Vodacom Business chief William Mzimba to retire

Vodacom South Africa's Chief Officer of Vodacom Business, William Mzimba, has decided to retire from Vodacom after a five-year tenure and will leave the company at the end of September 2023.

During his term, Mzimba headed up Vodacom Business enterprise units in Africa where he led a team tasked with driving digital transformation of businesses and governments across several industries and markets.

"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 which improved revenue assurance for the municipalities, citizen engagement and smart asset management," said Vodacom South Africa CEO Sitho Mdlalose of Mzimba's departure.

Mdlalose said a successor will be announced in due course.

"During my time at Vodacom, I have been privileged to witness the remarkable growth and success we have achieved together. It is through collaborative efforts of an exceptional executive team and employees that we have helped many organizations, small to large, transform their challenges into opportunities," Mzimba added.

Mzimba's successful tenure at Vodacom

Vodacom said Mzimba was instrumental in repositioning the operator's cloud hosting and security business where he spearheaded a strategic partnership with Amazon Web Services (AWS) resulting in the creation of the Vodacom Amazon Business Group. This further fast-tracked the telco's drive into a fully-fledged multi-cloud provider delivering cloud-first solutions.

Mzimba also led the diversification of the Internet of Things (IoT) business, supported by various acquisitions, and extended its reach to include Vodafone markets.

The 53-year-old is credited with spearheading the launch of Vodacom's Connected Education platform during the pandemic lockdown, which delivered virtual education to more than a million students.

With his team, Mzimba boosted agritech impact through Vodacom subsidiary Mezzanine's Connected Farmer platform, which connected over three million farmers, and delivered e-vouchers to support small-scale farmers. The digital platform provides farmers in Kenya, Tanzania, Zambia and South Africa with access to local services such as credit providers, resellers and insurers.

Mezzanine's mVacciNation platform also helped deliver COVID-19 vaccinations, impacting over 40 million citizens.

Vodacom South Africa CEO Sitho Mdlalose. (Source: Vodacom).

In June 2022, Vodacom SA's MD Balesh Sharma also stepped down, less than two years after taking up the role, and was replaced by Mdlalose who returned from Tanzania where he had been the MD of Vodacom Tanzania since August 2021.

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*Top image is of Vodacom South Africa's Chief Officer of Vodacom Business, William Mzimba, who is leaving the company at the end of September 2023. (Source: Vodacom).

— Paula Gilbert, Editor, Connecting Africa