Now in its 8th year, the IT Leaders Africa Summit, Africa’s largest CIO gathering, will take place on the 15th and 16th March at the Century City Conference Centre in South Africa’s tech hub Cape Town.

The 2017 edition of the IT Leaders Africa Summit will host a number of industry experts as well as top IT solution providers who will be presenting on the current trends affecting African IT Executives.

Recent years have seen IT leaders moving away from the tech-heavy role and taking up a place in developing business strategies alongside other executives, essentially approaching enterprise IT from a business point of view and establishing themselves as the most effective person to lead IT transformation. 

The strategic decision to bring the event to Cape Town has yielded positive results and a high level of interest across industries in Africa.  Attendance is already up by 42% and the new venue is a perfect fit for a top level IT event.  There is a lot of interest this year and Kinetic is committed to strengthening the industry across the African continent through our involvement as a key information provider and business facilitator.  We are encouraged by the number of companies who have already expressed interest in anticipation of the next edition in 2018”, says Terence Southam, Co-founder & Managing Director of Kinetic.

This year, the summit will host Lead Sponsor, Mimecast’s ‘The Anatomy of the Cyber-attack’.  This session takes place on Day One and will look into topics such as Social Engineering, the Legal Implications of a data breach & POPI. 

The summit features over 40 speakers, 20+ keynotes, panel discussions, and numerous educational workshop sessions that are hosted by leading IT solution providers from around the world.

‘This is my second year of attending the IT Leaders Africa Summit. As a delegate last year I found the topics to be relevant and panel discussions to be very informative. The conference also provides an opportunity to build a strong professional network’, says Rolan Christian Executive Manager: ICT Operations, Medscheme/HeliosITS.

This year’s agenda will delve into topics including strategy in a constantly changing landscape, the human element surrounding the role of the CIO and customer and employee engagement, as well as value-driven IT and how to extract all forms of value from various endeavours.

The advisory panel has assisted in shaping the agenda and ensuring that the most pressing topics are addressed at the summit.  This year we have utilised the expertise of four advisory board members:

Peter du Plooy, CIO, Engen who will speak about Predictive Analytics & AI and the disruption to the workforce.

Vijay Naidoo, Head of IT, Parmalat who will take a look at customer-centricity within the role of the CIO.

Prasanna Kumar Burri, Group Head of IT, Dangote as well as Prof. Pete Janse Van Vuuren, CEO – The Thinking Cap & Director – Africa CIO Forum, CIO Council of South Africa have also served as advisors.

Other leading speakers include:

Richard Van Rensburg, Deputy CEO, Pick n Pay
will be participating in a panel discussion surrounding predictions for the future of IT and technology as a whole.


Sophia Vargas, Analyst Serving Infrastructure & Operations Professionals, Forrester will examine Infrastructure Strategy as the key to a successful digital transformation.

Visionary CIO finalist 2016, Ridwaan Bardien, CIO, SANBS, will present how SANBS is laying a foundation for digital initiatives.

Lead sponsor:

Mimecast

Mimecast’s security, archiving and continuity cloud services protect business email and deliver comprehensive email risk management in one fully-integrated subscription service. Mimecast reduces the risk, complexity and cost traditionally associated with protecting email.

Platinum sponsor:

SITA

SITA was established in 1999 to consolidate and coordinate the State’s information technology resources in order to achieve cost savings through scale, increased delivery capabilities and enhanced interoperability. 

Gold sponsors include:

InfoVista

Ipanema, InfoVista’s automated and fully integrated Business Application Performance Assurance solution, gives CIOs all the features they need to future-proof their network for application-aware SD-WANand Hybrid WAN.

Balabit

Balabit – founded in Budapest, Hungary – is a leading provider of contextual security technologies with the mission of preventing data breaches without constraining business.

SailPoint Technologies

From managing employees that come and go, to auditing and reporting, to assessing security risks—SailPoint delivers best-in-class solutions for Compliance, Provisioning, Access Management, and Identity Analytics.

JMR Software

JMR Software is an international, large enterprise and services IT specialist, with extensive technological expertise and in-depth knowledge of software solutions.

ITR Tech

They offer full Infrastructure Monitoring and Management, Lifecycle Management and Configuration Management capabilities which allows the client to make use of ITR Technology as a “one stop shop” to obtain a proactive approach and increase Quality of Service and uptime to their IT environments and company / customer services.

Darktrace

Named ‘Technology Pioneer’ by the World Economic Forum, Darktrace is one of the world’s leading cyber threat defense companies.

Attend the 8th Annual IT Leaders Summit on 15 & 16 March 2017 to ensure that you are up to date with current IT leadership trends.

For more information about IT Leaders please contact:
marcia@kineticevents.net +27 (0) 21 180 4700
2nd Floor, Dean Street Arcade Dean Street, Newlands, Cape Town
Follow @ITLeadersAfrica on Twitter and join the conversation using the #ITLAfrica