His Excellency, Dr. Debretsion Gebremichael

Deputy Prime minister for finance and economic cluster and the Minister of Communication and Information Technology, Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia

Dr. Debretsion Gebremichael is Deputy Prime minister for finance and economic cluster and the Minister of Communication and Information Technology, Ethiopia, and currently Board Chair of Ethiopian Electric Power Corporation, Ethiopia. Dr Debretsion was previously Director General of the Ethiopian Information and Communication Technology Development Agency. He holds B.Sc. in Electrical Engineering, M.Sc. in Electrical/Communication Engineering, M.Sc. in Public Policy and Management, and PhD in IT.

Mr. Charles

Senior Security Consultant, Cyber Security Africa

Lead Security Consultant at Cyber Security Africa. He has 9 years of progressively responsible and diversified experience in Information Security and Management. Active in the IT and Information Security sphere conducting security assessments, penetration tests,computer forensics and assurance.

Delivered consultancy and Training for some of the largest private and public players in the Eastern African Region. Highly specialized and focused on Penetration Testing as well as able to perform both general white and black box audits.

Mr. Felix Mulei

ICT Specialist Eclectics International

Felix Mulei is an experienced Information and Communication Technology(ICT) Specialist with over seventeen(17) years post Masters Degree in Computer Science working experience. He has implemented core banking systems in fifteen(15) banks in several countries including Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, Rwanda, Malawi, Ghana and Zimbabwe. is an experienced ICT consultant and has helped banks develop best practice procedures and controls for their ICT function. He is the Head of Business Development at Eclectics International.

Mr. Amady Kadhi Ben Djouma

Business Development Manager - SAB INTERNATIONAL

He is responsible for Tanzania and East African Countries of, which is a fully owned subsidiary of SAB Group. SAB International is a deployment base from which a business network will be set up to cover the Americas, South east Europe, the Middle and Near East, the Gulf countries, Asia, the English-speaking parts of Africa and the Far East. The SAB action plan relies, up to now, upon its regional offices abroad (Italy, Luxemburg, Monaco, Lebanon, Tahiti, Tunisia, United Kingdom) or upon relevant partnerships which differ according to sector.

He has about ten years’ experience in IT with different technologies such as Oracle Database, Oracle Application Servers, Oracle Flexcube, Oracle Data Warehouse, and Solaris/Linux and other areas of business such as business development and marketing.

He worked as IT consultant and technical instructor for various banks and company in Tanzania in different areas of the technology especially oracle technologies and finally he opened his own company called Actant Technologies Limited in Tanzania. He participated in various IT training especially in Oracle technologies with various companies.

Mr. Ozgur Erkan

Verifone Mena Sales Manager

Ozgur Erkan was born in Istanbul, Turkey in 1982 and raised by sales engineers parents . He is married and has 2 boys who are 3 & 2. Ozgur is a trained engineer graduated with a BS degree in Electronical and Electrics Engineering from the University of Koc. Ozgur enjoys spending time with POS devices and he is a crucial part of Verifone “World’s leader in POS industry” since 2009.

Ozgur has 10 years of experience in Sales & Business Development and he heads the regional sales activities of Verifone with senior management responsibility for leading the sales & partner management strategies in 35+ countries in Middle East & Northern Africa.

Mr. Meried Bekele

Founder & CEO of IE Networks

Mr. Meried Bekele, Founder & CEO of IE Networks, was the first person to become Cisco Certified Internetworking Expert (CCIE) in Ethiopia in 2007 at age 24 while he was working as senior network operations expert for WoredaNet in Ministry of Communications and IT (then called EICTDA). Meried has got BSc in Electrical Engineering from Mekelle University and MBA in IT Management from Trident University International in CA, USA. He is certified in IT service management (ITIL) and project management professional (PMP). Since November 2007, he has served as technical and project management consultant of Ethio telecom for USD 1.5 Billion national next generation network (NGN) program, which includes IP/MPLS, optical DWDM/SDH backbone/backhaul, fixed line NGN, CDMA, mobile (GSM/3G/LTE) and Network Operations Center (NOC) projects. He is also the architect of a national research and education network (NREN) that interconnects all public higher education institutions in Ethiopia - EthERNet (Ethiopian Education and Research Network) – with 40Gbps IP/MPLS OTN optical backbone. Moreover, he had founded and led IE Networks into a homegrown forefront IT infrastructure solution provider for Ethiopian Enterprises and public institutions.

Mr. Karoly Petocz

Solution Sales Manager eBanking & eCommerce Gemalto

Karoly Petocz holds the position of Financial Services Security Solutions Manager for Africa region at Gemalto, the world leader in digital security. With a solid experience of more than 15 years in banking and financial IT, Karoly started his career in Hungary developing front office applications, and delivering different banking solutions.

Later he moved his focus to IT security working in different regions CEE, CIS, ME and has built through the years a deep understanding of both secure and trusted strong authentication technologies and banks’ security challenges. Karoly has joined Gemalto more than 5 years ago.

In his current role, Karoly supports financial institutions in the region with their digital banking strategy and initiatives, and his expertise of the market enables him to provide them with advanced digital banking solutions that address their exact needs, bringing security from the edge to the core to protect the bank’s entire ecosystem and encompassing retail banking, corporate banking and ecommerce, inter-bank transmissions and enterprise security.

Angela Ng’ang’a

Corporate Affairs Lead , East and Southern Africa & Indian Ocean Islands Microsoft Corporation, West, East & Central Africa (WECA)

Responsible for government relations and policy across 15 countries, Angela is responsible for policy advocacy and driving alignment between government priorities and Microsoft’s strategic goals in Sub Saharan Africa.

She is a seasoned communications professional with over 15 years’ experience in developing and managing corporate affairs for various local, pan African and multinational organizations. Her strong competencies in government relations, internal communications, advocacy and lobbying, strategic communications and transformational change has seen her become an integral member of the C-suite in the organizations she has served.

Her key corporate experience spans from AAR Health Services where she was part of the management team that transformed the local health management organization to an East Africa operation and Telkom Kenya where she was part of the dream team involved in the transformation of the company from a parastatal to a private sector player. She has also served as a board member to the Brand Kenya Board.

Professionally, Angela is a member of the Chartered Institute of Public Relations UK, the Secretary General of the Public Relations Society of Kenya, member of the Kenya Private Sector Alliance (ICT) Sectoral Committee and the Northern Corridor Technology Alliance where she serves as a (NCTA) Coordinator for Kenya.

Mr. Melaku Kebede

Vice President, Systems & E-Banking of United Bank S.C.

Mr. Melaku Kebede is currently Vice President, Systems & E-Banking of United Bank S.C. (one of the top private Bank in Ethiopia). Formerly, he was also Vice President Technology for Zemen Bank S.C. in Ethiopia. Before his 11+ services in banking industry, he was Registrar, Senate Member and Lecturer at Unity University College. He has led and carried out more than 16 ICT projects during his previous consultancy periods including some key projects like: conducting a Study to establish a National Switch (EthSwitch) for Ethiopia, Developing a National Financial Cyber Security Framework for Ethiopia, CORE banking (both conventional and Islamic banking) implementations for various Banks, Lead projects in implementing Mobile, Internet, Card Payment (proprietary cards, Visa, MasterCard, CUP) and Agency Banking at various...