Technology guru sets his sights on the rest of Africa
INFORMATION technology guru Garth Madella is pinning his hopes on the landmark African Continental Free Trade Area (AFCFTA) to take his business across Africa.
Madella has already done business for a bank in Swaziland and for telecommunications company Airtel in Niger. He says he is determined to increase his footprint to the rest of the continent.
“If you are going to work in Africa, you need to have your head above your shoulders to navigate the terrain,” says Madella, the co-founder and chief technology officer of technology firm Alteram Solutions.
“The Africa free trade zone will definitely be a positive step in getting us into Africa.”
A number of African countries signed the AFCFTA, and committed themselves to eliminating crossborder tariffs and making border posts more efficient, during the African Union Extraordinary
Summit held in Rwanda’s capital Kigali recently.
President Cyril Ramaphosa said his government needed more time to consult but signed the declaration on the establishment of the free trade treaty.
Madella says he has been in the information communication technology sector since the 1980s, working for mining giant Anglo American and subsequently BP
South Africa in the mainframe arena.
“I was involved in ICT long before it was popular. I was a software programmer in the mainframe operating system space, working for Anglo American.
“We wrote software programmes and did a lot of fault finding,” says Madella.
“This was actually at a time when being a software programmer was regarded as the most stressful job around.”
He says working for these two companies gave him a good foundation and core understanding of the ever-revolving sector, and made him start his own business.
He established Alteram Solutions in 2013 to focus on customer relationship management solutions, network operations and big data solutions, which branched out into business intelligence and business analytics.
The company today boasts the SA Revenue Service, City of Tshwane, DHL, SA Maritime Safety Authority, pharmaceutical company Pfizer, and the departments of Transport, Trade and Industry, Science and Technology, and Water and Sanitation among its clients.
“We are also local partners to a German company called Muhlbauer, they provide technology to the Department of Transport. We support them in 406 driving licence testing centres across the country by providing them with desktop support.”
He says it’s not easy starting a business.
“Firstly, you have to have the right focus, you need to focus on what you want to do. And you have to start somewhere, a lot of people procrastinate, they know they want