OUR still relatively new minister of communications,
Roy Padayachie, made a grand gesture last week by inviting 30 top CEOs from the ICT sector in South Africa to a meeting where the discussion focused on how to grow the sector and, in doing so, meet the president's objective of creating more jobs.
Padayachie also pegged his department's estimations of the local telecoms market in terms of revenue, and expressed his wishes as to how that growth will materialise.
He said that the South African sector had grown from R131bn in 2007 to R179bn in 2010.
"This sector will grow to about R187bn in 2011, with a possible figure of R250bn in 2020," said Padayachie, adding that his meeting with industry captains last week was to discuss how they get to that point.
In attendance at the occasion were
Vodacom Group [JSE:VOD] CEO,
Pieter Uys, Altech CEO
Craig Venter,
MTN Group [JSE:MTN] incoming CEO
Sifiso Dabengwa; chairperson of Convergence Partners and
Dimension Data Holdings [JSE:DDT] Andile Ngcaba, the Gupta brothers who founded Sahara Computers, and others.
It would have been fantastic to have been a fly on the wall at that meeting, but press were kept to a briefing held afterwards.
One of Padayachie's first pronoucements after his appointment as minister during President
Jacob Zuma's cabinet reshuffle late last year was that he would aim to create partnership between his department and the private sector. And he certainly seems to be doing that.
Padayachie said that last Friday's meeting would be the first of a series of conversations to come. He said that the companies represented at the meeting were identified as being at the "top of the pyramid".
He said he respected the fact that these companies were designed to create profit and pay dividends to their shareholders, and that government wants to support them in that. He added, however, that they must also aim to create "developmental dividends" in the process.
Padayachie explained that this dividend "Must express itself in having greater accessibility and affordability for telecommunications to our general population".
"We want a growth that is more inclusive, not exclusive. The rural areas constitute a very important developmental dividend," he said.
Flanked by Uys and Venter, Padayachie said that his department wanted to reverse the brain drain and convince bright young South Africans to stay and develop their business interests at home. "Africa is waiting for South African companies to meet their needs," he said.
The minister said that the world beyond Africa should also be in the sights of South African companies, and added that President Zuma had been working "carefully" to build strategic alliances with Bric countries (a grouping comprising Brazil, Russia, India and China).
"We want our companies to become global, because we cannot allow this opportunity to be exploited by European and American telecommunications companies," he said.
The new minister has big ambitions and clear plans. Engaging the private sector is an astute move to my mind and scores several goals for the department as it balances demands from the presidency with the needs of its industry.
But Padayachie is yet to win over the South African public, who still pay too much for mostly mediocre telecoms services. To round out his strategy, he must make the South African consumer and small businesses a priority focus.
- Fin24