According to Elizabeth Naidoo at Datacentrix, traditionally, the CFO’ s role at Datacentrix focused on financial oversight. Today, it has evolved into a strategic function that supports competitive and sustainable value creation. The position has expanded to focus on performance optimisation, capability building and support to the CEO, the Board, executive management and other internal stakeholders.

For Naidoo, who has served for over 22 years at Datacentrix, integration of risk with financial management is critical in building business resilience and driving the company’ s strategic vision. This involves evaluating resource allocation and implementing support structures and activities that impact value creation.

Naidoo believes CFOs and CROs need to consider themselves as Chief Value Officers of organisations. This entails more than financial oversight and evaluating financial KPIs. It involves supporting top management in their efforts to achieve organisational resilience and supporting innovation and employee engagement. Read more about these dynamics in this month’ s cover feature.

And in this month’ s CIO section, according to Luigi D’ Amico at e4, where speed, adaptability and customer centricity define competitiveness, business agility is a strategic requirement for operational leaders. Agility is not a function of IT. Instead, it is a company-wide mindset shift that enables smarter prioritisation, faster execution and better business outcomes.

Business agility is about structure, culture, and prioritisation. It is not about quick wins or trendy frameworks. Traditional corporate structures often slow down decision-making by separating teams based on function rather than outcomes.

Turn these pages to read more about the digital transformation that is taking place across Africa.

And in this month’ s Editor’ s Question, executives from Omnix, Cloud Box, SoftServe, Check Point, Fortinet, share their answers on how African CIOs and CISOs should evaluate modern cybersecurity solutions for their resilience against AI driven malware and advanced threats?

With this edition, Intelligent CIO Africa reaches its 100 th monthly release and we thank all our readers and the African IT industry for their support. We also welcome all the award winners, attendees, jury members, at our Intelligent ICT Awards scheduled in May at Johannesburg.

Wishing you the best of business success in the month ahead.

Arun Shankar Managing Editor | arun @ lynchpinmedia. com

www. intelligentcio. com INTELLIGENTCIO AFRICA 7