Cisco Connect South Africa: company affirms pledge to Africa’s growth

Cisco’s SVP Hilton Romanski and country manager Cathy Smith today opened Cisco Connect South Africa with a joint keynote, expressing the company’s acute focus on African technology growth and digitisation.

Romanski, who is also the country sponsor for South Africa and China, pledged to focus on accelerating the continent’s digital adoption rates, both at the consumer and business level.

“Technology presents many opportunities and challenges for Africa as the fastest urbanising region in the world,” Romanski explains.

“Cisco recognises the pipeline of African talent and we are deeply involved in enabling the widespread emergence of tech ecosystems across the continent.”

Cisco Connect South Africa kicked off in Sun City today, and will run until Tuesday

This is also appropriate in light of Africa’s projected growth within the next four years. According to Romanski, over a billion devices will be floating around the continent by 2020, presenting companies and Africa’s citizens with large growth possibilities.

In addition to the keynote (and one particularly interesting surfing analogy), Romanski also touched on the Cisco Switch Board — the company’s smart whiteboard-cum-collaboration tool, as well as Cisco’s Innovation Centres — the company’s version of tech startup incubators.

Other keynote speakers included South Africa’s minister of science and technology Naledi Pandor, Intel’s South Africa managing director and country manager Videsha Proothveerajh, and Cisco cloud security consultant Paolo Passeri.

The two-day conference runs until Tuesday afternoon, and showcases a number of Cisco’s, and the company’s partners’ wares, offerings and solutions.

Andy Walker is a guest of Cisco at Cisco Connect South Africa 2017.