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Africa: The cradle of mankind, the future of businessAt the turn of the decade, South Africa stands on the brink of one of the most unique periods in modern business history. On the back end of a recession that has rocked global markets, coupled with hosting the largest and most popular sporting event on the planet, businesses have never been under more pressure to underline the stability of the African business sphere. With a recession of great magnitude, businesses both private and public have been forced to reassess how their companies are structured, and what kinds of improvements can be done.
In doing so, more and more businesses have shifted their focus to areas of staff management in order to streamline the structures in place effectively, as well as carry this momentum through to other aspects of their brands.
With the announcement that the country officially has come out of its recession phase, many corporate leaders feel that now is the time to harness technology-based opportunities in order to stimulate economic growth. With global studies indicating that new or unfamiliar technologies introduced during a country’s growth phases have impacted positively on its economy, never has the time been more ideal to implement such positive change.
The South African business sphere has certainly, over the past two years, taken a more active approach in the management of its people. In its efforts to become more compliant with first-world business standards, companies are spending more time and funding focusing on areas such as human resources (HR), overall staff management and administrative areas such as efficient and compliant payroll systems. Leaders of such organisations realise that they have to innovate and not imitate in order to drive their brands forward in an ever challenging corporate sphere.
Areas such as information and communication technology (ICT) are imperative areas of focus when one analyses and realises that in today’s workplace, one cannot solve today’s problems with outdated solutions – and if businesses are to fail this test, they will be stung into a crippling future shock paralysis. Seminars, workshops and lectures are becoming increasingly common as the country realises the need for technical innovation, coupled with effectiveness in areas such as people management and effective ICT and HR.
An example of this was the recent lecture, in December 2009, given by Dr Rias J. van Wyk, a Harvard University qualified authority on technology management and innovation for sustainability. Dr Van Wyk held the lecture in order to bring to light the need for strategic technology analysis (STA) in order to better focus company funding and management on areas that will lead companies into a new corporate age.
With South Africa finally opening up to the opportunities present within an increasingly digital and technical age, come numerous gateways in which to channel company assets and time more effectively. With more businesses seeking new ways of organising work and implementing changes in the organisational structure to improve performance, innovation and technology both are playing key roles in this transition.
Workplace innovation can take many formats, including employee empowerment schemes, knowledge management policies, team models, as well as skills development; and it is essential that these are understood by all levels – from high level decision-makers through to the lower levels in an organisation.
South African business, particularly the larger and more organised corporate-based entities, have done phenomenally well to realise that among the numerous factors influencing the modern local business sphere, are rapid evolutions in the labour market, technological developments, automation of work processes, and ultimately the growing internationalisation of both labour and service markets.
Very few can dispute the fact that any organisation’s most precious asset is that of its workforce. This is seen in both larger and smaller businesses, as more companies realise that people development-focused managers, and leaders, can bolster corporate performance significantly, and counteract forms of skills shortage within the country.
The improving and more intricate HR development of these companies is, in turn, having a major stake in directing the revolution of re-engineering South African business leadership, and making the country a significant player in an economy on the rebound.
Areas finding themselves focussed on from a South African staff management perspective include: employment equity; management training; HR strategic planning; skills development; communications and public relations; development of HR policies and procedures; and talent management.
The fact that South African business is opening itself up to areas such as effective staff management processes is a massive step for the entire business sphere. Promotion of differing forms of workplace innovation is imperative as today’s organisations operate in an increasingly demanding and turbulent atmosphere – creating a need for more flexibility and technologically focused solutions.
Against this backdrop, and in order to guarantee sustainable business success, companies need to give serious consideration to the nurturing of human creativity and to greater investment in HR development in strategic business development.
While South Africa’s modern-day workplace has been turned on its head with the ability to open itself up to global markets post-1994, never has the time been more perfect for it to embrace technological breakthroughs, in its ever advancing staff management processes.
One of the highlights in this regard, and a project that is bound to cause shock waves across the African business sphere, is that of a project being undertaken by Neotel, labelled Seacom – an initiative tailored around introducing Africa to a digital age that long has been suppressed. This project will see South Africa, and certainly the African continent, catapulted into a new, affordable and profitable era.
The company, having noted a significant gap in an otherwise monopolised market, has hailed the Seacom project continuously as the “light at the end of the formerly narrow bandwidth tunnel”.
According to Neotel – the company placing the financial and infrastructural basis for Seacom – it will not only alter the local telecommunications landscape, whereby businesses and consumers have faced the constraints of a lack of true broadband or bandwidth, but significantly reduce the staggering telecoms costs experienced by South Africans today.
With the construction of the US$650-million Seacom undersea fibre-optic cable, which will lay claim to the first ever links between southern and eastern Africa and India and Europe, with over 17 000km of submarine cable, comes the dawn of a superior telecoms service at more competitive prices.
From the initial feasibility phase initiated back in October 2005, project leaders have done well in that the Seacom bandwidth has, in 2009, been made available via the Neotel Data Centre in Midrand, South Africa. The online community has reacted positively to the initial phases of implementation, with forums and online bloggers labelling the infrastructural behemoth as a “luxury” that South Africans were yet to become accustomed to.
Further praise and recognition was placed upon the project when, in November 2009, it was named “Best Pan African Initiative” at the AfricaCom Awards 2009 ceremony held in Cape Town. The importance of an award such as this cannot be ignored, as the event is judged and attended by the leading African operators, service providers, ministries, regulators and equipment and solutions providers in Africa, providing further positive attention to an influential investment community.
The project has proven its ability from not only a long and arduous journey from both an administrative and logistical level, but also with regard to its enormous infrastructural capabilities. It has been hailed as an African business success in that although privately funded, the project is in fact over three-quarters African owned.
Apart from the mind-blowing progression from an infrastructural standpoint, the initiative also brought to light new and innovative relationships in order to ensure the success and speed of the project.
This was highlighted with the announcement, in September 2009, that JSE-listed Allied Technologies Limited (Altech) and Seacom formed a strategic alliance for the mutual acquisition of bandwidth capacity on two cable systems.
The importance of this coalition is underlined by the fact that effectively it will see Altech procuring two STM-16s from Seacom (equivalent to 5 gigabytes per second), with the option to upgrade within three years to double this capacity. Seacom will in turn purchase six STM-64s throughout the East African region on the back of a network owned by Kenya Data Networks (KDN), a subsidiary of Altech.
A coalition on such a large African scale underlines the resilience and relationship building required by businesses in today’s African corporate sphere.
Neotel has stated openly that, with the African market for international bandwidth expected to swell to 800 Gbps from the present-day 10 Gbps, with a significant portion of this new demand coming from East Africa, the infrastructural gains of such an alliance is not only a breakthrough for the African continent, but essential for the continent’s success.
From an infrastructural aspect, KDN’s extensive inland infrastructure in East Africa essentially will be linking Seacom’s landing station in Mombasa to Nairobi, and then onto Kampala and Kigali, opening up a doorway to Asia that only a few years ago was unthought of.
With statistics indicating Africa harbouring only 1% of broadband penetration, the infrastructural significance of this union will most certainly unshackle the five-country African network, with nations such as Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda and soon the Democratic Republic of Congo and Tanzania harbouring the potential to become significantly more competitive on a global scale, and finally allowing the African continent to unleash the technological potential it has been harbouring for decades.
Adam Currie
