POD: Wabo Majavu on Early AI, Strategic Foresight, and Digital Activism
South African strategist Wabo Majavu traces her technical roots at CSIR, MTN, and Intelsat to reveal how they've informed her executive strategy work—balancing digital inclusion, AI innovation, and commercial success.
Episode overview:
In this conversation, South African strategist Wabo Majavu, executive strategy and business operations leader at Africa Data Centres, unpacks how her technical training (BEng.Hons and MSc.Eng in Electrical Engineering) and acquired corporate leadership expertise at organisations like MTN and Intelsat laid the foundation for her distinctive approach to strategic leadership and digital activism.
From building radar applications at the CSIR to optimising cellular networks through late-night, township-sourced sheep's head dinners with seasoned veteran technicians, Majavu's journey illustrates how hands-on technical experience and savvy adaptation becomes the bedrock of strategic thinking. She discusses navigating workplace discrimination, helping transform organisational culture at state-owned Sentech, and her prescient work in AI before it became a global phenomenon.
Andile Masuku explores with Majavu how strategists shape a company's future direction, the delicate balance between commercial viability and digital inclusion, and her current mission to democratise coding through native African languages.
Key topics:
- From radar systems at CSIR to RF optimisation at MTN: building the technical foundation for strategic leadership
- How experiences at Intelsat shaped her understanding of managed services and market transformation
- The Sentech years: leading digital transformation while learning that culture can eat even the best strategy for breakfast
- Studying AI and signal processing before the global AI boom, and formative educational experiences in Malaysia that shaped future vision
- Strategic stakeholder management: converting union leaders into product managers and building collaborative ecosystems
- Balancing commercial imperatives with digital inclusion through long-term strategic thinking
- Where to start learning AI: practical advice for breaking into the field
Notable points:
- Majavu's radar applications work at CSIR and cellular network optimisation at MTN provided the technical depth that informs her strategic decision-making today
- At MTN, she overcame racial barriers by building relationships with Network Operations Centre (NOC) technicians through after-hours learning sessions, bringing sheep's head delicacies from Mamelodi township to earn their trust and knowledge
- At Sentech, she learned firsthand that "culture can eat strategy for breakfast," successfully converting a well-respected, highly influential union leader into a turnkey product manager spearheading the roll-out of new digital services
- Majavu studied signal processing and then AI before it became mainstream, building web crawlers and predictive systems
- Her approach to change management involves understanding each stakeholder's agenda and finding areas of alignment, demonstrated through her successful transformation of adversaries into collaborators
Listen for Majavu's insights on how strategists inform a company's trajectory, why patient capital and technical depth are essential for Africa's digital transformation, and how past experiences become the lens through which strategic leaders view future possibilities.