e4’s Fikile Sibiya on a challenging 18 months for IT leaders [promoted]

Loading player...
Fikile Sibiya is chief information officer of e4. She knows just how much pressure CIOs and IT leadership teams have been under over the past 18 months, with Covid-19 impacting them hard.
In this podcast interview with TechCentral, Sibiya talks about how CIOs have helped steer their organisations through a time of great stress and uncertainty and how they are beginning to emerge on the other side wiser but with the battle scars to show for it.
Can IT leaders ever really prepare for an event like Covid and the sudden need for their companies’ employees to work from home en masse? And what lessons have been learnt through it all?
Certainly, many people may underestimate the strain that people in positions of IT leadership have been through in the last year and a half, Sibiya explains in the podcast. And South Africa’s unique problems – not least of them load shedding – has added to this.
Is a remote workforce, or even a hybrid workforce, sustainable in the longer term? How do companies manage productivity when their employees are working remotely? And equally, how do they ensure people don’t burn themselves out? Sibiya tackles all of these important questions – and more – in the podcast.
The conversation also touches on the security aspects of working from home as well as the impact of the Protection of Personal Information Act.
Lastly, Sibiya talks about a passion of hers: fintech. She explains why fintech start-ups have seen enormous growth through the Covid lockdown and how the technology holds huge promise for the unbanked and the so-called “township economy”.
If you’re in IT leadership, or even just interested in it, make sure you don’t miss the conversation.
31 Aug 2021 English South Africa Technology · Business

Other recent episodes

TCS+ | How AI is turning hardware into a subscription service

For most of business history, buying technology meant owning it. Capital was set aside, servers and laptops were hauled into the building alongside the software licences, and the business then sweated those assets for as long as it practically could. In the age of AI, that logic is starting to…
6 Aug 19 min

TCS+ | iStore Business on why Apple makes sense for SMEs

For small and medium enterprises, technology must do one thing above all else: get out of the way. Unlike large corporations with dedicated IT departments, SMEs run lean – and every hour spent wrestling with systems is an hour not spent on the business itself. In this episode of TechCentral’s…
30 Jul 37 min

TCS | Icasa's rules skip the real bottleneck: ACT

Communications regulator Icasa’s draft rapid deployment regulations – a critical intervention for the sector – risk failing unless the regulator brings municipalities into the process, according to Nomvuyiso Batyi, CEO of the Association of Comms & Technology (ACT). Speaking on the TechCentral Show with TechCentral editor Duncan McLeod, Batyi said…
30 Jul 29 min

TCS+ | A smarter approach to cloud for South African businesses

South African businesses are spending millions on cloud – and many have very little to show for it. That is the uncomfortable starting point for this episode of TCS+, in which Nkosinathi Ndlovu speaks to Joel Chacko, executive head of department for cloud services at Vodacom Business, and Jonathan Oaker,…
28 Jul 21 min

TCS | How Optasia lends billions to people banks can’t see

Optasia is on target to distribute more than US$6-billion in credit across its markets in 2026 – and it carries every cent of the default risk itself. In this episode of the TechCentral Show, CEO Salvador Anglada unpacks how the JSE’s biggest recent fintech listing actually works. Formerly known as…
23 Jul 25 min