Speaker line-up drives records at AfricaCom

AfricaCom Congress and Exhibition, to be hosted from 10 – 11 November 2010 in Cape Town, South Africa, has received a 75% increase in pre-registered attendance, with 618 companies already represented.

AfricaCom will gather more than 4 000 attendees from across the African continent and beyond for two days of contact building, learning and buying.

African telecoms is undergoing a new phase of growth that requires innovation from every corner of the continent’s ICT Industry. Mobile operators are transforming their business structures so as to focus more on what is core to operational delivery. Service providers are becoming more innovative by launching dynamic tariff plans, segmenting the market to deepen their value offering or by further building their brands through entering into partnership with content providers. This while vendors are beginning to showcase solutions to meet the challenges of Africa’s telecoms landscape, to name but a few examples.

It is this call for innovation that forms the backdrop to discussions at the 13th annual AfricaCom congress. Featured under the overarching umbrella of ‚Driving the Next Stage of Growth in African Telecoms,‚ the AfricaCom congress agenda has been expanded and re-focussed for 2010. Sessions cover broad strategic answers to driving growth and predicting trends alongside in-depth discussions to the most pertinent topics facing the industry including: Efficiency and ROI Strategies: LTE: VAS: Marketing, Pricing and Loyalty: Mobile Money: Fibre Optics: Broadband Data Services: WiMAX: and Capacity and Wholesale.

To guarantee the most value from these discussions, 100 speakers will present across the two days including:

> Ahmad Farroukh, Vice President, MTN West & Central Africa

> Themba Khumalo, CEO, MTN Uganda

> Serame Taukobong, Chief Marketing Officer, MTN South Africa

> Marc Rennard, Executive Vice President for Africa, the Middle East & Asia, Orange Group

> Nkateko Nyoka, Chief Officer – Regulatory & Stakeholder Relations, Vodacom Group

> Wessel Van der Vyver, General Manger, Telecom Namibia International

> Mickael Ghossein, CEO, Orange Telkom Kenya

> Etienne Kouadio, Managing Director, Alink Telecom Cote D’Ivoire

> Jose dos Santos, CEO, Vodacom Mozambique

> Chiruyi Walingo, Chief Commercial Officer, Zain Tanzania

> Hussein Rifaii, Chairman & Managing Director, MDC

> Noel Herrity, CEO, Zantel Tanzania

> Serame Taukobong, Chief Marketing Officer, MTN South Africa

> Dr Angus Hay, Chief Technology Officer, Neotel South Africa

> Paul Edwards, Chairman, Starcomms Nigeria

> Nazar H Sahal, Information Technology Director, Expresso Telecom Group Ltd

> Arthur Goldstuck, Managing Director, World Wide Worx

‚It is the re-vamped congress agenda and record-breaking speaker line-up that has driven the 75% increase in pre-registered attendance numbers to AfricaCom,‚ says Julie Rey, Conference Director, AfricaCom. ‚The broader range of topics has attracted a wider audience and has meant that companies are sending more representatives from more departments to ensure that no conference session is missed. This new phase of growth in Africa has also made it more important than ever for companies to ensure they have the most up-to-date market information, insights and contacts to remain competitive in this ever changing landscape. We are very pleased to see that our previous attendees are continuing to see AfricaCom as a forum to achieve this and that a whole host of new companies are joining them.‚

Find out more and register to attend AfricaCom at: www.comworldseries.com/africa