Alpheus Mangale is Seacom's new CEO

Subsea cable operator and telecoms service provider Seacom has appointed Alpheus Mangale as its new Group CEO, effective April 1, 2023.

Seacom said that Mangale is a seasoned business leader with over 25 years' experience across the enterprise, telecoms, financial services and technology markets across Europe, the Middle East and Africa.

He will work alongside the company's outgoing Group CEO, Oliver Fortuin, for a three-month period to ensure a smooth leadership transition, at the end of which he will assume full responsibility for the business.

Fortuin has been Seacom CEO since January 2021, when he replaced Byron Clatterbuck. Fortuin announced his resignation earlier his month but said he would stick around until June, to support the Seacom Board and help with the transition to a new CEO.

Mangale said he was delighted to join Seacom at what he called a "critical time in Africa's digital transformation and the business' own transformation."

"I look forward to continuing to drive the strategy that has set the company on becoming a pan-African converged telecommunications organization. Much has been achieved in the past two years, and I am excited to be part of a truly African business as we expand our services and geographic footprint further," said Mangale.

Seacom expansion plans

Seacom's Chief Digital Officer Prenesh Padayachee told Connecting Africa at the end of 2022 that the company planned to expand its footprint into West Africa and would set up a hub in either Nigeria or Ghana in 2023.

Currently Seacom's focus is more on Southern and Eastern Africa with offices in South Africa, Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, Mozambique and Mauritius.

Seacom launched Africa's first privately owned broadband submarine cable system along the continent's eastern and southern coasts in 2009. Since then, it has invested in multiple subsea cables around the continent including strategic alliances with both Google-backed Equiano and Meta's 2Africa.

Earlier this month Seacom announced it was live on the Equiano cable, allowing it to provide services to its customers via the cable.

The 2Africa cable system coming ashore in Yzerfontein in South Africa's Western Cape in December 2022. (Source: MTN GlobalConnect).

Wealth of experience

Mangale's most recent role was a five year stint at Standard Bank where he was most recently Group chief engineering officer across all of the bank's markets.

Mangale previously spent 16 years at Dimension Data Group (now NTT), where he held various senior leadership roles, including chief technology officer, chief operating officer and client experience director across Africa and the Middle East.

He also held the roles of managing director for Cisco Systems South Africa and chief enterprise officer for MTN Business in South Africa.

Seacom Board Chairperson Pieter Uys thanked outgoing CEO Fortuin "for his effective leadership and commitment and for redefining how we do business across the continent" and welcomed Mangale to the group saying he was delighted to have him lead the company's "strategy of African expansion."

"We are confident, given Alpheus's track record, knowledge and experience in this operating environment, that Alpheus is precisely the right person to lead the business at this juncture," Uys said.

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*Top image is of Seacom's new group CEO Alpheus Mangale. (Source: supplied by Seacom)

— Paula Gilbert, Editor, Connecting Africa