Africa

Nobody’s perfect. What quality or ability do you wish you had?

I am beginning to realise that I ought to use patience as a strategy more often than I do. My tendency is towards driving change and making things happen now. I feel that companies must develop long-term sustainability and therefore must be driven by a long-term vision and strategy. Therefore, there are things that leadership needs to do which doesn’t often have an immediate short-term result and requires planning and patience in the execution.

Chief executive officer Tony Sofianos explains how, with the oil and gas industry stretching across the globe more than ever before, companies like Wings Travel Management have never been more important to their customers.

Renowned for the provision of high quality, high performance business technology solutions, BCX aims to earn 30 percent of its revenue outside South Africa by 2016.

France Telecom currently has approximately 80 million customers across Africa and it will now commence work to ensure that phones sold by its operators there are pre-installed with the web browser.

The company has said that slow data speeds on African mobile networks have made it difficult up until now to support web-browsing. This new browser is expected to ease the burden on networks by using specially written code that reduces the amount of data that has to be passed back and forth when visiting popular websites.

Madagascar is a land of increasing opportunity. Chairman, Zouzar Bouka, explains his vision of a new Madagascar and how VIMA Group is helping make this a reality.

Chief executive officer Steven Golding explains how a lack of fear, a willingness to embrace innovation and good old fashioned family values have combined to create a leading project management consulting company.

For the better part of three decades Inorganic Ventures has been a leading manufacturer of certified reference materials. Executive vice president Michael Scott, and vice president of operations Christopher Gaines explain how it is now targeting the lucrative mining sector.

Chief executive officer Ismail Dockrat discusses the restructuring programme that has contributed to this South African success story.

In the nearly two decades since 1994, air travel into South Africa has increased by approximately 70 percent. In fact, during the month long staging of the 2010 FIFA World Cup alone it is estimated that over one million foreigners visited the country. These figures go some way to highlighting the reason why the aviation sector in this part of the world has undergone such tremendous growth in recent times.

Healthcare delivery in Africa is to benefit from a $10.6 million public-private financing initiative from the Medical Credit Fund (MCF).

The MCF financing has been sourced from the US Government and a group of leading international foundations this week—the US Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC), the Calvert Foundation, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the Soros Economic Development Fund, the Deutsche Bank Americas Foundation and Dutch private investors, as well as grant funding from the US Agency for International Development (USAID).

Nobody’s perfect. What quality or ability do you wish you had?

There are lots of things I wish I could do better! Everything from eye-hand coordination to mathematics – the list is long. I often have a hard time being nice and it seems like I could be more patient with people. The ability to relax would be nice too…

What is the best business book you have ever read, and why?