Continental Telecoms Leaders Gather In South Africa
By Novell Zwange – CAPE-TOWN – The 2010 AfricaCom Congress and Exhibition, to be hosted this year from 10 – 11 November in Cape Town, South Africa, has received a staggering 75% increase in pre-registered attendance; with 618 companies already represented. Firmly established as Africa’s leading telecoms event, AfricaCom will gather more than 4,000 attendees from across the African continent and beyond for two days of contact building, learning and buying.
African telecoms is undergoing a new phase of growth that requires innovation from every corner of the continent’s ICT Industry. Mobile operators are transforming their business structures so as to focus more on what is core to operational delivery. Service providers are becoming more innovative by launching dynamic tariff plans; segmenting the market to deepen their value offering or by further building their brands through entering into partnership with content providers. This whilst vendors are beginning to showcase solutions to meet the challenges of Africa’s telecoms landscape, to name but a few examples.
It is this call for innovation that forms the backdrop to discussions at the 13th annual AfricaCom congress. Featured under the overarching umbrella of “Driving the Next Stage of Growth in African Telecoms,” the AfricaCom congress agenda has been expanded and re-focussed for 2010. Sessions cover broad strategic answers to driving growth and predicting trends alongside in-depth discussions to the most pertinent topics facing the industry including: Efficiency and ROI Strategies; LTE; VAS; Marketing, Pricing and Loyalty; Mobile Money; Fibre Optics; Broadband Data Services; WiMAX; and Capacity and Wholesale.
To guarantee the most value from these discussions, the speaker line-up represents a “Who’s Who” of those at the top of some of Africa’s most successful and important telecoms companies. A record 100 speakers will present across the two days including:
Ahmad Farroukh, Vice President, MTN West & Central Africa
Themba Khumalo, CEO, MTN Uganda
Serame Taukobong, Chief Marketing Officer, MTN South Africa
Marc Rennard, Executive Vice President for Africa, the Middle East & Asia, Orange Group Nkateko Nyoka, Chief Officer – Regulatory & Stakeholder Relations, Vodacom Group
Wessel Van der Vyver, General Manger, Telecom Namibia International
Mickael Ghossein, CEO, Orange Telkom Kenya
Etienne Kouadio, Managing Director, Alink Telecom Cote D’Ivoire
Jose dos Santos, CEO, Vodacom Mozambique
Chiruyi Walingo, Chief Commercial Officer, Zain Tanzania
Hussein Rifaii, Chairman & Managing Director, MDC
Noel Herrity, CEO, Zantel Tanzania
Serame Taukobong, Chief Marketing Officer, MTN South Africa
Dr Angus Hay, Chief Technology Officer, Neotel South Africa
Paul Edwards, Chairman, Starcomms Nigeria
Nazar H Sahal, Information Technology Director, Expresso Telecom Group Ltd
“It is the re-vamped congress agenda and record-breaking speaker line-up that has driven the 75% increase in pre-registered attendance numbers to AfricaCom,” says Julie Rey, Conference Director, AfricaCom. “The broader range of topics has attracted a wider audience and has meant that companies are sending more representatives from more departments to ensure that no conference session is missed. This new phase of growth in Africa has also made it more important than ever for companies to ensure they have the most up-to-date market information, insights and contacts to remain competitive in this ever changing landscape. We are very pleased to see that our previous attendees are continuing to see AfricaCom as a forum to achieve this and that a whole host of new companies are joining them.”
AfricaCom is more than a conference. The market-place exhibition will feature 250 of the world’s foremost solutions and technology providers who will showcase their portfolio of new solutions and services that meet the challenges of Africa’s telecoms landscape. This represents an unique opportunity for telcos from across Africa to see the full product offering in one place to assist in making better technology decisions.
With this record-breaking attendance, it is expected that this year’s AfricaCom will play a pivotal role in bringing the continent’s ICT value chain together and in so doing; support this ongoing market transformation.
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