Musa Kalenga has been appointed the new group CEO for The Brave Group.
He was the current managing director of the digital business unit, Motherboard and is a director and shareholder of Brave Group.
Karabo Songo, the current group CEO, has stepped down from the role. Both positions were effective 1 June 2022. Kalenga and Songo will spend the next few months transitioning the business.
“Kalenga is a credible leader and well-known digital marketing expert. He has also steered Motherboard to becoming one of the country’s most respected digital marketing operations and I have no doubt he will bring the same energy and focus to the GCEO role,” says Brave group chair, Andile Khumalo.
"It brings us great pleasure to announce that @musakalenga will now be assuming the role of Group CEO. We trust and believe that under his leadership, the group will soar to even greater heights. Roar on proud lions"
— Brave Group (@BraveGroupSA) June 1, 2022
A passion for the continent
Kalenga, who was born in Zambia, has resided in Scotland, Botswana, and England.
He has a Bachelor of Commerce from the University of Witwatersrand, and a Chartered Marketer (SA) designation from Wits Business School - qualifying as the youngest Chartered Marketer (SA) in South Africa and Africa. For his GIBS (MBA), he graduated as a top student in sustainability and future-fit business.
The first chairman of the Youth Advertising Board of South Africa, he currently holds the position of chairman of the School of Consumer and Information Sciences Industry Advisory Board at the University of Johannesburg (UJ).
Musa’s first business, Monatefellaz, was a youth marketing consultancy, that he built up from the ground to the value of R6,5m in turnover by the age of 26.
After Monatefellaz was incorporated into IHOP World (a division of the Brand Leadership Group), Musa worked as MD IHOP World. Previously, he worked for Facebook as a client partner for the Africa business and prior to that he was the group head of digital marketing at Nedbank.
In 2012, Kalenga was voted one of the Top 200 young South Africans by the Mail & Guardian, he is a member of the World Economic Forum Johannesburg Global shapers, head of brand for IAB, and a member of Africa Teen Geeks.
He is the author of Ladders & Trampolines, a book in which he shares anecdotes and experiences about growing up in Southern Africa as well as working and doing business all over the continent.
His passion is emerging African markets and Africa, its people and the challenges that they face. It is his mission to inspire, share insights and be involved in projects that work towards making Africa better through technology.
This led to him founding Bridge Labs, a company he says is not a company but a decisive response to a changing world. "We’re obsessed with unlocking potential in emerging markets. Africa has abundant resources, and focusing on mobile is an instrumental part of creating value for the digitally invisible economy.
"We’re Africa’s brightest minds solving emerging market problems, every day. With our combined backgrounds in marketing, IT and AI, we deliver technology products and services for the digitally," Kalenga states.
Focus on support
Songo will focus on supporting the business going forward.
“My goal has always been to make history with any role that I play and feel like I achieved that. For now, my focus is on being a strong follower and support as a non-executive director/shareholder,” says Songo.
“Songo has been hugely successful over the last four and a half years in building the group into a company that now operates an integrated full-service offering to its clients across various markets,” Khumalo says.
After successful empowerment transactions led to the transformation of the agency from an individual agency into a communications group with an international footprint, this latest appointment is the continuation of the implementation of its business strategy of being a world-class integrated independent creative agency.
This article first appeared on https://www.bizcommunity.com on 2 June 2022
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