South African construction company Motheo Construction has appointed Gregory Mofokeng as a nonexecutive director.

Mofokeng is currently involved with voluntary industry associations such as the Black Business Council in the Built Environment and the Construction Alliance South Africa, as well as regulatory bodies such as the South African Council for the Landscape Architectural Profession.

The company on September 10 said Mofokeng’s involvement will “add tremendous value to Motheo’s business and consequently the company’s value proposition to its myriad client base”.

Considering that such industry bodies are critical platforms from which to introduce a plethora of developmental and transformational measures and industry best practice benchmarks, Motheo believes it will, with Mofokeng’s appointment, “be in an advantageous position to influence industry policy and the attendant programmes aimed at engendering lasting transformation of the industry”.

Mofokeng’s role as nonexecutive director will be to provide strategic contributions to the board in the form of independent oversight of the executive directors and the management team.

“Motheo occupies a unique position in the South African construction landscape as a majority black women owned business. Beyond its transformational ownership profile, the company strives to build sustainable legacies in the communities within which it implements projects,” Mofokeng commented.

In addition, the current management has embarked on a diversification strategy to achieve balanced growth based on organic vertical integration.

Its newly established divisions have been designed to tap into markets that represent significant growth areas in the construction industry value chain. These new divisions are expected to make a meaningful contribution towards the company’s bottom line and will form strategic pillars for its next level of growth.

Mofokeng also participates in the Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa (Brics) Infrastructure Working Group, where his role is to collaborate in reviewing projects in member countries, as well as on the African continent, structure opportunities for collaboration with private sector partners and identify potential funding partners.

These include major development finance institutions such as the Development Bank of Southern Africa, the Industrial Development Corporation, the African Development Bank and multilateral funding institutions such as the New Development Bank, commonly known as the Brics Bank.

“Infrastructure plays a central role in unlocking Africa’s potential especially through trade,” Mofokeng highlighted, noting that the African Union’s African Continental Free Trade Area initiative is designed to enable African countries to trade with each other much more significantly than is currently the case.

For such trade to flourish, however, he stressed that infrastructure development is key to allow for the movement of goods and services throughout the continent.

“It is only through sustainable infrastructure development that we can liberate the continent economically, thus unlocking its much-talked-about, but hitherto unrealised potential.”