Oliver Fortuin, group CEO of Seacom — one of Africa’s largest undersea cable providers — has resigned.
The company said Fortuin’s decision to leave the fibre network operator is due to a need to be closer to his adult children who have relocated overseas.
Fortuin — who has been at the helm since late 2020 — will remain in his position until June, during which time he will help to appoint a successor, which the company expects in the coming weeks.
Seacom has changed gears recently and begun an expansion, taking advantage of its place in the market to offer more IT services to corporate customers.
The company, with shareholders such as Sanlam and Remgro, sells internet data capacity on its networks to businesses, internet service providers and mobile operators on a wholesale basis.
Founded in 2009, it connects SA’s internet traffic to Europe via its eastern African undersea cable and holds about 25% of the wholesale fibre market locally, competing with firms such as Telkom, Vodacom and Liquid Intelligent Technologies.
A former MTN, IBM and British Telecoms (BT) executive, Fortuin was responsible for driving the group’s shift to compete in IT services beyond its core telecom business.
The group has been working over the past three years to ramp up its unit that sells network capacity to companies in a bid to increase its contribution to half of total revenue.
Seacom has been making a number of investments in its quest to compete with the likes of Dimension Data and BCX in the enterprise market.
In August 2022 Seacom concluded an agreement with BT to extend its enterprise IT business, and boost its offering to have a comprehensive portfolio of cloud, security and connectivity services.
As part of the expansion plan, Seacom also signed a deal in April 2022 to acquire EOH’s Network Solutions and Hymax divisions.
To finance the expansion, Seacom received backing from the International Finance Corporation (IFC) in the form of a $260m (R4.8bn) loan. An affiliate of the World Bank, the IFC specialises in financing private enterprise investment in developing countries through both loans and direct investment.
“The last few years have been a period of change and growth for Seacom. It has been thanks to effective leadership that we have weathered storms, made bold decisions, and redefined how we do business across the continent. We are grateful to Oliver for his commitment to our shared vision and wish him all the best,” said Seacom chair Pieter Uys.
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