CxO & Enterprise CxO of the Year Award 2018

AfricaCom AHUB Pitch & Win

The AfricaCom 'CXO Of The Year' and 'Enterprise CXO Of The Year' Award recognises the outstanding achievements of CEOs, CTOs, CIOs, CDOs and others in driving development across telecommunications, technology and enterprise in 'Digital Africa'.

Voted for by the public and presented at the AfricaCom Awards 2018, these two accolades are awarded to African-based telecoms, ICT and enterprise leaders who are at the forefront of navigating their organisation through Industry 4.0, by prioritising telecoms innovation, embracing disruptive tech and elevating the continent's digital economy.

There's no limit to the number of times you can vote, cast your vote below.

These are the nominees for 'AfricaCom CXO Of The Year' 2018:

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Dudu Mkhwanazi - CEO, Project Isizwe

At age 27, Ms Dudu Mkhwanazi is one of the youngest Chief Executive Officers in South Africa and currently heads Project Isizwe, NPO and is a digital inclusion activist. Under Dudu’s leadership, Project Isizwe connected two mining communities to free Wi-Fi in partnership with Glencore Mine in Mpumalanga (a pioneering step in South Africa); partnered with AWARE.org to use the internet as an enabler for their Responsible Alcohol Usage Programme in the Free State and Nelspruit; and The Social Collective on their Free Wi-Fi Champions Programme, creating micro-jobbing opportunities for unemployed youth in the Free State, Nelspruit and Mpumalanga. Project Isizwe has also pioneered the deployment of the largest free public WiFi network in Africa in the Tshwane Municipality, Gauteng, South Africa during 2013 – June 2018.

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Mike van den Bergh - Chief Marketing & Strategy Officer, PCCW Global

Mike van den Bergh has been instrumental in the transformation of African markets over the last 30 years. His key achievements include steering the successful acquisition and integration of Gateway Communications resulting in upgrade and expansion of a combined network across Africa; Connecting landlocked countries and linking Africa to global business hubs including high capacity terrestrial networks allowing African countries to exchange traffic on the continent; Advancing Africa through leapfrog technologies like low cost video on-demand streaming, mobile payment solutions and Smart City developments.

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Mamadou Bamba - CEO, Orange Côte d'Ivoire

Mamadou Bamba has been instrumental in putting the Ivory Coast firmly on the digital map. He has steered the development of Orange Money facilitating greater financial inclusion for more than 2.5 million people, increased fiber deployment across the country, and the establishment of the foundation Orange-CI Telecom, which focuses in the areas of health, education and culture - which has undertaken more than 275 projects all over the country.

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Giovanni Chiarelli - CTIO, MTN South Africa

Giovanni Chiarelli has been instrumental in successfully launching of 5G in South Africa, a first on the African continent. He is a global technology leader in the telecom industry – with leadership experiences across networks / IT and across fixed / mobile technologies. He has been at the forefront of building some of the best technical platforms to deliver superior consumer experience, enabling stronger brand differentiation and driving growth for the business.

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Sherry Singh - CEO, Mauritius Telecom

Sherry Singh has been instrumental in the transformation of the telecom landscape in Mauritius: full 4G mobile island-wide coverage with single RAN network; brand new core ISP for high-speed broadband and 4K IPTV transmission, increased redundant international connectivity. In addition to those projects, he also steered an accelerated fibre roll-out strategy connecting 260,000 homes (70% household penetration) within only 3 years, making Mauritius the 8th most fibered country in the world after Japan and China. Under his leadership, the company has continued to earn recognition on the African continent: FTTx Council Africa Operator of Year [2016-2018], Africacom Best Network Improvement and Best App for Africa (Traffic Watch) amongst others.

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Thinus Mulder - CEO, Dark Fibre Africa

As CEO of Dark Fibre Africa, Thinus’ vision is to grow the DFA Group into a substantial and sustainable Tier 1 Telecom Infrastructure entity through organic growth and acquisitions and expanding the business into adjacent areas and territories. Dark Fibre Africa is South Africa’s largest open source network company; financing, building, installing, managing and maintaining a world-class dark fibre network to transmit metro and long- haul telecommunications traffic. At the beginning of 2017, it had invested over R8 billion and installed over 10 000 kilometres of fibre infrastructure and access to over 30 000 end points nationwide.

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Abdikarim Mohamed Eid - CEO, Telesom

For almost two decades Telesom has been the driving force of the economic development of a little known country "Somaliland'' by making this country the fifth country to launch a successful in house mobile money platform (Zaad) and the first in the world to create a mobile currency exchange platform that has transformed the lives of our community. Under Abdikarim Mohamed Eid's leadership, the company has been transformed from an expertly considered strategy to a digitally transformed company (Mobile money,Cloud, IoT and VAS).

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Wanda Mkhize - Executive Content, Telkom SA

Wanda Mkhize has worked within the strategy field in both private and public sector for over 15 years. This experience stretches across financial, broadcasting telecommunications and esports industry. She has both consulting and operational experience in business turnaround strategy development and implementation; development of new operating models, product development; DTT Content Strategy; Funding strategy development and acquisition, converged media strategies as well as business startup, growth strategy and Mergers and Acquisitions.

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Aminata Ndiaye - Chief Marketing Officer, Sonatel

Aminata developed a global approach of prices in order to be able to address all segments of the population with good data services. 4G is now available on Sonatel network with a low cost brand and very adapted daily or weekly packages. It is available in the capital city of Dakar as well as in most rural areas. The strong price reductions created a huge demand for Internet services and helped reach all populations. Aminata also launched a specific program to help low income people swap their feature phone with a subsidized entry level smartphone.

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* 1. Please cast your vote for AfricaCom CXO of the Year 2018

Dudu Mhkwanazi - CEO, Project Isizwe

Mike van den Bergh - Chief Marketing & Strategy Officer, PCCW Global

Mamadou Bamba - CEO, Orange Côte d'Ivoire

Sherry Singh - CEO, Mauritius Telecom

Abdikarim Mohamed Eid - CEO, Telesom Company

Giovanni Chiarelli - CTIO, MTN South Africa

Thinus Mulder - CEO, Dark Fibre Africa

Wanda Mkhize - Executive Content, Telkom SA

Aminata Ndiaye - Chief Marketing Officer, Sonatel

These are the nominees for the 'AfricaCom Enterprise CXO Of The Year' 2018:

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Priya Thakoor - Chief Digital Officer, Coca-Cola South Africa

Priya Thakoor is heading up the digitization of the internal landscape of the business unit, as well as encouraging a fluid learning culture that monitors trends, disruptive market forces and competitive moves. She is also responsible for driving innovative business development and partnership opportunities with leading players in the digital space as well as effectively support the Europe, Middle East & Africa Group Digital Council to maximize synergies and common bets.

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Trevor Gosling - CEO, Lulalend

Trevor Gosling launched and has driven the rapid growth of Lulalend, a fintech based business finance company. The Lulalend platform was created to address the lack of access to finance, that has been identified as limiting business growth, in the SME sector in Africa and globally. Trevor identified that reducing the cost and time of assessing businesses was necessary in order to finance this market segment. He realised that technology could allow us to create a platform that automated the entire application & assessment process, reducing assessment from months in the traditional sector to a matter of hours. The technology now allows businesses to apply online in minutes and access finance in a matter of hours increasing business resilience within the market by allowing them to take advantage of opportunities, or react to potential issues in real time. Through their rapid growth to date, every decision has been based on creating and keeping a product that is entirely tech-based and scalable in order to provide a far-reaching solution in South Africa and eventually across the continent. This is fed entirely by his beliefs in the power of business to foster economic prosperity.

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Palesa Sepanya - CIO, PetroSA

Palesa Sepanya is a highly experienced IT Operations and Infrastructure Manager and has growing and extensive experience in managing IT operations of large organizations, strategy formulation, planning as well as implementation of strategies.

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Ronald Bownes - CEO, dreamXchange

Ronald is a driver of change. After successfully running a non-profit Dreamworker for 10 years and he is taking his passion for helping the unemployed and going digital with a platform called dreamXchange. It's a space that encourages self-employment through work and resource exchanges. His biggest passion is helping South Africa solve unemployment and dreamxchange is going to be massive in the next 5 years. They already have a 20,000 person database of work seekers migrated onto the system from their 10 years of work.

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Biola Alabi - Chief Executive Officer and Managing Partner, Biola Alabi Media

Biola Alabi is the founder and managing partner of Biola Alabi Media, a consultancy and production company. Biola Alabi Media produce Nigeria’s food travel documentary-series Bukas and Joints airing across Africa and in the USA. Alabi is also the founder of “Grooming for Greatness” a leadership development and mentorship program for a new generation for African leaders. Named one of the 20 Youngest Power Women in Africa by Forbes Magazine, a World Economic Forum Young Global Leader and CNBC Africa’s AABLA West African Business Woman of the Year.

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Prasanna Burri - Group CIO, Dangote Group

At Dancom, Prasanna Burri has championed partnerships with major IT service providers and vendors such as Microsoft, SAP, Lenovo, Fortinet, Dell, etc. to deliver solutions to IT challenges and ensure top notch service delivery to clients. A strong believer in local talent enablement is key to delivering indigenous and ingenious solutions to unique challenges in the region.

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Pieter Welgemoed - CIO, RAIN Group

Pieter is a seasoned ICT Management Executive with 20 years of achievement in leveraging technology to drive organisational growth, performance, profitability, and expand intellectual property capital. He has a proven track record to build and lead multidisciplinary teams and acts as a change agent, capable of orchestrating transformative business strategy through data-driven decisions. With diverse experience in high-growth, startup, and turnaround environments, he champions innovation with a focus on developing flexible, scalable solutions for consumer and organisational challenges.

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Peter Simiyu - Co-Founder & CEO, Jaza Space East Africa

Peter Simiyu has come up with a new innovation in transportation sector, where transporters are connected to cargo owners digitally to ensure trucks are not traveling empty.

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* 2. Please cast your vote for AfricaCom Enterprise CXO of the Year 2018

Priya Thakoor - Chief Digital Officer, Coca-Cola South Africa

Trevor Gosling - CEO, Lulalend

Palesa Sepanya - CIO, PetroSA

Ronald Bownes - CEO, dreamXchange

Biola Alabi - Chief Executive Officer and Managing Partner, Biola Alabi Media

Prasanna Burri - Group CIO, Dangote Group

Pieter Welgemoed - CIO, RAIN Group

Peter Simiyu - Co-Founder and CEO, Jaza Space East Africa

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