How Jozi My Jozi Is Rebuilding Joburg, One Block at a Time
Bea Swanepoel on how Jozi My Jozi, a team of 24, relit the Nelson Mandela Bridge and is rebuilding Joburg's inner city: clean it, make it safe, light it.
▶ Watch the full recording| In one line | A team of about 24 people is rebuilding Johannesburg's inner city by orchestrating companies, communities and the City rather than doing the work itself. |
| Who should read this | Business leaders deciding where CSI money makes a real impact, and anyone working on urban renewal in African cities. |
| Key number | About 67 projects in the book of works at any one time, run by a core team of about 24. |
| Bottom line | Clean it, make it safe, light it, go to the CEO rather than the CSI team, and leave the egos outside the room. |
| Read time | 10 min |
I worked in Joburg for years, commuting in from the northern suburbs, and I was glad when the bank I worked for moved out to Sandton. Most of corporate Johannesburg made the same move, and the inner city paid for it. I had filed that decline under final.
Bea Swanepoel has spent the last few years proving me wrong. She is group CEO of Jozi My Jozi, which she describes not as a company but as "a movement actually": "citizen led, it is private sector enabled and it is government supported." She joined me on the AWS Founders Series on 13 October 2026 to explain how a team of about 24 people is putting the inner city back together, one bridge, one block, one street light at a time.
The first project: relighting the Nelson Mandela Bridge
The first thing Jozi My Jozi fixed was the Nelson Mandela Bridge, and the choice was deliberate. "We said we need to do something that is impactful."
Four years ago the glass panels were out and the lights in the bridge did not work. Wits sits on one side, the Bree Street taxi rank on the other, and students did not feel safe walking across. With Absa and PG Glass the panels were replaced and the coloured lights restored, during COVID, when much of the city was dark at night.
"That icon of hope was shining brightly and that's exactly why we chose that bridge," Bea said. Her proudest moment was the first night the lights came back on, when people came out from everywhere just to look at it.
A team of 24 orchestrating a whole city
Reading through the project list, the Queen Elizabeth Bridge, Light Up Jozi with solar street lights, the inner city gateways, Ellis Park, Main Street Sundays, the education centre, the taxi ranks, I assumed she must have an army behind her.
"We actually don't. We're a very small team. I think we're a team of about 24 people." Some are volunteers, some are seconded by partners. The model is to orchestrate rather than do: pick projects with knock-on impact, bring in the companies, the communities and the City, and break down the silos between them. "We can't afford to get 10,000 people to do their job."
The work is organised into seven work streams, and they came from the ground up, not from a boardroom. "If you come from the northern suburbs and you try and do a project in the inner city, you assume what people need." So they asked. Safety and security came first for everyone they spoke to, which put it at the base of the pyramid, with homelessness, education, sport, arts and culture, and jobs built on top.
Supported by
Silicon Overdrive
Silicon Overdrive Founders Series
An AWS Premier Partner running cloud infrastructure for South African businesses: architecting, migration, security and compliance, monitoring and cost optimisation. They also invoice in rand and can arrange proof-of-concept credits.
See their AWS services→Upcoming Virtual Event
From Talk Radio To Tech Hub Founder
Monday, 9 November 2026
With Kieno Kammies, Innovation City Cape Town
RegisterChoosing projects: start with what you will not do
With so much broken, I wanted to know how they choose. Bea's answer started with the opposite question. "When we finalized our strategy, we were clear on what we will not do. I think that was step number one."
Water, electricity and sanitation are the council's job, so Jozi My Jozi supports where it can and does not take them on. The geography is fixed too: strictly the inner city of Johannesburg. "You need to secure one place and fix one place so that you can see the impact before you go to others." Inside those boundaries a prioritisation framework holds about 67 projects at any one time.
Ellis Park shows how a project actually runs. Before the All Blacks game in 2024, the stadium came to them because people were not buying tickets: they saw the precinct as dangerous, dirty and broken. Roads, street lights, gardens and traffic were the obvious fixes, and then came the less obvious one of bringing in Prasa so people could get there by train.
What makes it work, she says, is "leaving egos outside of the room. Egos is why we are in this problem in the 1st place." Organisations that cannot let go of the credit are not fought. They are simply not worked with closely, and in her experience they come back to the middle within a couple of years.
Go to the CEO, not the CSI team
This is the part any B2B seller should steal. Jozi My Jozi works from the ground up with communities and from the top down with business. "So don't go to the middle management level. Go to the top."
Founding members like Robbie Brozin opened the first doors, because they have "a certain black book that the best of us just do not have." After that the rule held: get the group CEO to buy into the vision, and let them open the door to the ESG or CSI team, rather than starting with a team that wants to help but has no mandate. "That's been the magic trick."
The second key is evidence. When they first sat down with Adrian Gore at Discovery, his opening question was how they measure and evaluate impact. Several big sponsors are not even in the inner city; they are in Sandton and Rosebank. They fund it because they believe "doing good is actually good for business", and because if Johannesburg falls, it takes everyone around it down too.
The sequence: clean it, make it safe, light it
Asked from the audience what the ideal sequencing is, Bea did not hesitate. "So 1st and foremost for us is clean it, make sure it is safe, and then you can take the next steps." Then light. Only after those three come beautification, arts, culture and sport. "I don't think anybody will come back to the inner city if you don't have those 3 things at least sorted."
Some of it is remarkably simple. There were no bins in the CBD, so even people who wanted to pick up litter had nowhere to put it. Jozi My Jozi put bins out, worked with Pikitup, and brought in students from Wits and UJ for Friday cleanups. Residents from the flats started coming down to help.
The graffiti story is my favourite. They kept cleaning areas and the taggers kept coming back two days later. So instead of reaching for enforcement, "we did go on a big exercise to get hold of all of the graffiti taggers in the CBD and getting them all around the table", explained what they were doing and why, and gave them their own spaces to paint. "And it stopped."
Changing perceptions: bring people in to see it
A question from the audience asked what evidence an investor should look for that Joburg is turning a corner. Bea's first answer was not a statistic. It was: come into the inner city.
Jozi My Jozi runs tours for people too scared to come in on their own because of what they have seen in the media. Before they start, she asks what they expect to see. "It is mayhem, it's drugs, it's dirty streets, it's potholes, it's nothing is working." Then they walk the city, "the good, the bad, and the ugly", including the areas the work has not reached yet. "But when they leave, they feel inspired. They are feeling surprised." For Bea, that perception change is the best part of the job.
The numbers back it up. Property prices have risen steadily for four years. Empty buildings are being bought and converted to mixed use. The first art gallery in the CBD opened about a year ago. And she points out that there are now more working traffic lights in the inner city than in Sandton and Rosebank.
Working with the City through the city manager's office
Plenty of civic projects stall on government. Jozi My Jozi's answer was structure. It signed a formal memorandum of understanding with the City of Johannesburg, and in it agreed to work through the office of the city manager rather than through the mayor or the MMCs, who it engages on strategy only.
The positioning matters as much as the channel. "We see it as supplementing what they're doing, not replacing what they're supposed to be doing." That is the same line as the rule about what they will not do: water, electricity and sanitation stay the council's job.
Through the city manager's office they have an open line to City Power, Joburg Water, the JPC, the JRA and Joburg City Parks and Zoo, and every second week they meet senior representatives of each who are mandated to make decisions. Even the bins work this way: Jozi My Jozi puts them out, and Pikitup comes and collects. Bea describes the City's support as incredible.
The technology: Copilot for a small team, a control centre for the city
Inside the organisation, AI is what lets 24 people do the work of many more. Microsoft is a strategic partner, and Bea is refreshingly honest about where the team started. "Everybody is my age, a few youngsters. We don't know anything about AI." They use Copilot extensively anyway, for analysis, research into what other cities are doing, and communicating with supporters. "Otherwise, we would not have been able to do what we've done with only a handful of people."
Outside it, the plans are bigger. The Cisco Foundation agreement brings its technology into the city, and early next year an inner city control centre goes live: cameras, smart lights, facial and number plate recognition and gunshot detection feeding one hub, so private security, the JMPD and SAPS have a base to respond from quickly.
Responsible giving: designing Zlto with homeless people
The R10 or R20 handed over at a traffic light, Bea argues, does not solve homelessness. Paper vouchers were the first answer, working with U-turn and MyChange in Cape Town, and they did get people into shelters and services, until people realised the vouchers could be traded.
So Jozi My Jozi went back to the people it was trying to help. Zlto is a giving platform built by two young developers from Mitchells Plain, iterated on feedback from homeless people themselves, and designed to move people towards services and job readiness rather than just the next meal.
I pushed back, because voucher and blockchain schemes have been pitched for years and nobody adopts them. Her answer was about design and distribution. The homeless told them, in effect, that they still wanted to earn a beer on a Friday. "Why would we take that away?" And with partner companies rolling it out through their own businesses, adoption starts higher than any standalone app could manage.
The origin story: putting her hand up at Anglo American
Bea was part of the team that moved Anglo American out of the inner city to Rosebank. Standing in the precinct afterwards, with a whole block empty, she saw what was coming. "If there's a void, something is going to fill the void, and Joburg is going to react one way or the other."
Conversations with Wits, UJ and the City followed, and she volunteered. "I just put up my hand to say, this is me. I want this challenge." Anglo seconded her, so she runs Jozi My Jozi alongside her Anglo role, though she says she would have done it pro bono.
The early months were brutal, with an explosion in the city soon after they started. The team, four or five people at the time, went to the City the same day to offer support, and helped with food alongside Gift of the Givers. Has she ever thought it could not work? "The fact that it is hard work doesn't make it impossible."
What comes next: Hillbrow, and a national model
The inner city has been divided into four quadrants, and three are close to done. From January the work moves into Hillbrow, Berea and Yeoville, the hardest part of the city. The people living there, she says, deserve the same dignity: an area where they feel safe and protected.
Beyond Johannesburg, the model is being taken to other cities, adapted rather than copied, because what works in Joburg will not work unchanged in Bloemfontein, Kimberley or Cape Town. Bea wants to see it in rural areas, townships and informal settlements, and eventually the rest of Africa. In five years, she says, Johannesburg "will be an example globally of how you turn a city that everybody has written off."
Her lesson from the journey so far is to trust the process. "If a door doesn't open, there's a reason why you're struggling." When the timing and the people are right, the doors open and the work moves faster than it ever could have before.
I have interviewed a lot of guests. I walked out of this one with a real spring in my step.
Why do corporates fund projects outside their own neighbourhood?
Because the inner city's problems do not stay in the inner city. Several of Jozi My Jozi's biggest sponsors sit in Sandton and Rosebank. They back it because a functioning Johannesburg lifts property values, staff safety and the economy for everyone, and because, in Bea's words, doing good is good for business. Getting the group CEO on board first is what turns that belief into a budget.
Can the Jozi My Jozi model work in other cities?
Yes, but adapted. The principles travel: ask people on the ground what they need, decide what you will not do, clean it, make it safe, light it, and orchestrate partners rather than doing everything yourself. The specific projects and partners have to fit each city, which is why the national rollout adapts the model to places like Cape Town, Durban, Bloemfontein and Kimberley.
How can a company or individual get involved with Jozi My Jozi?
Through the contact form on jozimyjozi.com. Say where you want to get involved or introduce your company, and the team routes it to the right work stream lead. Bea calls that contact page "the lifeblood" of Jozi My Jozi, and they respond to it quickly.
The Backroom
Get conversations with senior leaders delivered to your inbox.