Mandla Msimang

Organization:	Pygma Consulting
Region:	Africa
Country:	South Africa
Formerly a member of the ICANN Board

Mandlesilo (“Mandla”) Msimang is a former member of the ICANN Board and a regulatory expert and entrepreneur with over 20 years of experience in the Information and Communications Technology (ICT) sector across Africa. She established and ran the pan-African ICT advisory firm, Pygma Consulting, for 11 years. She is currently the Chief Executive Officer at Nozala Investments.

Career

In 1998, Msimang started her career in the telecommunications sector as an Advisor to the Council at the South African Telecommunications Regulatory Authority (SATRA, now the Independent Communications Authority of South Africa, ICASA). During Msimang’s time at ICASA, which coincided with the liberalization of the telecoms sector, she was the Head of the Policy and Analysis Department, responsible for universal service, economic regulation, and competition matters, until she left in 2003. At ICASA, she worked on the licensing of the third mobile operator and Internet service providers. Msimang also contributed to the introduction of the converged regulatory regime that would later govern them. Msimang joined mobile operator Cell C (Pty) Ltd in 2004, where she was Senior Manager of Regulatory Affairs. She then left to start a consulting firm, Pygma Consulting, specializing in ICT policy and regulation. Currently, Mandla is the CEO of Nozala Investments, a Johannesburg-based women-owned private equity firm. At Nozala, she is responsible for managing a portfolio that includes listed and unlisted assets across a number of sectors including minerals, resources, and industrial and consumer services. Mandla sits on the Board of Directors of several of Nozala’s investees and on the Board of the South African Communications Forum (SACF).

Internet Industry Participation in Africa

Mandla has collaborated with regulators in the region initially through the Communications Regulators’ Association of Southern Africa (CRASA) and later as clients of Pygma Consulting. Msimang has also held senior and executive management positions with a mobile operator in South Africa, and a pan-African mobile broadband operator, where she gained experience on the other side of the regulatory equation. As Managing Director of Pygma Consulting, she used assisted public and private sector clients, including both established and start-up mobile and broadband operators in Africa.

Internet Governance

ICANN Involvement

She was selected to serve on the ICANN Board by the NomCom, and her term started in November 2019 after ICANN66 in Montreal, Canada, and runs until the AGM in 2022.

Current ICANN Committees

Mandla was on the following ICANN Board Committees:

• Audit | Member
• Finance | Member
• Technical | Member

International Telecommunications Union (ITU)

She has been appointed as a Regional Expert/International Expert by the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) on numerous occasions, working on broadband policy, universal service and access, and ICT accessibility for persons with disabilities. She was the primary author of the G3ict Model ICT Accessibility Policy Report as well as a key contributor to the SADC Toolkit on Universal Access Funding and Universal Service.

Education

BA from Cornell University (Ithaca, New York) MSc in Regulation (Utilities), London School of Economics

Publications

Msimang has written on universal service in South Africa, Broadband in Kenya, , and strategies for financing universal broadband access, among other telecommunication policy topics.