From Lego to logic for Cape Town pupil
On the surface, 14-year-old Luke Taylor seems like any other boy his age. He loves surfing and water sports, playing the guitar and spending time with friends. But this grade 9 pupil from the German
There’s something about Andy
There is something about Nashua Mobile’s new CEO Andy Baker that instantly puts the people around him at ease. It’s a talent that has worked in his favour throughout his career, he tells me in his spacious office at the company’s Midrand
Made in Africa
There is a sense of a “take no prisoners” attitude about Angela Gahagan when I meet her for this profile interview. The MTN Business managing executive is sitting, impeccably dressed, at the company’s boardroom table
Long road to the top for Gijima’s chief geek
Jonas Bogoshi’s rise to become leader of one of SA’s most prominent listed IT companies, Gijima, is filled with stories of how he overcame hardship. The rags-to-riches story is a fairly common one shared by SA’s black elite, but
The passions of radio’s Greek geek
Aki Anastasiou has had a love of radio since he was just 10 years old. It’s a passion, he says, that is matched only by his love of the latest gizmos and gadgets. Talk Radio 702’s resident traffic reporter and technology geek has been helping
Paris in his springtime
It’s not surprising to see Paris Mashile, former chairman of the Independent Communications Authority of SA (Icasa), more relaxed than before. Less than a week ago he was one of the most prominent figures in the telecommunications industry; today he says he is “just a simple so-and-so”. Sitting in the stark white seats at Mythos, [...]
Why moving on is hard for MTN’s Nhleko
“It’s difficult to let go.” Phuthuma Nhleko, MTN’s group president and CEO, sounds almost rueful when I ask him why he’s decided to hang up his hat at the mobile operator. “You do a lot of soul searching,” he tells me in an interview at the Melrose Arch Hotel in Johannesburg, a day after presenting [...]
Bharti founder hopes to strike it third time lucky
Indian telecommunications tycoon Sunil Bharti Mittal is hoping to make it third time lucky as he seeks to gain a presence in Africa, one of the world’s least developed mobile phone markets. After two failed attempts to tie up with South African flagship MTN, the founder-chairman of cellular giant Bharti Airtel announced this week a [...]
Software maverick Jan Baan back for another go
Briefly, about 12 years ago, Jan Baan was a billionaire, at least on paper. He’d built his company, Baan Co, into one of the biggest business software suppliers in the world and, in the mid-1990s, had taken the company public on the Nasdaq stock exchange. By 1998, amid the hype around technology stocks, Baan Co [...]
Parliament’s Vadi vows to get tough in 2010
In 2007, when the ANC asked Ismail Vadi to become chairman of the important parliamentary portfolio committee on communications, he was stunned. “I knew absolutely nothing about communications,” he says. But since assuming the role just over two years ago, Vadi has taken to the job like a duck to water. Under his direction, the [...]
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