Loshnee Naidoo situates her work within South Africa's stark social landscape: 55.7 million people, an unemployment rate of 34.4%, a poverty rate of 55.5%, and a legal framework, the Broad-Based Black Economic Empowerment (BBBEE) programme, that compels private companies to invest in socio-economic development (SED) as a condition of competitive standing. Communities tend to experience SED as a potential remedy for immediate deprivation, including housing, water, sanitation, healthcare, and employment, while companies engage partly for commercial reasons: higher BBBEE ratings improve access to government procurement, SED-funded training pipelines create local skilled workforces, and stable community relationships ease labour negotiations. Naidoo draws out the tensions inherent in this arrangement, where the motivations of each party rarely align and where SED spending can remain transactional rather than generative. The question she presses is how genuine community engagement, rather than compliance-driven spending, can shift development outcomes. This recording brings her analysis into dialogue with practitioners reflecting on the conditions under which SED programmes produce durable rather than superficial change.