Annual Reports

This Annual Report covers the 2016/17 financial year, the second full year in the GCRO's current five year strategic plan - approved in late 2014 - for the period 2015/16 to 2019/20. This was a year of much growth for the GCRO, as a host of new researchers hired at the end of 2015 began to find their feet, and as we occupied new and expanded office space on the 6th floor of Wits' University Corner in March 2017. Results from the fourth Quality of Life survey for 2015/16, now with 30 000 respondents, were launched in June 2016, and important new programmes of research, including a 'city-region economies' thrust, and within this a pilot firm survey, got underway.

GCRO is a partnership between the Gauteng Provincial Government, the University of Johannesburg, the University of the Witwatersrand (Johannesburg), and organised local government in Gauteng. This report covers the 2015/16 financial year, the first in the GCRO's current five year strategic plan for 2015/16 to 2019/20. This was a turbulent year for the higher education sector in South Africa, and indeed for South Africa as a whole. It was also a year of much change for GCRO with a number of staff leaving and new talent joining. The year saw a number of important milestones, including the running of the fourth Quality of Life Survey, a complete organisational rebranding and launch of the new website, as well as a significant uptick in both academic output and support work to government.

This report covers the April 2014 to March 2015 financial year, and sees the Observatory in the first year of the current five year planning cycle. GCRO is a partnership between the Gauteng Provincial Government (GPG), local government in Gauteng represented by the South African Local Government Association (Gauteng) (SALGA), the University of Johannesburg (UJ) and the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg (Wits). GCRO is an innovative response to the socio-economic, cultural, governance, political, growth and other challenges related to the cluster of cities that makes up the Gauteng City-Region (GCR), the economic engine of South and southern Africa.

This report covers the April 2013 to March 2014 financial year and marks the end of the first five year cycle in the life of the Gauteng City-Region Observatory’s (GCRO) – GCRO was publicly launched on 11 September 2008, but really only became functional in 2009. It is a partnership between the Gauteng Provincial Government (GPG), local government in Gauteng, the University of Johannesburg (UJ) and the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg (Wits), later joined by the Gauteng branch of the South African Local Government Association (SALGA).

This report covers the April 2012 to March 2013 financial year, the mid-point of the current three-year cycle of work of the Gauteng City Region Observatory (GCRO). GCRO was publicly launched on 11 September 2008.

A partnership between the Gauteng Provincial Government (GPG), local government in Gauteng, the University of Johannesburg (UJ) and the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg (Wits), GCRO is an innovative response to the socio-economic, cultural, governance, political, growth and other challenges related to the cluster of cities that makes up the Gauteng City-Region (GCR), the economic engine of South and southern Africa.

This report covers the third full operating year of the Gauteng CityRegion Observatory (GCRO) and the beginning of our second three-year cycle of support from the Gauteng Provincial Government (GPG). (We were operational for only the final quarter of 2008/2009, our first year, which formed part of the first three-year cycle which ended in March 2011.) GCRO was publicly launched on 11 September 2008.

A partnership between the GPG, local government in Gauteng, the University of Johannesburg (UJ) and the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg (Wits), GCRO is an innovative response to the socio-economic, cultural, governance, political, growth and other challenges related to the cluster of cities that makes up the Gauteng City-Region (GCR), the economic engine of South and southern Africa.

This report covers the second full operating year of the Gauteng City-Region Observatory (GCRO), and also the end of the first three-year cycle of support from the Gauteng Provincial Government (GPG) (this began in 2008/09, but GCRO was functional for only a quarter of that year).

This report covers the first full operating year of the GCRO, with the financial year April 2009 to March 2010 coinciding with GCRO staff joining the organisation and the GCRO notching up some notable achievements, even in these formative months.

September 2008 saw the launch of an exciting new initiative – the Gauteng City-Region Observatory. The initiative is exciting for two reasons. First, the Observatory represents a grand experiment: a jointly established research centre that stands between the University of Johannesburg and the University of the Witwatersrand, governed by a Board and jointly supported, financially and in kind, by the Gauteng Provincial Government and the two academies.

We hope that this experiment will show a vista of other possibilities for collaboration across higher education institutions in our country, and other potential partnerships between government and the academy.