East African ICT sector gains momentum at IT Leaders Summit
The 2nd annual IT Leaders East Africa Summit is well into day two of the event taking place in Nairobi. The strategic summit has aimed to provide attendees with the industry insight into delivering IT projects and services for the enterprise enabling growth and innovation.
Day one of the summit proved insightful with expert-led discussions featuring industry giants including Dr. Bitange Ndemo, Permanent Secretary, Ministry of Information and Communication, Dr. Katherine Getao, ICT Secretary, Directorate of e-Government, Presidency and Cabinet Affairs Office of the Government of Kenya, David Karanja, Head of ICT at the Co-operative Bank of Kenya LTD, and Simon Njuguna, IT Director at Deloitte East Africa.
The summit is well underway as delegates attend the second day of the event. Jim McFie, Academic and Research Director for Management and Commerce at Strathmore University launched into day two with an industry oriented keynote presentation focused on getting the right staff for the job.
The anticipated panel discussion of day two focused on addressing the IT Leader as Chief Acceleration Officer and how your CEO can rate your contributions to speeding up the business. The panel highlighted industry speculation with a heated debate in reducing latency in product development, moving as fast as your customers and prospects and increasing the speed of operations and execution. The panel featured industry leaders including Simon Njuguna the IT Director from Deloitte; Abdul Mombokaleo, Product Manager for Tanzania Telecommunications Company and David Irungu Waggema the IT Manager at the Nairobi Securities Exchange.
Tom Juma, Head of Service Delivery and ICT at Old Mutual Kenya provided invaluable insight into industry challenges focusing on the CIOs role as a business enabler or change agent. This keynote proved to be a favourite among attendees as Juma addressed how our world is changing at an incredible speed with challenges such as globalisation.
Day two of the summit offered delegates a wider industry review and analysis with summit solution provider workshop sessions. Platinum solution provider Telkom SA shed light on the industry in a topical workshop focused on convergence solutions across Africa enabling our individual economies to grow. Silver solution provider Kofax delivered an industry focused workshop session on maximising business performance for the enterprise. T-Systems, silver solution provider offered delegates an insightful workshop session focusing on the journey to the enterprise cloud.
Summit moderator and Director at ClearSpace Consulting, Derrick Plank is set to present a keynote placing the spotlight on changing the skill set of tomorrow’s IT leaders in facing the challenge of repositioning and reconstructing the value of IT. Josphat Karanja, Head of Infrastructure at the Kenya Education Network (KENET) presents ‘Building a world class Research and Education Network’.
Louis Kaptich, the Co-Owner & Chief Operations Officer of Propertyzote.com will lead attendees into an industry focused keynote session with an emphasis on digitising the enterprise. Nixon Mageka Gecheo, the Chief ICT Officer at the Commission on Administrative Justice will discuss Information Technology and the importance of effective Government involvement.
The summit is a true success for the industry and proved to be an insightful, informative and comprehensive industry event. Attendees were impressed with the agenda and provided positive feedback.
The successes of the summit were widely shared with positive feedback and satisfaction from all attendees, summit partners and sponsors. Summit producers, Kinetic Events; in association with the Kenya ICT Board, KITOS and the Eastern African Economic Chambers of Commerce, have achieved a global industry initiative success this year; proving that next year’s event will be even more impactful.
The success of the summit is attributed to its professionalism, organisation and expert presentation. Event organisers; Kinetic Events would like to thank all sponsors, partners, participants and attendees for an outstanding event and look forward to hosting you all again next year!
The 2nd annual IT Leaders East Africa Summit took place from 5 to 6 September 2012 at the Crowne Plaza Hotel Nairobi, Kenya. The summit provided a unique and exclusive business-to-business platform for IT executives and industry leaders to share experiences, network among peers and engage in interactive discussions with fellow senior executives, government officials, senior decision makers and international industry guest speakers.
For more information, comment or photographs, visit www.itleaders-eastafrica.com or contact Shaunei Meintjes on +27 21 555 0866 or [email protected]. Follow @ITLeadersAfrica and @KineticEventsSA on Twitter for daily updates and news feeds.
