One of South Africa’s leading black-owned information and communications technology (ICT) service companies, Gijima Technologies, which also operated locally, has undergone a massive transformation to become a new company.
The new entity, Veya Information Communication Technology, which has been on the cards for some time, is now 100 percent Namibian-owned and say they will play a strong role in creating local ICT professionals.
According to the newly appointed managing director of Veya, Winnith Schrywer – who served Gijima Namibia as senior manager for shared services for over six years – the previous shareholders held the firm belief that for the company to grow more vested interest had to be in the hands of Namibians.
“Their view was further cemented with the introduction of the new Procurement Act at the end of last year. However, due to certain challenges faced by the local entity in South Africa, the transaction took longer than anticipated to complete,” Schrywer said.
The new shareholder in Veya is a locally registered company, called Sand City Thirty Four Enterprises CC, owned by Thomas Jonas, Omotuli Shiluwa-Marino, Winnith Schrywer, Waldheim Shiluwa and Kenandei Tjivikua.
Schrywer noted that the new shareholders believe the business model, as it currently stands, is sound and should only be improved upon.
“The services that have been offered by Gijima Information Technology Services, namely business systems and integration, banking and finance services and support, infrastructure services and support, will be the key focus areas that Veya will continue to build and expand on.
Veya is also proud to have retained the entire staff complement that led the charge in servicing these areas, and thus quality will again only be improved upon,” vowed Schrywer.
She continued that Veya aims to improve current service levels, but will have a strong view on the devemopment of ICT professionals in the country.
“Our aim is to capacitate Namibians, so that services to the Namibian economy are delivered by Namibians. Thus any new ICT-related projects undertaken will have a strong measure of training associated with it,” Schrywer explained.
Veya’s vision is to become the preferred innovator providing cutting-edge ICT business solutions in Namibia.
Said Schrywer: “The difference is that prior to the ownership change, the vision was not localised. Therefore, the focus was not entirely on the Namibian economy’s ICT needs and a focused strategy could not implemented to meet these needs. This has now changed.”
Schrywer added that for the local ICT sector to grow, more Namibians need to be capacitated.
“Our role, therefore, is to raise the bar on service delivery and inevitably in doing that we will raise the quality of professionals at the same time. Our push is to be innovative in the provision of solutions that speak to Namibia’s economic needs and is relevant to us. Fundamentally, we want businesses to be able to ‘shop’ inside our borders before looking elsewhere,” Schrywer said.