Microsoft has appointed Vukani Mngxati as the new CEO of Microsoft South Africa, effective immediately.
Mngxati takes over from Lillian Barnard, who was recently named as chief of enterprise partners for Microsoft Middle East and Africa.
In his new role, Mngxati will lead the company’s South African operations with a mandate to expand cloud infrastructure, build AI skills in local communities and forge partnerships that support the country’s national development priorities, Microsoft said in a statement on Wednesday.
Mngxati brings more than 25 years of experience in enterprise modernisation and strategic innovation, it said. He previously held several leadership roles at Accenture, serving most recently as CEO and board chairman of the consulting firm in Africa. He also pursued an entrepreneurial venture earlier in his career.
“Stepping into this role in Microsoft South Africa is a deeply meaningful and proud moment for me,” Mngxati said in a statement. “I’m excited to continue the legacy and help businesses – public and private, large and small – unlock their full potential through cloud and AI technologies. By harnessing the strength of our partner ecosystem and global best practices, we’re enabling real, sustainable impact.”
The timing of Mngxati’s appointment dovetails with Microsoft’s growing infrastructure push in South Africa.
Data centres
In March this year, Microsoft said it was committing a further R5.4-billion investment in new AI-optimised data centres in South Africa, a move intended to support compute-intensive workloads such as large-scale AI and machine learning in the region.
These facilities will be filled with GPU infrastructure and expand the capacity beyond Microsoft’s current Azure footprint, where it has already spent over R20-billion locally.
Read: Microsoft to invest billions in AI data centres in South Africa
Beyond hardware, Microsoft plans to back its infrastructure moves with skills development: it has committed to training 50 000 people in in-demand digital and AI skills via certification programmes. – © 2025 NewsCentral Media
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