About this report

Unleash your greatness

When thinking about the nature of greatness, astronomy and particle physics come to mind.

In astronomy, greatness is measured in light years, the speed of light or the cosmic cycles of birth and death of stars. In particle physics, on the other hand, the greatness constituting life can be found in infinitely small phenomena, such as leptones and quarks, the latter being the building blocks of protons and neutrons.

The range of greatness at the NWU is just as infinite, permeating space and time.

In our work environments it ranges from colleagues implementing our ethic of care by supporting each other and our students, to making an impactful, global difference by implementing our expertise to solve problems experienced by people all over the world.

Traversing time, our striving towards greatness without boundaries spans our past and our future – it is both part of the NWU’s DNA and heritage, and a proud legacy we want to leave for future generations.

As a result, Greatness without boundaries became the theme interlacing all our activities in 2023 and, by extension, the story we tell in this integrated report.

Our first intention with our story is to show you how we as a university offer people numerous opportunities to guide and empower them on their own journeys towards greatness. Our second aim is to invite you, our readers, to witness how we create value for ourselves and our stakeholders while continuing to pursue ever-expanding greatness.

We aim to show you how we mobilised and affected our resources, skills and relationships, known as our “capitals”, for the greater good.

There are six capitals: intellectual, human, social and relationship, manufactured, natural and financial.

Although we strive to always increase value for the university and our stakeholders, we realise that changing circumstances in our internal and external environment may hamper our efforts to accomplish this.

We apply and use our capitals while executing our strategy through our daily activities.

This means that our capitals can also undergo either a net decrease, or no net change. In such cases, value is eroded or preserved.

We include these instances – where value is maintained or even eroded – in our integrated report, as we aim to tell our story in a balanced and transparent way.

Our story is for you

The Greatness without boundaries story in this report is intended for you, our stakeholders.

Our stakeholders are those individuals or groups whom we affect through our activities and services, and whose actions can also affect our ability to successfully implement our strategy and achieve our goals.

This integrated report refers mainly to our primary stakeholders. They are our students, alumni, Council, staff, the Department of Higher Education and Training (DHET), our peers, our collaboration partners and our business communities (as future employers of our students), as well as our communities in surrounding areas.

However, we believe that our story will also be of value to the other stakeholders with whom we engage.

How we tell our story

At the beginning of our story, we give an overview of the NWU and explain how we interacted with our operating environment.

You will find a graphic image of our business model, followed by the risks and opportunities that affect us, and how we are dealing with these. The section on our strategy aims to inform you about where we want to go to and how we intend to get there, while the section on how we performed against our capitals describes what we did to achieve our strategic objectives.

How to navigate our story

We use different icons to show the connections between the various sections in our integrated report and enhance your journey of discovery.

• Our capitals
• Our strategic goals
• Our enablers

Materiality of the report content

The University Management Committee (UMC) members, together with their directors, provide the content that appears in the integrated report, while taking into account the principle of materiality.

As set out in the International Integrated Reporting Council’s (IIRC) Integrated Reporting Framework, material matters are those issues that substantively affect our university’s ability to create value for itself and its stakeholders.

Our integrated reporting task team also contributes towards identifying matters with the biggest impact on our ability to create value. This team is led by the NWU’s registrar and includes the deputy vice-chancellor for planning and the chief strategy officer in the office of the vice-chancellor.

Reporting frameworks and documents guiding us

Our integrated reporting is guided by the principles and requirements of the Integrated Reporting Framework, King IV and the DHET’s reporting regulations.

We also consider documents such as the NWU’s *Annual Performance Plan (APP) that puts the strategic plan into action, and the institution’s **risk register. Both these documents are compiled with various role players across the university providing input.

In addition, materiality was informed by the matters our stakeholders raise during their interaction with the university. These are described in the section on how we engage with our stakeholders, in the table under the subheading: Issues raised.

Our integrated report reflects the performance of the NWU across our three campuses for the period 1 January to 31 December 2023.

Information about our performance is both financial and non-financial. This includes facts about our non-financial performance, risks and opportunities and the internal and external factors that substantially influence our business Where material, we discuss the real and potential impact of these matters on our ability to create value.

How we ensure the integrity of the report

Various measures are in place to ensure the integrity of both our financial and non-financial information reported in the Integrated Annual Report.

These measures include a combination of monitoring and oversight by our management and governance structures, as well as the use of internal audit and external assurance providers.

• We obtain reliable student and staff data from our Institutional Planning and Strategic Intelligence Department, which is also responsible for submitting NWU data to the Higher Education Information Management System (HEMIS) for approval.
• Internal assurance providers give us assurance about the effectiveness of the internal controls at the NWU. Their input is incorporated into our report.
• The summarised, audited consolidated financial statements in our report are extracted from the audited consolidated financial statements, prepared in accordance with the IFRS and independently audited by our external auditors, Nexia SAB&T.
• Our auditors independently audited the information in our performance assessment report.
• The financial statements, including the auditors’ report, are in annexure 6.
• More information about combined assurance can be found in the risk section of this report.
• To further ensure the accuracy of our content, we submit our integrated report to various NWU structures for their consideration and approval. These structures include the University Management Committee, the Audit, Risk and Compliance Committee (among other Council committees), and finally the NWU Council.

Council approval

Upon advice from its Audit, Risk and Compliance Committee, Council believes that the integrated report addresses all material matters and offers a balanced view of the NWU’s strategy and the organisation’s ability to create value.

The NWU Council confirms that it has:

• reviewed the contents of the report and applied its collective mind to the preparation and presentation of this document,
• appropriately considered the accuracy and completeness of the material matters, as well as the reliability of the information presented in the report, and
• sufficiently considered and materially presented these matters in accordance with the Integrated Reporting Framework of the IIRC.

The NWU Council approved the 2023 Integrated Annual Report on 13 June 2024.

MR BERT SORGDRAGER

CHAIRPERSON OF COUNCIL

MR THABO MOKGATLHA

CHAIRPERSON OF THE AUDIT,

RISK AND COMPLIANCE COMMITTEE