By Lehlohonolo Lehana.
William Mzimba, head of Vodacom Business in South Africa, is stepping down from the company after a five-year tenure. His last day on the job will be 30 September.
In a statement on Friday, Vodacom confirmed Mzimba’s impending exit, saying he is retiring from the role. A successor will be named in due course, the company said.
“I would like to offer my gratitude to William for his invaluable contribution in growing Vodacom Business, including overseeing Vodacom’s SmartGov initiative, which saw the deployment of smart metering solutions that improved revenue assurance for the municipalities, citizen engagement and smart asset management,” said Vodacom South Africa CEO Sitho Mdlalose in a statement.
“William was instrumental in repositioning Vodacom’s cloud, hosting and security business, where he spearheaded a strategic partnership with Amazon Web Services resulting in the creation of Vodacom Amazon Business Group. This further fast-tracked Vodacom’s drive into a fully-fledged multi-cloud provider, which delivers cloud-first solutions.
Under the leadership of Mzimba, Vodacom Business bought a controlling stake in local IOT start-up IoT.nxt in 2017, in order to tap into opportunities presented by the local IOT space.
Vodacom said at the time that through this acquisition, it will leverage and combine what IoT.NxT has already been doing in the IOT market.
Mzimba spent 18 years at Accenture and held the position of chief executive and chairman of Accenture in Africa since 2006. In that role, he oversaw Accenture’s growth and strategy.
According to his LinkedIn profile, between 1998 and 2000, he served as director of New Africa Technology, the information technology arm of New Africa Investments.
His qualifications include an MBA, a BA (Honours) in Business Studies, Management Advancement Programme and Diploma in Datametrics.