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AFRICA’S SALES REP Carl Moyo; selling the business case for Africa

AFRICA’S SALES REP Carl Moyo; selling the business case for Africa

28th June 2013

By: Tracy Hancock

Creamer Media Contributing Editor

  

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Carl Moyo, sub-Saharan Africa regional director of DuPont, speaks to Tracy Hancock of Engineering News about his journey from a milking stool, in Zimbabwe, to climbing the corporate ladder in South Africa

Being a teacher would have sufficed for science-based products and services company DuPont sub-Saharan Africa regional director Carl Moyo, a man who is attuned to the struggles faced by Africa’s poverty stricken population.

“My dream was just to get out of the village [a farm compound in Gweru, Zimbabwe]”, where he milked cows and did other chores to pay for his school fees, the 43-year-old tells Engineering News.

“It was a tough life – cooking on an open fire, living in one room, ploughing the fields before going to school and spending days in the bush herding cattle, eating berries and roots, and digging for drinking water at the river bank.

“I know what it is to till the land and get no result because you don’t have the right knowledge. Breaking your back and getting nothing,” he shares.

Food insecurity is a result of a lack of knowledge, says Moyo, adding that he is determined to collaborate with stakeholders to solve the challenges faced by Africans.

“Unless we find ways to work together with government, nongovernment organisations and academia to harness global knowledge, it will not become local wisdom.”

Born in 1970, his life was shaped in Zimbabwe, formerly Rhodesia, were his mom was a domestic worker and his dad a cook for the Seventh-Day Adventist Church.

He attended Anderson Primary School for three years and then Anderson Adventist High School, in Gweru, Zimbabwe's third-largest and most central city, in the Midlands province.

“In the early 80s, the Zimbabwean economy was doing well. Although we were poor and life was a struggle, when you are young it doesn’t matter what your circumstances are because your basis for comparison isn’t that great,” says Moyo, noting that job security, along with the influence of his mother, an entrepreneur, who trusted Moyo with money from an early age, are probably why he decided to become an accountant.

After completing his accounting degree, in 1988, in the US at Andrews University, a flagship educational institution of the Seventh-Day Adventist Church, in Berrien Springs, Michigan, he moved to the Eastern Cape, where he once lived as a child, and worked for a hardware company as an accountant.

He only stuck with the trade for two years, but describes accountancy as a “solid base” on which to build great business acumen.

While working for an administrative company for doctors’ practices, in 1995, as a client services manager and then area manager, and moonlighting as an ambulance driver, he was headhunted by global energy group BP to be the Western Cape retail business manager.

“I went from lowliness, poverty, segregation and discrimination to being offered a job by the president of BP.”

Moyo stayed with BP for ten years, during which time it was expected that the South African petrol price would be deregulated. This act would have decreased the cost of liquid gold, reducing the revenue of petrochemicals companies operating in the country. As a result, he was sent to Australia – a deregulated petrol market – for three years to bring back knowledge on generating income from nonfuel stream such as fast-food restaurants and convenience stores.

Moyo, who, in 2000, received his master’s degree in business administration from the University of Edinburgh Business School, returned to South Africa in the same year as BP’s business development manager for nonfuel income.

“I then moved into procurement within BP to gain experience in cost-side management, rounding out my business acumen. Later, I was appointed as the executive adviser to BP Southern Africa chairperson Rams Ramashia, where I stayed for two years in preparation for a GM position.”

However, before this appointment was made, Moyo was headhunted by DuPont in 2006. The company flew him to Switzerland for an interview at its European headquarters in Geneva. He stayed in Switzerland for two years as a business development manager for East and Central Europe, the Middle East and Africa, concentrating on route to market optimisation and building DuPont’s footprint in emerging markets.

He moved back to South Africa in 2008 to be DuPont’s sub-Saharan Africa regional manager, a job that “resonates strongly with me”, says Moyo.

Although he highlights that he has always been a sales and marketing person, one of the most difficult challenges he has undertaken as the DuPont sub-Saharan Africa regional director is selling his business case for Africa against competing opportunities for the company in India and China.

But he succeeded. Since being appointed five years ago, Moyo has extended the reach of DuPont, a US company, with its global headquarters in Wilmington, Delaware, from only being focused on South Africa to being present in more than ten African countries.

“What we have been able to achieve in Africa is something to be proud of. In five years, DuPont has more than doubled its revenues and, by 2020, intends to more than quadruple this figure compared with the company’s 2008 base,” he says determinedly.

DuPont is focused on three megatrends, food security – which is influenced by population growth and climate change – alternative energy sources and protecting people and sustaining the environment for generation to come.

DuPont owns Pioneer Seeds, one of the biggest seed companies in the world, which supplies high-tech seeds and provides advanced agronomy know-how aimed at improving agricultural productivity in Africa, says Moyo. He also points out the company’s “intense focus” on making food more plentiful, affordable and nutritious.

The company is also focused on renewable energy solutions such as photovoltaics, wind, fuel cells and biofuels. “We are looking at cellulosic technology to produce high-end fuels such as biobutano. We are collaborating with other companies, such as BP, on these technologies, which have the potential to revolutionise the alternative energy space when fully commercialised, as any biomass potentially could be converted into a fuel source,” explains Moyo.

DuPont is also one of the biggest safety consulting companies in the world, he says, and innovates and collaborates with companies, governments, industrial manufacturers and academics to develop best-in class practices and advanced protection technologies to tackle the challenges faced, namely, growing populations, mounting pressures, rising hostilities and inhospitable environments.

“I dedicated my life to Africa and contributing to the continent’s development. I am passionate about making a difference through science to the lives of those people most affected by changes in the globe because I know what they are going through,” says Moyo, who is now a member of the global village, with seventeen years of work-travelling experience, and has sat to dinner and discussed Africa’s developmental opportunities with the likes of Prince Charles at Buckingham Palace and Jacob Zuma.

Edited by Creamer Media Reporter

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