Cinga Nyangintsimbi, MD and founder of Batsamayi Software Development, has been named the 2024 winner of the ICT sector’s coveted IT Personality of the Year Award.
The winners were announced at the Institute of IT Professionals SA (IITPSA) President's Awards, hosted in Bryanston this morning, under the theme: “Celebrating leaders in ethical digital transformation”.
This topic highlights the importance of keeping ethics at the heart of digital transformation, says the ICT industry body.
The South African IT industry accolades recognise a respected and outstanding ICT professional who has made a significant technical or academic contribution to the industry, who has been successful in building a respected IT organisation or business, and/or who has made a major contribution to the IT profession over the years.
The awards have grown in scope over 30 years to include the IT Personality of the Year, Visionary CIO, Technology Excellence Award, Social Responsibility Award and Dynamism in ICT Youth Award.
Accepting his award, Nyangintsimbi said: “This was definitely unexpected, because being a nominee on its own is enough.
“I hope that out of this award, there are more young people of all races and genders that will start companies that will make a difference on the continent and help Africa keep pace with the rest of the world – that’s my mission. I hope that it becomes everyone’s mission too.
“We started Batsamayi in a two-bedroom apartment and we’ve grown from six to 50 young professionals, with 15 who are AWS [Amazon Web Services] certified today.”
Nyangintsimbi established Batsamayi as a third-year project group during his time as a student at Nelson Mandela University in 2013, where he later became a student assistant and consequently started lecturing final year IT students.
The company specialises in software engineering, quality assurance and cloud services.Batsamayi landed its first major international client in 2019, and moved to its current office premises in Port Elizabeth.
The IITPSA says under Nyangintsimbi’s leadership, Batsamayi has experienced exponential growth.
Past winners of the IT Personality of the Year Award include Mamela Luthuli, founder and CEO of Take Note IT; professor Tshilidzi Marwala; Livestock Wealth’s Ntuthuko Shezi; Geekulcha COO Tiyani Nghonyama; Zutari CEO Teddy Daka; former Adapt IT CEO Sbu Shabalala; as well as Entelect CEO Shashi Hansjee.
Addressing the audience this morning, IITPSA president Pearl Pasi said the theme was particularly relevant, given the growing importance of the role of ICT professionals in the new, digital world.
“As ICT professionals, we are building and deploying solutions that run the world and impact the lives of every citizen, and we must do so ethically. We must be always be aware of the impact of our technology, and ensure the digital world is accessible, unbiased and fair to everyone. The world we build should uplift – not exclude,” she commented.
Pasi added that the finalists for the 2024 IITPSA President’s Awards are all shining examples of ethical, innovative ICT professionalism in action.
She noted that this year was the first in the President’s Awards' 46-year history that women finalists outnumbered men in most categories, and overall.
“Women dominated in terms of nominations and finalists in the Visionary CIO and IT Personality categories. And in our Dynamism in ICT Youth category for people under the age of 25, all of the finalists are young women. We take this as an encouraging sign that more young women are entering the sector, and the gender gap is really closing in South African ICT.”
Futurist winner
Nomonde White-Ndlovu, CIO of Bidvest Bank, scooped the Visionary CIO of the Year Award.
Introduced in 2008, the Visionary CIO Award recognises an executive responsible for IT strategy in an organisation who has demonstrated visionary leadership in using technology to grow the business.
White-Ndlovu is a seasoned technology executive who has made a name for herself in SA’s ICT industry, says IITPSA.
In her previous roles, she was part of the Absa Group’s technology executive team, and headed up governance, risk and compliance for Absa Group’s IT office.
She began her technology career at UCS Solutions and later moved on to other multinational organisations, including British American Tobacco.
White-Ndlovu is currently chairperson of Wired4Women, a technology industry advisory board focused on the development of women in technology.
In this role, she advocates for the upliftment and recognition of women at industry level, and pursues gender parity and equality in the workplace, says the IITPSA.
Other award winners included:
Technology Excellence Award: Cornelius Greyling, Fibertime executive and technology leader.
Social Responsibility/Community Award: Zoie Health, a digital health platform for women and family health and wellness.
Dynamism in ICT Youth Award for people under 25: Matshepo Soto, CEO of MoveMates, which offers instant quotes and on-demand moving services.
Member Ambassador Award: Constandious Takura Munakandafa, a member of the IITPSA Social and Ethics Committee. He is also an agile systems analyst at Glacier by Sanlam.
Distinguished Service in ICT Award: Jason Jordaan, a digital forensics, incident response and cyber crime investigation specialist, and founder and principal partner of DFIRLABS.
IITPSA Fellowship of the Institute Award 2024: Thabo Mashegoane, past president and non-executive director of the IITPSA and former chair of the Africa ICT Alliance.
The IITPSA President’s Awards 2024 were presented by the IITPSA, in association with ITWeb and the Gordon Institute of Business Science, and sponsored by SoftwareOne Experts SA. The Distinguished Service in ICT Award was presented in association with EngineerIT.
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