Business & Entrepreneurship 2018

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Business & Entrepreneurship 2018

Gontse Sekhitla (30)

Head of Risk Product Development, Liberty (Corporate)

Gontse Sekhitla believes that every organisation needs an actuary, whether they know it or not. He says it was the best career choice he could have made for himself, because it allows him to understand business through the lens of economics, accounting and statistics.

Sekhitla’s high school years at Potchefstroom Boys “felt like a perpetual sleepover with your friends, and despite the periodic bullying it was a pleasurable experience”. Boarding school allowed him to thrive academically, as he was forced to study and found himself excelling because there was not anything else to do. His first professional job as an actuarial analyst at Alexander Forbes exposed him to the world of employee benefits and the impact of pension funds on families and by the time he left he was a key account person on a number of accounts.

Today, he is in a challenging and rewarding senior management role at Liberty (Corporate) where he is tasked with understanding how a product house works and then articulating customer experiences that match the organisation’s customer value propositions.

“Some of the misconceptions that people have about actuaries is that they are boring and bad communicators. Most of the young ones I know are actually knowledgeable about other stuff as well. We are not just number-crunchers, we are value providers.”

On choosing a career, he says: “A lot of young people in South Africa go to university not knowing what they want to study. Mentorship is therefore important, because it takes more than brains to be an actuary; you need tenacity and the ability to fail forward.”

Sekhitla is excited about being a young person today. “The future is being shaped right now. AI and machine learning are developments that are going to disrupt the space that I work in. The world is changing, and it is beautiful to witness.” — Nomonde Ndwalaza

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Rivo Mhlari (23)

Rivo Mhlari (23)

Co-founder and chief executive, Rikatec (PTY) Limited

Adversity in South Africa is what inspires Rivo Mhlari, founder of Rikatec, a vehicle information management systems company. He hopes to become a leader in technology in Africa and to be at the forefront of the Fourth Industrial Revolution.

The entrepreneur, who hails from Phalaborwa in Limpopo, graduated from the University of Cape Town with an honours in Business Science, specialising in finance and accounting in 2016. From a young age Mhlari says he was interested in business; he wanted to become a chartered accountant until his third year of university for the sole purpose of being credible in his field. Mhlari then worked as a management consultant at McKinsey & Company before pursuing his dream at Rikatec full time.

Mhlari started Rikatec in his first year of university. His company’s vision is to leverage Artificial Intelligence and Big Data to become the dominant player in the Internet of Things. Through machine learning, Rikatec detects trends within different vehicle detection systems to improve prediction of vehicle longevity, assist in determining insurance and warranty premiums, fleet management and in enhancing the resale value of motor vehicles, among others.

Mhlari says entrepreneurship is liberation. “Both economically and socially, I became an entrepreneur because I wanted to make an impactful change in my country and continent, through innovation, job creation and socioeconomic enhancement. I became an entrepreneur because I didn’t want to be boxed into a certain career; I wanted to make a difference through being ambitious and innovative.”

He says it is important for young people to see what he does because it is not traditional. “I believe this is where the world is going and young people in Africa need to be a part of this, so that Africa can rise as an innovative continent and not just be adapting to the rest of the world.” — Rumana Akoob

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Matthew Butler-Adam (29)

Matthew Butler-Adam (29)

Management Consultant at Bain and Company

Matthew Butler-Adam has always had a bias towards broadness. Being the child of teachers meant exposure to a solid work ethic from a young age and that influenced his determination to do well in his own studies, because he wanted to impress his parents.

He credits the Politics, Philosophy and Economics degree he did at the University of Cape Town with giving him the necessary grounding to think about resources, power and politics in a thoughtful and informed way, while also honing his passion for debating.

After UCT Butler-Adam went on to complete master’s degrees at Oxford and Harvard universities.

“Oxford was a very strong academic environment; my peers and I found ourselves grappling with challenging topics within and beyond the classroom, and it was something that was natural to us as opposed to being geeky behaviour. My Harvard experience, on the other hand, despite being academically rigorous, was more professionalised. Here I learned about soft skills and networking — the types of skills that are important but aren’t necessarily taught in the classroom.”

Today Butler-Adam is a management consultant at a leading firm, working on variety of projects in South Africa, Zambia and Botswana. One of his most memorable projects includes being part of a team that reworked the HR systems of an organisation with the aim of making the employee wellness experience more central to how the organisation conducts business.

For him, good management consulting is about being able to tie one’s personal motivation with positive societal growth.

“This means putting away short-term goals and gains in favour of the sustainability of the business, so that 20 years from now you can look back at the work that you did and be assured that it was beneficial to those that needed it … it’s not an easy balance, but value creation is crucial.”

Butler-Adam feels that that as South Africans, optimism about the future we want must be balanced by the necessary scepticism and vigilance required to hold people to account, both privately and publicly.

“We have the fundamentals in place, but there must be a constant questioning of what equal opportunity means, for instance, especially because privilege is not always easily identifiable. We must be willing to have the hard conversations.” — Nomonde Ndwalaza

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Sibu Mabena (26)

Sibu Mabena (26)

Founder, Duma Collective, a subsidiary of Mbuduma Communication
@sibumabena

Waiting for her mom to fetch her from school at 5pm each day opened a world of possibilities for Sibu Mabena; she followed her friends to dance class. By age 10 she had already competed in a dance competition in Germany. She later joined dance crews and choreographed shows for major events.

She now works behind the scenes on some of the biggest hip-hop concerts South Africa has ever seen. After having competed with major dance crews she started creative consulting.

“I’ve been that person that’s just like, ‘Give me a chance to work and I will show you what I can do, then we’ll take it from there’. This is how I got to work on the Fill Up series.”

Mabena has managed to build a career around her passions — dance, social media, events and talent management.
She founded Duma Collective while doing a Bachelor in Political Sciences and International Relations at the University of Pretoria. She has worked on Cassper Nyovest’s Fill Up The Dome, Fill Up Orlando Stadium and Fill Up FNB Stadium. Natasha Tshahane, Luthando Shosha, Reason, K.O., Solo & The BETR Gang, The Muffinz, Sne Mbatha and DotCom are all managed by her agency.

Mabena’s creative agency employs seven people. She says “sacrifice or compromise while being diplomatic” is how she gets the job done. “To be of service, one needs to understand that at times, you have to do something you don’t like, because it serves the greater good.”

Mabena says that young people need to remember that, “it is cool to work hard! It is cool to sacrifice now to gain later”.

What Mabena puts out on social media is the final product, but the work it takes to get there is hard. “I’ve gone from picking up cases of cool drink and water into dressing rooms to serving Raphael Saadiq a cup of tea on stage. Working hard is worth it, because every rand you get to spend has been earned.” — Rumana Akoob

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Tony Mabaso (33)

Tony Mabaso (33)

Founder of Alex Art Market

“With the passion that I have for my community and the love I have for craftwork, I don’t think I will create jobs for everyone, but I will spark the mind of the individuals who can create more jobs in my community to alleviate poverty,” says Tony Mabaso, founder of Alex Art Market and Alex Fashion Week.

He was born in Alexandra and raised by his grandmother, who taught him how to design clothing; later he was given an opportunity in South Africa’s high profile television and theatre shows. “I understand the challenges that are faced by my community and the reality of lack of skills; and even those who do have skills, of producing products; and those who don’t have a platform, to showcase their products. That dream led to the establishment of Alex Art Market,” he says.

The Alex Art Market was established in 2016 by Mabaso and his business partner Lungelwa Mtitshane, who both work in the TV, film and theatre industries. Mabaso is responsible for the daily running of the place, fundraising, creating marketing opportunities, upskilling creative SMMEs that are housed at the market, and finding opportunities for those SMMEs by linking them with government agencies and the private sector. He works with 10 creative SMMEs that employ more than 120 people.

Alexandra is one of the poorest townships in Johannesburg and is situated next to Sandton, the biggest economic hub in Africa. “Alexandra has been a bucket market, where money comes in at the end of the month, but by the 15th it’s gone back to the rich neighbourhood and is being spent in malls around Johannesburg, where people get charged high costs having to use transportation to access those places, which doesn’t benefit our community. So, we created the Alex Art Market space to convince our community to create more jobs and attract tourists, as well to contribute to our GDP,” he says.

“It’s good to know there are individuals who don’t leave the township but rather strive to make it a better place for the upcoming youth as well.” — Rumana Akoob

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Lethabo Mokoena (27)

Lethabo Mokoena (27)

Founder at Walk Fresh

Lethabo Mokoena is a young entrepreneur who is playing a role in changing the unemployment situation in his home surroundings of Daveyton, Ekurhuleni. It was after he returned home from completing a degree in Corporate Communication at the University of Johannesburg in 2015 that he realised the importance of building at home first.
“I came back and even though I had changed, things had stayed the same. My peers were jobless, and they would spend their days at street corners, young and going to waste. That’s when I decided to start the business and asked the people around me if they would join me.”

Sneaker culture is an institution in South Africa, and people are often sensitive about mistreating their valued shoes.
“If you think about it, using a washing machine or hard bristles to clean your shoes is very damaging, and a lot of people do not like these methods. At Walk Fresh we hand wash them, because we understand their delicacy, and we understand the cultural attachment that our clients have to their shoes, be they sneakers or suede or leather shoes.”
Walk Fresh is a sneaker-cleaning and shoe-care start-up, which hand washes your precious shoes, while also offering deliveries as well.

Demand is steadily growing, and in addition to the flagship store in Daveyton that also serves as a workspace for young entrepreneurs, Walk Fresh drop-off points can be found at laundromats in Edenvale, Fourways and Randburg, and another store will be opening soon in Durban.

The 27-year-old entrepreneur collaborated with brands such as Kiwi, J&B, Nike and a number of local youth brands in his township in an effort to deliberately plough back into the township economy. — Nomonde Ndwalaza

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Kutlwano Hutamo (34)

Kutlwano Hutamo (34)

Director at Washesha Online

Kutlwano Hutamo’s love for learning and education one of the reasons why she is a successful entrepreneur. She has an MBA from GIBS business school, an MSc in veterinary sciences as well as a BSc honours in genetics. However, her path to success has not been an easy one.

“I am the first in my family to go to university, and the first time I saw my mother cry, actually, was when I matriculated. My mom was so overcome with emotion because I had had so many challenges that year and I still managed to pass with flying colours.”

Hutamo, a solitary creature by heart, grew up wanting to be a lab scientist. After enrolling for chemical engineering on the advice of a career counsellor, she quickly converted to biological sciences after seeing that the engineering course was full of physics and calculus courses — not biology. This saw her gain work experience and pursue a law degree and an MBA before finally taking the entrepreneurial leap.

“Washesha” means to hurry up and to have a sense of urgency, and it is the ethos behind this term that informs how the organisation prioritises the customer above everything else. Hutamo is deliberate about using black suppliers for her business, as she believes that the inclusion of black people in value chains that previously excluded them in is a matter of social justice.

“Entrepreneurship is about learning new stuff everyday, learning about health and safety standards, about machinery, about people management.”

Although optimistic about the potential of young people to go out and create opportunities, she admits that the position of women in our society is troubling. “Reading the news as a woman is depressing. Women are not safe in the streets, and in some cases, they are not safe in the house. The mental work of always having to fight for visibility as a woman can be draining.”

There is no doubt that Washesha will continue to garner a following of loyal clients who keep coming back due to the exceptional product offering and customer experience. — Lesley Stones

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Itumeleng Mothibeli (34)

Itumeleng Mothibeli (34)

Director of Asset Management, Vukile Property Fund

Growing up in eight of the country’s nine provinces has given Itumeleng Mothibeli solid exposure and insight into to all that South Africa has to offer. It was a graduate programme at Old Mutual that introduced him to the world of property, and he has never looked back.

Under the mentorship of investment heavyweights such as Ben Kodisang, Mothibeli has been able to carve out a space for himself in the property world. He is passionate about how infrastructure drives development and how development drives growth, and is committed to using brick and mortar as a tool to break the barriers to trade that still exist on the African continent.

His executive management role at Vukile Property Investments means that he is accountable for the overall strategic direction, operations and performance of the fund’s South African and Namibian property portfolio, which comprises 47 properties valued at R16-billion.

Mothibeli believes in the transformative potential of responsible investing. “I don’t think the property industry in South Africa has really thought about making a difference in the context of still being able to make money, because in a market that is overly saturated with malls, responsible investing must include building schools and clinics as well.”

As a young man in South Africa today, the possibilities of digitisation excite him. “Young people have ideas that are being discussed in real time and technology has enlarged that conversation. What we must ensure however, is that these ideas are converted into concrete action, as the only way is to chip away.” — Nomonde Ndwalaza

Website: [email protected]

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Faith Dowelani (33)

Faith Dowelani (33)

Quantity surveyor, salon owner and mentor

Faith Dowelani has an unusual mix of professional interests, being both a quantity surveyor and a beauty salon owner.

As a quantity surveyor she’s worked for the company MLC and lectured in the subject at the University of Venda. On the beauty side, her Tshavhudi House of Beauty employs four full-time and three part-time employees in Thohoyandou in Limpopo.

But neither of those are what qualifies her as an unsung hero. That comes from her work in mentoring young girls to uplift her rural community.

“In my spare time I mentor a group of girls between 12 and 22 years old. They meet on Saturday in a girls’ school that teaches moral regeneration and cultural dances. I help them by being an elder sister, supporting them financially and emotionally,” Dowelani says.

“Being a mentor has made me a better person. I spend time with the girls teaching them the importance of education and self-love. A mentor is like a guardian angel: someone who offers a helping hand, an ear to listen and a guiding voice to those who aspire to do and be better.”

Dowelani also mentors through the South African Breweries 18+ Be the Mentor programme. It’s an initiative that encourages young adults to help teenagers make positive life choices, including staying away from alcohol and other toxic substances and situations. She hopes that by providing enjoyable and meaningful activities for youngsters in Thohoyandou, she can help to steer them away from poor life choices.

The girls have also taught her some lessons, she says. One of them taught her that no obstacle is too big to overcome. “One mentee lost her mom recently and she was stronger than I could ever have been. She showed me that she could pick up the pieces and make the best of her situation.”

She hopes her mentees will grow to be successful, educated women who go on to make their own mark in the community.

For herself, she plans to grow her salon into a hub of well-being and expand it into a one-stop bridal shop.
She is also honing her qualifications and wants to return to teaching one day. “I have a gift. I would love to go back to that space once I have completed my MSc in property development and management and done a PhD.” — Lesley Stones

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Zaza Motha (34)

Zaza Motha (34)

Founder and director: POUT MOVEMENT and POUT magazine
@zazamotha

At the tender age of seven, Zaza Motha witnessed the death of her mother; an ordeal that, till this day, motivates Motha (34) to speak out against injustice. “She was shot in our house while she was on the phone. I remember that I wanted to tell the world my story. Tell the world about the injustice that I felt. That moment shaped my life and how I saw the world, and influenced my decision to become a journalist so I could tell the world my story.”

This award-winning journalist is the founder and director of POUT MOVEMENT; a self-empowerment movement for young women that publishes POUT MAGAZINE. Her work with POUT MOVEMENT earned her the 2018 Gauteng Premier’s Youth Excellence Award in the Economic Development & Entrepreneurship category. Motha — who has freelanced for some of South Africa’s biggest publications (Sunday Times, City Press and Mail & Guardian) — has significant experience in research, intelligence gathering, interview techniques, and compilation and presentation of information and findings, skills she continues to draw on through her entrepreneurial pursuits.

Among her many achievements, this budding entrepreneur says two stand out for her. The first being selected as one of the top two journalism students from the Tshwane University of Technology to study in the Netherlands. “That experience of staying overseas contributed to my paradigm shift; that of living in a safe space where there was quality of life,” she says. The second achievement she notes is being selected as a Milead Fellow by the Moremi Initiative for Women’s Leadership in Africa. “Representing South Africa, I was part of 25 young women across the globe who demonstrated promising leadership and commitment in shaping Africa’s future. We also received training in Ghana, where we were exposed to a myriad of issues that African women face. This made me more focused in terms of the role I can play on the continent.”

Motha was nominated by The Media Online as one of the young South Africans under the age of 30 making strides in the media industry for 2010. She also won the Caxton Excellence Award for Best Food Feature (2011) while working for Food & Home Entertaining magazine. — Simphiwe Rens

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Zakhona Ndlovu (33)

Zakhona Ndlovu (33)

Senior manager B-BBEE, MultiChoice South Africa

Zakhona Ndlovu joined the Multichoice Group in 2014 as the group BBBEE senior manager. As the group’s leader for transformation, she also heads the group’s Enterprise and Supplier Development portfolio. She helped develop a number of Enterprise Supplier Development programmes, including the ICT start-up boot camp, which gives young black entrepreneurs the opportunity to gain invaluable business knowledge, receive mentorship and coaching, access to finance and the market.

In this role, she’s gone on to design classroom-based skills development programmes, mentorship and coaching. “I fell in love with enterprise development when I experienced first-hand the joy of doing work that changes lives in a substantial and tangible manner,” she says about her passion for working in the transformation sector.

Although she came into this role by chance, she’s quick to admit that she’s adamant about doing her best at realising South Africa’s vast potential. “It’s way past the time that our potential became a reality,” she adds.

Ndlovu says that in her line of work she often hears people in corporate spaces complain about how ineffective BBBEE is. “Like any other policy it is not perfect; however, it’s important that corporates remember that they are the ones responsible for implementation, not the government.”

Having completed an LLB from the University of Pretoria, an MBA from GIBS, a diploma in Insolvency Law and Practice from the University of Pretoria and a postgrad diploma in Compliance Management from the University of Johannesburg, Ndlovu believes that university helped her truly see the depth and impact of social inequality, and how education can go a long way to starting to bridge some of those gaps.

She is a force to be reckoned with. She strongly believes in people’s potential and takes the effort to develop and nourish the potential she sees in others. Since she’s joined MultiChoice, the company has since achieved a BBBEE Level 1 certification and won the Oliver Empowerment Awards for Top empowered enterprise and supplier development for three years in a row (2016, 2017 and 2018) — which is a big achievement for her, the company and the transformation project in South Africa.

Ndlovu describes the real highlight of her career as “watching young black filmmakers coming into their own and proudly walking the courses they have charted for themselves”. — Welcome Lishivha

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Thulisile Volwana (26)

Thulisile Volwana (26)

Chief operating officer, Tuse

Thulisile Volwana is the co-founder of Tuse — a company that has developed technology to allow people to communicate in places where there is no signal. Innovation and “new ways of improving the way we currently work” are what drives her.

Volwana’s company is the first African company to be selected to be part the Founders Space tech accelerator — the number one accelerator in Silicon Valley for foreign-based startups, according to Forbes magazine.

In 2012, Volwana graduated at Nelson Mandela University, where she studied economics, finance and finance management. The year after that she co-founded Millbug, Africa’s first solar-powered WiFi only tablet.

In 2015 she co-founded the technology company Tuse Applications with Sabelo Sibanda. The firm has developed a solution that allows people to communicate in places with no signal through the creation of wireless mesh networks. The company developed an app that allows users to make secure voice and video calls.

The Flood Sensor will alert you of a threatening flood, a rapid temperature rise or linkages to these. The business was started due to her experience with poor connectivity while attending high school in a small town called Ngcobo in the Eastern Cape.

“I want to connect the unconnected; the internet enables us to reach the world,” she says.

As the Eastern Cape has a dire lack of infrastructure, Volwana has chosen to work and stay in the province. “There is a need to change people’s lives and growing up in similar circumstances, I want to provide services to give me better insight into the things they need,” she says.

Volwana was selected as one of the 10 most disruptive startups in the world at the 2016 Global Technology Symposium in San Francisco and was a finalist in the SAB Social Innovation Awards during the same year.

She says she passionate about building communities through the products Tuse creates, because there is a need for their technology. “Connectivity is intermittent on the African continent.” — Rumana Akoob

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Philisiwe Precious Nduli (32)

Philisiwe Precious Nduli (32)

Head of technical marketing, Discovery Insure

hilisiwe Precious Nduli is head of technical marketing at Discovery Insure, reporting directly to the chief executive. In this role, she is a point of contact for internal and external stakeholders, while also working to create new business propositions for the organisation.

She completed an MBA from the University of Cape Town Graduate School of Business on a scholarship from the Bertha Centre for Social Innovation and Entrepreneurship.

An actuary by profession, Nduli loves her job as it gives her the opportunity to engage with a number of people while also opening her up to the deep analytical work that underpins her actuarial studies.

“The thing I enjoy most about my job is the different interactions with various people, but also the impact that we are able to make. I recently saw my comments on hijackings that I had given to a different publication in English featured in Isolezwe, which means it was able to reach more people and help people to be safer on the roads.”

In the same way that Discovery Vitality motivates people to make better health choices, so too does Discovery Insure use telematics and behavioural economics to incentivise South Africans to improve their driving, and this has garnered positive results when it comes to the accident severity and intensity cited in insurance claims.

As a young South African woman who has worked extremely hard and has been fortunate to make a success out of her life, Nduli is very proud of her achievements and how they allow her to have a big influence on society. However, she reflects that a lot of work still has to be done, as the general unemployment rate speaks to the many barriers to entry that still exist for the majority of young South Africans.

“From a gender perspective, women are still often not seen as good enough or smart enough, and this can be limiting.”

South Africa has one of the highest road accident rates in the world, and for Nduli, if we are to rectify this, change will need to begin with the man and the woman in the mirror. “There is also a cultural element to the way in which we interact on the road. We are an aggressive society and we need to be kinder with each other and not just do what we think is acceptable.” — Nomonde Ndwalaza

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Sisa Ntlango (34)

Sisa Ntlango (34)

Partner, Deloitte

“In anyone’s life, it is important to have role models. An opportunity to share one’s successes and failures sometimes is a great learning opportunity for other aspiring young persons,” says Sisa Ntlango, who was appointed as the first black director/partner by Deloitte in the Eastern Cape and is one of the youngest in his profession.

Ntlango is from KwaBodweni Village in Lusikisiki, rural Eastern Cape, where he attended schools with limited resources.

He graduated in 2004 from the University of Port Elizabeth with a Bachelor of Commerce and then went to the University of KwaZulu-Natal, where he earned a Certificate of Theory in Accounting.

Ntlango chose to remain in the Eastern Cape for many years, despite the urge many accountants have to migrate to cities like Johannesburg and Cape Town. “I was born here; there will always be a desire to make a difference in the community that raised me.”

He is the public sector leader of the firm, overseeing the regions of KwaZulu-Natal and the Eastern Cape, and seeks to form and maintain partnerships with local government where the skills of the accountancy profession are mostly needed.

The highlight of his achievements, he says, is having risen above the odds to become an inspiration for many gifted young people who also hail from seriously disadvantaged backgrounds and see no future for themselves.

Ntlango says he is driven by a desire to positively contribute to his clients and community though his professional expertise. Helping his clients achieve their goals and make the desired societal impact they seek to achieve is what he aims for, he says. — Rumana Akoob

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Nathaniel Japhta (31)

Nathaniel Japhta (31)

Entrepreneur, mentor and advocate for social change

There have been a number of experiences that defined Nathaniel Japhta’s upbringing and his outlook on life. He came from humble beginnings and was the first in his family to go to university and earn an accounting qualification. Despite being a smart and hardworking young man, he admits that he would not have gotten as far as he did have it not been for the people around him, who spoke potential into his life.

“I am really close with my mom, and my dad was something of a silent motivator to me because he was a rugby player who was not allowed to play rugby for his country of birth during apartheid. Despite this, he was disciplined and focused, and I brought that into my personal life.”

Today, Japhta uses the transformative power of sports and education to harness the growth and potential of young kids in the Western Cape. He founded Pro 226 Africa, an organisation active on the Cape Flats that tackles social and education problems by linking corporate individuals and university students to under-performing schools.

It also links young people to decisionmakers in the corporate world, training and upskilling young people to develop skills that will allow them to compete in the job market, find future study opportunities and develop national and international collaborations through sports diplomacy. Japhta’s dream is to build a big arena for basketball and netball in Cape Town. — Nomonde Ndwalaza

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Muhammad Taher Khan (34)

Muhammad Taher Khan (34)

Managing director, Zero Point Energy

Saying that Muhammad Taher Khan is an overachiever is simply an understatement. He cut his teeth at Sasol as part of an engineering graduate programme that exposed him to opportunities in solar and the need for organisations that promote entrepreneurship and the electrifying of Africa. Currently, he is the managing director of Zero Point Energy, an engineering organisation that has completed over 20 private and public sector projects. It is one of only a few successful Level 1 BBBEE and youth-owned green energy contractors.

He graduated cum laude from Wits University in Electrical Engineering did a master’s in Engineering Management. He attributes his academic success to his predisposition to doing everything in the most meticulous manner possible.
His PhD thesis focused on Eskom’s structural issues, with his results indicating that Eskom is operating as a monopoly where there is too much centralised control, among other issues.

Khan is optimistic about the future and his place in it: “It’s a beautiful time to be a black educated engineer in this space, because it is relatively new — the growth potential is huge if you are geared to seize the opportunities. I am not deterred by the bottlenecks and the ageism, because there is power in proving people wrong with your abilities and your achievements.”

Rural electrification is immensely rewarding to him because he can see its transformative effect for himself. “People tell me that they now don’t have to go to bed at sunset because they have lighting. I never thought I would fulfil people’s lives in this way. It really makes the journey and the vision more valuable.” — Nomonde Ndwalaza

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