Rapelang Rabana to join BCX as Chief Digital Officer from this December

BCX, a South Africa-based IT services firm and a subsidiary of Telkom SA, has picked Rapelang Rabana for the role of Chief Digital Officer (CDO). Ms Rabana is currently the CEO of Rekindle Learning, a learning technology company which she founded in 2014.

Already a distinguished and recognised professional, Rabana has been featured on the cover of Forbes Africa magazine before the age of 30, selected as a Fast Company Maverick and named a ‘Young Global Leader’ by the World Economic Forum and ‘Entrepreneur for the World’ by the World Entrepreneurship Forum.

(TOP: Rapelang Rabana, incoming CDO, BCX).

“Currently, Rapelang’s primary business focus is Rekindle Learning, a highly innovative learning technology company and Nisela Capital, a pioneering private equity and advisory firm. Rapelang journey began as the founding CEO of Yeigo, an innovative startup that developed some of the world’s earliest mobile VoIP applications in 2006”,
states her professional profile.

“She obtained B.Business Science (Computer Science Honours) from the University of Cape Town, giving a technical and business background. She has since believed that there had to be better, simpler more effective ways to do things – and there is: technology.”

She is set to take up her new position from December 1, 2017.

But who is a ‘Chief Digital Officer’ and what responsibilities come with the position?

Several definitions exist online, though we’ve here picked the general definition of the Chief Digital Officer (CDO) from Wikipedia. “A Chief Digital Officer (CDO) or a Chief Digital Information Officer (CDIO) is an individual who helps a company, a government organization or a city drive growth by converting traditional “analog” businesses to digital ones using the potential of modern online technologies and data, and at times oversees operations in the rapidly changing digital sectors like mobile applications, social media and related applications, virtual goods, as well as “wild” web-based information management and marketing,” reads the Wikipedia definition of CDO.

As she prepares to take up her new role outside Rekindle Learning, Rabana will step down as the CEO to become Chairperson of the firm she founded.

Nomsa Seisa, who has been with the company since the beginning of the year, will take over the role of CEO at Rekindle. according to BizNis Africa.