In October 2015 Corinium decided to research the South African Chief Data Officer environment to see if running the CDO Forum in the country was feasible. Preresearch thoughts were that it wasn’t going to be viable but the research uncovered a rapidly growing awareness of the role. And, like most markets Corinium operates in, South African companies were facing the same implementation/integration challenges.

In South Africa there are currently 4 official Chief Data Officers. All work in the financial services sector. And prior to 11 February 2016 none of them knew each other existed. That was a big problem we wanted to address through our Forums connect people with the same jobs and challenges with each other so they could share their stories and solutions.

Corinium hosted the CDO Africa Roundtable on 11 February to introduce the key players to each other and give them a platform to discuss their roles. In addition to the CDOs we had senior data leaders and a Chief Analytics Officer join the discussion.

Those who attended were:

• Yasaman Hadjibashi, Chief Data Officer, Barclays Africa
• PierreJohan (PJ) Bezuidenhout, Chief Data Officer, Wesbank
• Dr. Richard van der Wath, Chief Data Officer, MyBucks
• Pieter Vorster, Chief Analytics Officer, Absa Capital
• Elize van der Linde, Head of Information Governance, Firstrand
• Magan Naidoo, Group Data Manager, Dimension Data

Each participant in the roundtable was asked to answer 5 questions to give insight into their thoughts on the Chief Data Officer role in South Africa.

Download the CDO Africa Roundtable Report see what these data leaders had to say.

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