Group Chief Commercial Officer & Chief Executive Africa & Middle East, Basebone
Biography:
For over 20 years, James has been a hands-on senior executive with experience of leading all functional areas of growing businesses and has held senior executive positions working across the Telecom & Mobile technology sectors.
As Chief Commercial Officer for the group, he is responsible for Carrier Relations & Aggregation, Business Development, Legal & Regulatory Affairs as well as People Operations.
He also sits on the group’s board, and serves as Chief Executive for the groups African and Middle Eastern subsidiaries, with responsibility for rolling out the OTT services across the territories
As a long-standing liaison to numerous regulatory bodies covering 5 continents, James has been on the board of the South African VAS regulatory association, WASPA since 2013. He also served on the EMEA Board from 2014 – 2018 at the Mobile Ecosystem Forum (MEF), a global trade body and chaired the African Steering Committee which drove their strategic focus within the region.
Outside of the industry, he sits on the boards to various differing business entities.
Motivation:
- To ensure WASPA remains relative as a member body amongst key stakeholders, the network operators, government institutions, trade bodies and its members;
- To ensure that WASPA operates and acts as a business, working with its members to generate growth in the sector without compromising protection of the consumer;
- To provide continuity on WASPA’s Board on behalf of members;
- To provide input to WASPA on compliance and regulatory matters based on matters occurring in other markets;
- To bring experience of operating within multiple markets from an operational (MNO’s), marketing, regulatory across the globe within our industry sector;
- To bring experience of functionality and workings of other trade bodies and regulatory bodies with which he has involvement with across the globe;
- To support WASPA through the changing regulatory and industry landscape, ensuring that stakeholders (MNO’s & Members) interests are always first and foremost;
- To be a voice of the members within the body by continuing to provide a balanced view between the needs of the members and the role of WASPA
- To support stakeholders by working in partnership with them