Education receives 44% of South African corporate social investment, and 91% of companies support it. It has been the country's most funded cause for as long as Trialogue has been tracking the sector, and I don't think there is a serious argument against the priority.
The more interesting question sits one level down. Once the money arrives inside education it divides, and the division says something about what corporate South Africa believes will work.
Bursaries, scholarships and university chairs take the largest share, at around 28% of education spend in Trialogue's 2025 research. Infrastructure, facilities and equipment take about 16%; teacher development takes about 10%. The shares shift a little from year to year, so treat those as the shape of the thing rather than gospel.
I want to be careful here, because the bigger categories are not mistakes. A bursary changes a specific young person's life in a way I can point to. A workbook reaches a child who has none; a repaired classroom is not a metaphor. Every one of those interventions reaches the learners in the building now, and those learners are real and are there this year.
The difference is what happens in year two.
A bursary reaches its recipient. A workbook reaches the class it's handed to. A teacher, by our estimate, reaches around 1 155 learners over a 35-year career, which means a corporate funding her development isn't buying one cohort; it's buying an improvement that repeats every year she stands in a classroom, long after the contract closes.
That estimate carries an assumption I try to state every time it appears. It assumes a full 35-year career, and many teachers leave sooner. I think the argument survives the caveat, though; a teacher who stays fifteen years still reaches more learners than any programme that reaches learners alone.
So, the intervention with the longest reach I can point to receives about a third of the share that bursaries do, inside the largest category of South African corporate social investment.
I don't think anyone set out to make that judgement. Teacher development is harder to photograph and harder to count. A bursary produces a named graduate; a better-taught spelling lesson produces a class that reads more easily, which nobody can point at. The measurement problem is real, and I would say it belongs to those of us asking for the money rather than to the funders deciding.
That is the work in front of kolab. If teacher development wants a larger slice of the 44%, the case has to be made with evidence a funder can check, not with the multiplier alone.
