Dr Mwansa is head of information technnology infrastructure at the Johannesburg Stock Exchange, the world's 18th largest stock exchange..
Dr Mwansa underscores that e-government solutions, automation of the processing and notification can mitigate the long queues of people at different government offices such as the Passport Office, Road Transport and Safety Agency, government hospitals and clinics.
In education, textbooks and printed materials as a means of disseminating knowledge and information are quickly outdated and ultimately cost a lot of money in updates and preservation. Internet technologies can mitigate this.
"Recently, I have had the opportunity to discuss the importance of including IT in any planning of property development projects with the DBZ MD, fellow Zambian IT professions and companies with property development projects for example Sub-Sahara Gemstones Exchange in Ndola, Copperfields Mining Services in Kitwe and K.Chishimba Corporation in Luanshya," Dr Mwansa says.
"These companies are planning property developments which will deliver IT capabilities as utilities in their buildings and have included IT as an integral part of their designs. Through an introduction by Zambia's current Ambassador to Japan Mwelwa Chibesakunda, who is also Zambia's Ambassador to Australia, New Zealand and South Korea, I came to meet and know Mr Charles Kamwi, a director at Maysen and Borowski Group, an Australian investment firm involved in many large projects in Zambia. Mr Kamwi, like other investment professionals I speak to, confirms that many of their projects now involve IT as an integral constituent."
Commenting on the growth and development of IT in Zambia, Dr Mwansa says the industry is not where it could be in comparison to other developing nations.
"Today the fastest creation of wealth and jobs in the world is in the IT sector. IT companies such as Google, Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn have created thousands of jobs and wealth for their employees and founders. IT companies are changing the way people interact with each other, get an education and how businesses and governments deliver goods and services. Such examples alone are motivation enough to invigorate IT development in Zambia. That said, the state of development of the IT industry will always be a function of the available technology skills, electrical power and the network access infrastructure, " says Dr Mwansa.
"In Zambia, the single largest barrier to IT development is the cost of network and Internet connectivity. While cloud based shared platform IT delivery models such as Platform as a Service (PaaS), Application as a Service (SaaS) hold the promise of affordable leverage of state of the art IT, expensive connectivity in Zambia hinders their adoption by anyone but the most well funded firms. Development of the IT sector in Zambia will be largely dependent on Zambia's strategy and policies for enabling affordable internet access. Zambia needs to have a deliberate strategy, with policies and regulation, to build and mature IT in the country."
Dr Mwansa believes that today's development trajectories for countries, ICT infrastructure has become as important as road and railway network infrastructure.
"Zambia may need both private and public investments just like for roads and railways, to accelerate IT development. With robust and affordable network connectivity, Zambia can reap the benefits of its skilled diaspora. The diaspora does not necessarily have to come back to Zambia but can work for Zambian firms and Zambian development from wherever they are. Similarly, skilled Zambians at home can work for global firms without leaving Zambia as telecommuting staff or in global firms'operations and call centers as is the case in outsourcing destination countries like India, Malaysia or the Philippines," he says.
In the profile interview below, Dr Mwansa discusses his professional life.
Q: Your family background?
A: I was born in Lusaka in April 1967, a second born child. My parents, Dennis Mwansa Sr and my mother Kasimia Londe Sampa, separated when I was quite young so I grew up in Luanshya on the Copperbelt. My father remarried and thus I come from a family of a total of six siblings; my elder sister Mrs Matilda Lombe, my brother Ngosa Mwansa and sisters Mrs Lauzi Njelesani, Mrs Kasumpa Kabalata and Ms Ekiwe Mwansa. My father passed away in 2005 but my mother and my step-mother, Janet Mwansa, are both alive and live in Luanshya and Lusaka respectively.
Q: Are you married?
A: Yes I am married and my wife, Megumi Mwansa, is Japanese. I have four children - Londemulu, Mulenga and Kawanga Kasumpa who are 17, six and three years old respectively, and an adopted son, Dennis Chileshe Sampa, who is 18.
Q: Which schools did you attend?
A: I started grade one at Chilengwa Primary School in Ndola and moved to Mpelembe Primary School in Luanshya from grade two. For secondary school, I briefly attended Roan Antelope Secondary school in form one and then transferred to Luanshya Boys Secondary School where I stayed till completion of form 5.
Q: Which universities did you attend?
A: I studied for my Bachelor of Engineering Degree in Electronics and Telecommunications at the University of Zambia from 1984 to 1989, then after working for 18 months at Computer Services Limited, went to Japan for post-graduate studies. I studied at Kyushu University in Fukuoka city and then Nagasaki University in Nagasaki city. I obtained a Master of Science Degree in Information Engineering in March 1994 and a PhD Degree in Information Engineering in March 1997, majoring in computer science, artificial intelligence. My fascination with computers dictated my study choices.
Q: What is information engineering and how useful is it to a developing country like Zambia?
A: Nagasaki University described "Information Engineering" as the applied aspect of Computer Science, Software Engineering and Telecommunications Engineering. The discipline utilises computing hardware, software applications and network technologies to create systems that solve specific business problems. Today, information engineering or to use a more common and more generic term 'Information Technology', is a critical building block for any country's development. IT enables efficient communications, easy access to information and education and price discovery for goods and services. IT is also an enabler for operations automation and increased productivity in the delivery of goods and services in all sectors of the economy. IT can also decouple knowledge workers from the need to be in a given physical location enabling the cost efficient leverage of available skills anywhere in the country and even outside the country. A robust IT infrastructure will mitigate the barriers to delivery of the afore mentioned ingredients to development and thus IT capabilities are essential for Zambia's development.
Q: Which organisations have you worked for in the diaspora?
A: I have worked for a number of organisations, from higher education institutions, a company in the software industry and but mostly for firms in the investment banking industry such as Credit Suisse First Boston, Westdeutsche Landesbank, Goldman Sachs, The Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) and Mizuho Securities (the investment banking arm of Japan's 2nd largest financial services group). Although I have always been based in Japan, my roles in the last 14 years were mostly at the 'senior regional management levels', managing Asia Pacific region teams in Australia, Japan, South Korea, Singapore, India, Malaysia, Hong Kong and China. I frequently spent a considerable amount of time working in these countries and getting an appreciation of their respective work cultures and ethics.
Q: How did you start out on this career path and what have you learned and achieved?
A: I worked as an assistant lecturer at Nagasaki University where I was studying and as a lecturer at a nearby junior college. I taught computer science classes (which I had to do in Japanese). I also had some part-time jobs including one as a FM radio station DJ. The part-time jobs may have had little to do with my present profession, they gave me an insight into the working environment and culture in Japanese organisations. After obtaining my PhD and an unsuccessful attempt at getting a job at the University of Zambia, I stayed in Japan and joined Dassault Systems, the software arm of the Dassault Group, the French Aviation and Defence Contractor, best known in Zambia for the manufacture of the Mirage fighter jets. At Dassault, I worked as software consultant to client companies like Honda, Isuzu and Toyota, which used Dassault's CAD/CAM software in their car design process. My job as consultant to some of the world's best automotive engineers laid the foundation to the way I would approach my duties and obligations as an IT professional for the rest of my career. The primary lesson was that end-users are usually the best at whatever they do and what they require from an IT professional is an understanding of their objectives and then an assessment of whether and how IT can provide the tools to enable them accomplish those objectives more efficiently in terms of effort, speed, accuracy and cost.
Q: How did your career evolve from aerospace and aviation industry to IT in financial services?
A: After about a year and a half at Dassault, a chance conversation with Dr Edward Scheckler, the Asia Pacific head of technology infrastructure for Credit Suisse First Boston showed me how large a part technology played in the operations and business models of Global Investment Banks. Dr Scheckler had a PhD in physics and he shared with me how he was leveraging his educational background in the building of the platforms and systems CSFB needed to electronically connect and trade on stock markets across the world. Two months later, I joined CSFB. My responsibilities were to support and maintain trading systems connecting to stock exchanges and the market data distribution systems from vendors such as Reuters and Bloomberg. This job provided an excellent opportunity to learn how trading on stock exchanges works and the technology needed. In 2000, an opportunity came my way at Westdeutsche Landesbank (WestLB) and I joined that firm as the Asia Pacific Head of Network Services. I managed teams in Australia, Japan, Hong Kong and Singapore. A year later, I was made director and Asia Pacific regional head of technology infrastructure. Over the next few years, my role was to build and transform the infrastructure technology teams in Asia from simple support teams carrying out instructions from the headquarters in Germany to competent engineering and solution design teams, reflecting the growing importance of the Asian region in the bank's business portfolio. In 2005, WestLB decided to outsource all of IT in Asia to HP. After managing the outsourcing process in Asia, I left and joined Goldman Sachs as a divisional systems senior project manager. Two years on, one of my managers at Goldman Sachs joined the Royal Bank of Scotland as deputy CIO for Asia Pacific and he invited me to go with him. I joined RBS as Asia Pacific Regional head of networks and trading infrastructure services. My teams supported platform infrastructure for e-commerce, payments and settlements gateways, middle-ware messaging, stock exchange connectivity and trade execution and market data systems. Again my role here was to build the Asia teams from simple HQ support teams to competent engineering and solution design teams. My most challenging and probably most significant achievement came in 2008/2009, when an RBS-led consortium acquired the Dutch banking giant ABN Amro in what was largest takeover in the history of the financial industry. My role as regional head trading infrastructure services was to manage the separation or the unification of the disparate trading and payments platform infrastructures across more than 10 Asian countries with thousands of employees and sometimes different and conflicting regulatory frameworks. My team managed to achieve this mammoth task in 18 months, well ahead of schedule and well within budget. In late 2010, I was approached by the head of the High Frequency Trading (HFT) business unit at Mizuho.
Securities to head up their technology team, both application development and infrastructure. HFT is the ultimate application of technology in the financial capital markets. Financial trading firms use sophisticated technology to buy and sell millions of stocks and other financial instruments at speeds in the order of microseconds. It is the Formula One racing of financial technology. I joined Mizuho Securities as a director in charge of Prime Brokerage and High Frequency Trading technology. My role was to lead the IT teams in developing the fastest possible trading platforms for Mizuho Securities to deploy at stock exchanges worldwide. The ensuing period was both educational and rewarding. In HFT, the human trader is removed from the execution process and all trading is done by computer algorithms. We had to thoroughly understand the logic of stock exchange trading and associated risk management in order to implement the desired trading decisions in technology. As the head of technology for the HFT unit, I would usually accompany the prime brokerage business head on visits to Mizuho's hedge fund and institutional investment firm prime brokerage clients. My job was to explain and persuade these clients that our technology platform was the best in terms of trade execution and speed. I gained an appreciation of the thinking and driving factors behind the investment decisions of hedge funds and institutional investors. By mid 2011, I had another job at Mizuho, which was director in the Strategic IT Planning Division's Global IT office.
Q: Where are you now and what do you do?
A: I have just joined the Johannesburg Stock Exchange where I am the head of IT Infrastructure. I manage the teams that implement and support the technology infrastructure for the JSE.
Q: How have you found living and working in the diaspora?
A: Living in Japan is very pleasant and convenient once one gets over the language barrier. The society is friendly, helpful and rewards hard work. I have been awarded two of Japan's highest honours; the Foreign Minister's Award (Gaimudaijinsho) and the Education Minister's Award (Monbudaijinsho). I also see my numerous speaking engagements at Asia Regional financial conferences as testament of acceptance by the industry peers.
Q: After working and holding senior positions in some of the world's largest and most influential financial institutions, what has made you want to come back to work in Africa and do you contemplate coming to work in Zambia?
A: I have lived outside Zambia, mostly in Japan, for almost 24 years and I have always longed to come back home. The main reason for coming back is that my mother is getting advanced in her age and I want to be closer to her. My siblings and their families now all live in Zambia after most lived in the diaspora. Coming home affords my Japanese family the chance to get to know my country, culture and relatives. Also, any investment banker in the developed countries will tell you that the next economic frontier is Africa and I hope to be part of that.
Q: What opportunities are in Japan for Zambians living in that country?
A: The Zambian community in Japan is very small, probably less than fifty Zambians around the greater Tokyo area. Zambians in Japan get the opportunity to personally interact with Zambian government officials and business leaders whenever they visit Japan, which is useful for keeping abreast of developments in Zambia and building a sense of belonging. Over the years, the Zambian ambassadors to Japan and the embassy officials have always involved the Zambians in Japan in all Zambian events and meetings held in Japan. On several occasions, I had the privilege and honour of discussing my profession and the opportunities open for the profession in Zambia with various government and business leaders, including the late president Levy Mwanawasa, Cabinet ministers, Central Bank governors and on numerous occasions, the Development Bank of Zambia MD Mr Jacob Lushinga. Because I am in the financial services sector, a frequently discussed topic was the role of technology in Zambian financial sector, particularly in providing access to financial services to the unbanked rural population and urban poor. Today, technology today offers a means to include this population segment in the financial ecosystem. The Central Bank, its affiliates, private financial institutions and mobile payments services companies are currently involved in several structural and technology initiatives under the 'Financial Inclusion' theme to bring about a financial ecosystem that is accessible and affordable to all sectors of the Zambian population. After moving back to Africa, I have had the chance to discuss the same topics with Zambian IT professionals in South Africa, like my UNZA classmate Mr Angel Chisanga, who have worked on projects of similar nature in RSA and IT practitioners in Zambia and there is consensus Zambia offers great opportunities for financial IT professionals to design and build solutions for e-commerce, e-banking and e-payments.
Q: What goodwill message do you have for Zambia as we commemorate the 50th Independence anniversary?
A: Zambia, with its comparatively high skilled and semi-skilled workforce and comparatively superior English language skills, has the potential to be a global off-shoring destination just like South East Asian IT outsourcing powerhouses. We just need to make sure this is a deliberate not incidental goal for our nation and it is our duty as Zambian IT professionals to lobby and advise government as to what policies and regulation to effect.
Q: What message do you have for young people who would like to study information engineering? What does it take to make it?
A: Hard work, perseverance, ingenuity and an entrepreneurial approach to how IT solutions can address everyday problems and needs in our own Zambian environment is the key. The world's next Mark Zuckerberg could be a young Zambian.
Next Sunday, we feature Dr Biemba Maliti who is presently the acting Dean of the School of Business at Copperbelt University.
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Autor(en)/Author(s): Austin Mwange
Quelle/Source: postzambia, 27.04.2014
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