WE CO-CREATE STRONGER PLACES AND THRIVING ECONOMIES.
Ranyaka is a South African non-profit organisation and professional Place-Based Practice working with communities, businesses, municipalities, funders and other partners to strengthen the places where people live, learn, work and do business.
Developed over more than a decade of on-the-ground practice, our THRIVE Framework grew from the conviction that lasting transformation requires a different approach: one that puts people, place and collaborative partnerships at the centre. The four pillars of THRIVE, Clubs, Hubs, Networks and a shared Platform, are some of the key mechanisms through which the framework takes shape in practice.
We bring people, knowledge, investment and practical solutions together to strengthen the economic, social and environmental conditions that help places become more productive, resilient and regenerative.
By the end of 2025, our work had reached 38 communities across 15 towns in 8 provinces in South Africa. This includes our role as national implementation agent for the Nedbank-funded Proud of My Town programme.
WE WORK WITH
PLACES
The place is our starting point.
No two places are the same. Every community has its own relationships, assets, businesses, institutions, challenges and opportunities.
We start by understanding the place – bringing together different disciplines, partners and resources around one shared purpose:
HELPING A PLACE FUNCTION BETTER,
WE WORK WITH
PEOPLE
We work with local stakeholders, strengthening change agents, facilitating cross-sectoral collaboration and integrating citizen-led initiatives into the over-arching strategy for the area.
Our objective is collective, as opposed to isolated impact.
THROUGH COLLABORATION, WE TACKLE WHAT IS WRONG AND UNLOCK WHAT IS STRONG.
WE WORK WITH
PIONEERING INVESTORS
We develop smarter ways of investing in societal transformation. Our objective is sustainability, real impact and maximum return on investment.
Nedbank’s Proud of my Town initiative which is a prime example of Ranyaka’s place-based framework and smart investment in action.
SMART INVESTMENT LOOKS BEYOND ISOLATED INTERVENTIONS.
Meet our essay competition winners | Grade 8-10
Today, we introduce the winners of Group B in the 2020 Brain Waves Development essay competition - proudly sponsored by the Nedbank Proud of my Town programme. All three the winners shared their views on why food production and agriculture matter - especially in the...
The story of the little vegetable factories
An old tyre, a few discarded plastic shopping bags, a two-liter plastic cooldrink bottle and enough soil to fill the tyre to create a little vegetable garden – this is what you need to create what Steven Barnard from NuNet calls the “Garden of Life”, because with...
Meet our essay competition winners | Grade 5-7
We are excited to share the winning entries in this year's Brain Waves Development essay competition - proudly sponsored by the Nedbank Proud of my Town programme. The first prize winner in Group A is Thembelihe Mophuthing, a grade 6 learner from Bethany Combined...
Building Business | Reflections on 2020 and the way forward
The year 2020 upended the global economy, bringing disruption and, in many cases, devastation at mass scale. Small, medium- and micro enterprises (SMMEs) as well as survivalist businesses have been especially hard hit.During the course of this year, the Nedbank Proud...
Building communities together
Ranyaka is excited to announce that BUCO Hardware, a division of The Building Company, is embarking on a journey with us as we tackle Fix Your Space and Land & Property projects that will help create places where people can prosper – in every sense of the word....
From profit to purpose
What if a business could do so much more than generate a revenue? What if, at the same time, a business could solve pressing social problems and make the world a better place?This was the challenge facing the twenty participants in a Social Entrepreneurship...
Sport changes lives
Forty players from the Kanyamazane Hockey Club in Nelspruit, Mpumalanga Province are the proud owners of brand-new uniforms following a sponsorship by the Proud of my Town programme. Each of the four coaches also received tracksuits and PoMT will also be sponsoring...
Nedbank Greenbacks supports Proud of My Town
We are incredibly excited to announce that the Nedbank Greenbacks Programme now also makes it possible for clients to support the Proud of my Town initiative. What is the Greenbacks programme?Nedbank Greenbacks is a money management programme that encourages clients...
Meet the man behind the people’s brand
Starting out his working life as a performing artist on the stage of the dinner theatre, Amazink, in Kayamandi township, Stellenbosch, you can just imagine how Samkela “Teddy” Mhlakaza can tell a really good story! So it comes as no surprise that what gets him most...
R1 million milestone for PoMT COVID-19 relief
Over the past five months, the Proud of my Town (PoMT) programme has invested over R1 million towards a host of relief and recovery interventions in 13 communities across seven provinces. Ranyaka has been rolling out the multi-faceted PoMT programme in a growing...
What about the children?
Over the past four years, Nedbank's Proud of my Town (PoMT) programme has invested over R1 million towards supporting Early Childhood Development centres. With the ECD sector hard hit by the coronavirus pandemic and a nationwide lockdown, PoMT made it possible for us...
All things beautiful
Davene Pool grew up in Idas Valley and, in her words, was far from being a ‘girly-girl’. Growing up in a house with only boys, she remembers a happy childhood and being spoilt by all members of her family.'When you look good, you feel good'Fate had other plans,...
ABOUT US
In 1996, two young town planners from very different backgrounds reported for duty at a local municipality in Gauteng. Only two years had passed since the dawn of democracy in South Africa.
WHAT WE DO
Ranyaka works hand-in-hand with communities, local stakeholders, all levels of government and investors to develop and implement transformation strategies for towns and communities.
WHERE WE WORK
By mid-2020, Ranyaka will be working in 13 towns and neighbourhoods in 9 towns across seven provinces throughout South Africa. We focus mainly, but not exclusively, on under-resourced communities.