Early Days of Vodacom
Alan Knott-Craig, Pieter Uys, and Shameel Joosub have taken Vodacom from a small operator to a global telecommunications powerhouse.
Vodacom was founded in 1993 as a joint venture between Telkom, the UK’s Vodafone, and Johann Rupert’s Venfin.
In 1993, South Africa’s cabinet ministers authorised two cellular licenses after it decided to create a competitive mobile market.
Knott-Craig, a Telkom executive at the time, was leading the investigation into cellular phones for the South African market and became Vodacom’s first chief executive.
Knott-Craig’s major achievements include convincing shareholders to spend millions on advertising campaigns to promote Vodacom’s products and services.
These promotions happened before the company launched its first mobile offerings in 1994, giving it a big head-start against MTN.
He believed that first-mover advantage was essential in establishing a strong brand, allowing them to dominate the South African mobile market.
Under Knott-Craig’s leadership, Vodacom focused heavily on innovation and was behind many world firsts in the mobile industry.
Vodacom’s Expansion
With more and more South Africans needing connectivity, Vodacom launched Vodago, its prepaid service.
This made the mobile network more accessible and affordable, allowing people to control their spending while getting connected.
There was a strong focus on network quality. Knott-Craig was fanatical about having the best mobile network in South Africa and went to extreme lengths to achieve it.
His uncompromising demand for excellence helped Vodacom to exceed its initial growth projections of 250,000 subscribers within ten years.
By 2000, Vodacom had over three million users. This growth accelerated and helped Vodacom become the largest telecommunications company in South Africa.
Under his leadership, Vodacom expanded its presence to numerous other countries, including Lesotho, Mozambique, DRC, and Tanzania.
The mobile operator, a technology leader in Africa, was the first to launch products like 3G and LTE in South Africa and on the continent.
Knott-Craig also created an exceptional management team, including former Vodacom CEO Pieter Uys, current Vodacom CEO Shameel Joosub, and former CTO Andries Delport.
He led Vodacom for fifteen years until his right-hand man, Pieter Uys, succeeded him in October 2008.
Pieter Uys as Vodacom CEO
When Telkom decided to launch a mobile operator in the early nineties and put Knott-Craig in charge, Uys was one of the first employees to join him.
Uys moved to Vodacom in 1993 and was a founder member of the mobile operator’s engineering management team.
He transferred to the radio systems and planning division in 1995, where he played a major role in the first phase of the planning and rollout of Vodacom’s GSM network.
At the time, the Vodacom mobile network rollout in South Africa was the fastest in the world, which showed Uys’ engineering prowess.
He helped make Vodacom the largest mobile operator in South Africa, a lead the company still holds today.
Shameel Joosub as Vodacom CEO
Shameel Joosub joined Vodacom in 1994, only a year after the company’s founding and the same year it launched its first mobile services.
Over the next decade, he would climb the ranks and eventually earn the position of Vodacom South Africa managing director, which he held from 2005 to 2011.
He briefly served as Vodafone Spain’s CEO from 2011 to 2012 before taking over as Vodacom CEO.
Under Joosub’s leadership, Vodacom launched several industry-firsts, including the country’s first commercial LTE network and first 5G mobile network.
Outside of South Africa, one of the company’s biggest successes over the past decade has been the growth of its mobile money service, M-PESA.
Joosub has received numerous awards for his achievements as CEO, including the MyBroadband Telecoms CEO of the Year in 2023.
Recent Achievements
During his tenure, Vodacom’s subscriber numbers across Africa also jumped from just less than 59 million to more than 200 million.
Joosub has received numerous awards for his achievements as CEO, including the MyBroadband Telecoms CEO of the Year in 2023.
He has also received an honorary doctorate from the Central University of Technology in recognition of his exceptional contributions to business and telecommunications.
Joosub said while the company and industry changed, Vodacom’s purpose remained unchanged for the past three decades: to ensure everyone is connected.
“We have remained resolute in delivering societal value through a wide range of initiatives that change the lives of people,” he said.
This article was first published by Daily Investor and is reproduced with permission.
