Alan Knott-Craig will step down as CEO of the not-for-profit Wi-Fi company at the end of the year in order to focus his energies on his new business, HeroTel. Current Isizwe chief operating officer Zahir Khan will take the reins from Knott-Craig on 1 January.
Knott-Craig, who will remain as a nonexecutive director of Project Isizwe, revealed his plans for HeroTel in September. He intends building what he calls “the Capitec of telecoms” and consolidating the hundreds of small wireless Internet service providers across South Africa. HeroTel has the backing of several heavy hitters, including former First National Bank CEO Michael Jordaan and former Rand Merchant Bank CEO Mike Pfaff.
At the same time as appointing a new CEO, Project Isizwe has announced plans to expand its board of directors to include the former chairman of communications regulator Satra (now Icasa) Nape Maepa, the former director-general of the national treasury Estian Calitz and the former CEO of the South African Bureau of Standards (SABS) Martin Kuscus.
The nonprofit, which is spearheading the delivery of free Wi-Fi for low-income communities in South Africa, has decided to recruit more experienced independent directors, said Knott-Craig.
The new directors join John Volmink (chairman) and Sibs Moodley-Moore as well as Knott-Craig and Khan on the board.
The board now has experts in corporate governance, government procurement, compliance and telecommunications regulation, Knott-Craig said.
Khan, meanwhile, has 17 years of experience in the telecoms industry, having worked for both Vodacom and iBurst, where he met Knott-Craig, who is a former MD of iBurst.
Maepa was founding chairman of Satra. He also managed a US Trade and Development Agency-funded project for a complete electromagnetic frequency band plan for South Africa and led the creation of a new numbering plan.
Calitz currently serves as executive director of finance and professor of economics at Stellenbosch University. He was named director-general of the department of finance in 1993 and left government in 1996 to take up a professorship at Unisa.
Kuscus was MEC for finance in North West for 10 years from 1994. In mid-2004, he was named as SABS CEO, a position he held until mid-2009.
Project Isizwe launched its free Wi-Fi service in the City of Tshwane (greater Pretoria) in November 2013. Last week, it announced it had hit a milestone of a million unique devices having connected to its network. The company said its plan is to assist government in ensuring that all citizens are within walking distance of free Wi-Fi by 2025. — © 2015 NewsCentral Media