Johannesburg- German Software Giants SAP, announced in a press conference held in Johannesburg, South Africa that they plan to invest 500 million dollars in the African continent over the next seven years. SAP intends with this plan to up-skill local African talent and drive sustainable innovation and growth in Africa.
With the vision of helping Africa run better and improve the lives of Africans, the goal for SAP is to establish the African region as one of the company’s top five growth markets in the world. The majority of the direct investment will be made outside South Africa, where SAP is already strongly present. As a matter of fact, SAP has more than 1300 customers across Africa and ensures operations across 51 countries in Africa including Morocco. 700 employees work with SAP in Africa and the company plans to hire another 250 by the end of 2015.
The plan was made public by Robert Enslin, member of the Executive Board of SAP SE and President of Global Customer Operations and Pfungwa Serima, CEO of SAP Africa.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YOJCgJQleJk
“The African market is unique in its growth potential and readiness to innovate,” said Enslin.
“The SAP Executive Board strongly believes that now is the right time to take our engagement and commitment to expand in Africa to the next level. SAP’s additional investment in the continent reflects SAP’s vision to help the world run better by delivering leading-edge innovation. In Africa, we plan to engage and invest in even more markets while helping build the appropriate talent base for the IT industry, and support our customers and partners by actively contributing toward crucial technology and business skills-sets and new employment opportunities in Africa,” the man added.
Serima elaborated further adding that “SAP Africa has more than 20 years of experience successfully operating on the continent. SAP Africa is leveraging its established presence and valued ecosystem relationships to immediately commence execution of this plan across the four key pillars that we believe will drive the greatest growth and impact for the continent.”
The growth plan revolves around 4 main pillars. The first one consists of accelerating the industry growth in energy and natural resources, utilities, public sector, financial services, in the core countries of South Africa, Kenya, Nigeria, Angola and Morocco. The second essential pillar of the plan is to promote innovation by introducing SAP’s newest technologies in the field of cloud and mobile computing into African markets. Another part of the plan is to enhance small and midsize enterprises growth as these contribute to 40% of Africa’s GDP. The plan also includes the launch of new skills training programs in South Africa, Kenya, Nigeria and Angola.
SAP SE (Systems Applications Products Societas Europeae) is one of the largest software companies in the world. It is a German multinational that makes enterprise software to manage business operations and customer relations. It is headquartered in Germany and has regional offices in over 130 countries worldwide. Its most famous products include its enterprise resource planning application systems and management (ERP), its SAP Business Objects software, SAP Business Warehouse as well as its Sybase mobile products and SAP HANA, which is its in-memory computing appliance.
The Moroccan Times.
