Who Is Prof. Brian Armstrong

Prof. Brian Armstrong is one of the foremost ICT industry leaders in South Africa, with over 30 years of top level management experience in Telecommunications, IT, technology R&D and systems engineering, both in South Africa and abroad. He is widely regarded as a thought leader in digitalisation, convergence and business strategy.

Brian is currently Professor in the Chair of Digital Business at the Wits Business School. He consults widely to industry and government on technological disruption and digital business and is an acclaimed public speaker on digital transformation and its socio-economic impacts. He is a co-author of the book Digital Business, arguably the most complete and thorough text on the business impacts of and responses to technological change.

Brian is a non-executive director of Old Mutual Limited, the Huge Group Ltd, Bankserve Africa, and the Tshimologong Innovation Precinct.

Previously Brian spent seven years in the Telkom Group, as Group Chief Operating Officer and Group Chief Commercial Officer. In these roles he was responsible for all of the group’s retail units, as well as leading group strategy and transformation activities. In his prior role at Telkom as the Managing Director of Telkom Busines he revived the ailing Telkom Business unit, and conceived and led the acquisition of BCX and its integration into the group.

Before joining Telkom in 2010 Brian was BT’s Vice President for Middle East and Africa with overall responsibility to oversee and grow BT’s activities across the region. Before that his work experience includes South Africa’s CSIR, ultimately as the Director of the Division for Information and Communications Technology; and South African listed ICT services group AST (now Gijima), as Managing Director of AST Networks.

Brian completed his BSc (Eng) and MSc (Eng) at the University of the Witwatersrand in 1982 and 1984 respectively, and obtained his PhD from University College London in 1992.

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Keynote Topics:

Business, Society and Technology: A heady cocktail of disruption

Digitalisation in South Africa / Africa: Opportunities and Challenges

Digitalisation: strategy, opportunities and dilemmas

The dark side of Digital – critical issues that Business Leaders should be thinking about now