such as point-to-point leased lines, ADSL (Asymmetrical Digital Subscriber Line) services, packet-based services, managed data networking services and internet access and related information technology services;
  • Data Centre Operations includes e-commerce, application service provider, hosting, data storage, e-mail and security services;
  • W-CDMA (Wideband Code Division Multiple Access), a 3G next generation network, including fixed voice services, data services and nomadic voice services;
  • mobile communication services, including voice services, data services and handset sales through our mobile navbar-brand called Telkom Mobile;
  •  information and communication services including cloud services, infrastructure services, workspace services, global service integration management and hardware and network equipment sales locally, in seven African countries, the UK and Dubai through Business Connexion Group; and
  • other services including directory services, through Trudon (Pty) Ltd, wireless data services, through Swiftnet (Pty) Ltd.

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