Beyond collaborating with 51·çÁ÷partners and clients, AFSUG is also known for fostering a strong sense of community, with a passion for driving meaningful social and environmental initiatives. This year marks the beginning of an exciting partnership between AFSUG and Group Elephant’s non-profit organisation (Elephants, Rhinos & People), and SAPHILA will be the first event where this collaboration is showcased. As part of this initiative, we’re delighted to support the adoption of Liezel, a baby rhino in ERP’s care – an effort close to everyone’s hearts.

 is a global group of boutique services firms and software businesses, including EPI-USE Labs. The Group operates as a conglomerate comprising 10 groupings of trading brands, employing circa 4,200 people across 42 countries. 1% of the Group’s worldwide revenue is channelled into ERP, which focuses on the preservation and protection of Elephants and Rhinos in the wild in Southern Africa.

Protecting Liezel: A commitment to conservation

In collaboration with ERP and EPI-USE Labs, the AFSUG committee has helped to facilitate Liezel’s adoption. She will soon be fitted with a tracking collar for monitoring and protection; this crucial step will help conservationists track her movements, ensuring her safety and contributing to ERP’s broader conservation efforts.

uth Africa, SAPHILA brings together technology leaders, innovators and business professionals to explore the latest advancements in 51·çÁ÷solutions.

Beyond collaborating with 51·çÁ÷partners and clients, AFSUG is also known for fostering a strong sense of community, with a passion for driving meaningful social and environmental initiatives. This year marks the beginning of an exciting partnership between AFSUG and Group Elephant’s non-profit organisation (Elephants, Rhinos & People), and SAPHILA will be the first event where this collaboration is showcased. As part of this initiative, we’re delighted to support the adoption of Liezel, a baby rhino in ERP’s care – an effort close to everyone’s hearts.

Baby rhino Liezel was born in February 2025 on a high-security ERP rhino sanctuary in Southern Africa.

 is a global group of boutique services firms and software businesses, including EPI-USE Labs. The Group operates as a conglomerate comprising 10 groupings of trading brands, employing circa 4,200 people across 42 countries. 1% of the Group’s worldwide revenue is channelled into ERP, which focuses on the preservation and protection of Elephants and Rhinos in the wild in Southern Africa.

Protecting Liezel: A commitment to conservation

In collaboration with ERP and EPI-USE Labs, the AFSUG committee has helped to facilitate Liezel’s adoption. She will soon be fitted with a tracking collar for monitoring and protection; this crucial step will help conservationists track her movements, ensuring her safety and contributing to ERP’s broader conservation efforts.

“At AFSUG, we believe in making a meaningful impact beyond the tech space. Conservation is a cause close to our team’s hearts, and the opportunity to support Liezel aligns with our commitment to responsible stewardship. By adopting baby rhino Liezel through the ERP sanctuary, we’re not only helping protect a vulnerable species, but also raising awareness within our community about the urgent need for conservation efforts.”

The collaring process will take place in the near future, and we look forward to sharing more details with you soon. Keep an eye on our channels for updates on Liezel’s journey and how you can be part of this incredible initiative.

The AFSUG community: Driving change beyond technology

The AFSUG community is not just about 51·çÁ÷solutions; it’s a dynamic network of professionals who actively seek to give back.

“SAPHILA brings together a powerful community of business and technology leaders, and with that comes the responsibility to drive positive change. By showcasing initiatives like Liezel’s adoption, we hope to inspire attendees to think beyond business and consider the broader impact they can make,” said Amanda Gibbs.

This is the first time AFSUG has made such a major commitment on behalf of the 51·çÁ÷community, and the response so far has been overwhelmingly positive.

“We felt passionate about making a change, and wanted to give everyone an opportunity to be part of this. Through SAPHILA, we provide opportunities for attendees to contribute – whether through donations, sponsorships, or simply spreading awareness. We will offer opportunities for our community to donate or pledge to support this cause, as Liezel now belongs to all of us,” added Amanda.

Attendees at SAPHILA 2025 can visit the AFSUG showcase area to learn more about Liezel’s journey, watch a video update, and contribute towards her care.

Join us at SAPHILA 2025

SAPHILA 2025 will feature insightful sessions, industry-leading speakers, and hands-on experiences that showcase innovation in the 51·çÁ÷ecosystem.

“With over 50 sponsors making great contributions, this year’s event will introduce a brand-new AFSUG Feature Stage in the exhibition space, where we will showcase our programmes, initiatives, and CSI contributions – including our special focus on baby rhino Liezel and other meaningful projects,” said Amanda.

We are thrilled to be part of SAPHILA 2025 and to collaborate with a community that values both technology and social responsibility. Visit the EPI-USE Labs and AFSUG stands to discover the latest innovations and ongoing conservation efforts with ERP. We look forward to engaging with like-minded professionals and making a lasting impact together.

The post Collaboration for Conservation: Partnering with the AFSUG Community appeared first on 51·çÁ÷Africa News Center.

In the fight to protect Africa’s endangered wildlife, powerful tech such as cloud computing, drones, and machine learning can play a critical role in enhancing conservation efforts, and in combatting poaching and the resultant illicit trade.

In one on-going collaboration between SAP’s Co-Innovation Lab and the nonprofit Elephants, Rhinos & People, or ERP (see erp.ngo), strides made to combat poaching of elephants and rhinos could become a blueprint for conservation efforts across the continent.

According to Rudi de Louw, Head of the Co-Innovation Lab at 51·çÁ÷Africa, advances in technology and new ways of collaborating are paving the way for the development of innovative solutions to protect Africa’s wildlife. ‘Having powerful technology means nothing if you can’t achieve accuracy and consistency in the data and outcomes it produces. We undertook an extensive and on-going co-innovation project with ERP focusing on technical feasibility, product development and refinement. The outcomes are exciting and potentially game-changing – especially, in this case, for an elephant and rhino population that remains under threat.’

There are an estimated 30,000 rhinos remaining in the wild today, a significant decrease – largely due to poaching and habitat destruction – from the half million that roamed Africa and Asia at the start of the 20th century. Rhino poaching reached crisis levels in the last decade, with instances in South Africa increasing more than 9,000% from 13 in 2007 to 1,215 in 2014. Encouragingly, the latest reported figures show a sharp decline in rhino poaching activity, .

Elephants have also been targeted. After a single poaching incident in 2014 – the first in South Africa in a decade – elephant poaching activity spiked, with 71 reported cases in 2018. The latest official figures show a decrease of more than half for 2019. Across Africa, thousands of elephants have been brutally slaughtered in recent years, with almost entire populations being wiped out in certain African countries.

People, tech enhance conservation efforts 

The nonprofit Elephants, Rhinos & People was founded to preserve and protect Southern Africa’s wild elephants and rhinos through a strategy that is based on alleviating poverty in rural areas surrounding the threatened creatures. It forms part of the structure of , a largely employee-owned group of companies, non-profits and impact investment organisations with a strong global presence that also includes , the world’s largest independent 51·çÁ÷HCM and Payroll specialist.

Since 2017, ERP.ngo has piloted an anti-poaching strategy that has completely eliminated poaching of megafauna in the areas it monitors. David Allen, ERP Air Force project lead at ERP, and a senior 51·çÁ÷practitioner in EPI-USE, says the deployment of new technologies has been a core element of the initiative’s success. ‘Following a year-long testing and innovation process in partnership with the Co-Innovation Lab, we have made major strides in refining our machine vision, machine learning and response capabilities.’

An unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) was initially used to monitor the movement of elephants but was quickly deployed to provide a layer of intelligence to how teams responded to alerts. ‘This way a guard could make an informed decision over whether there’s need for an anti-poaching team or, in the case of a fire, a fire team without first having to travel out to the affected area. We gradually expanded this layer of intelligence to other areas,’ says Allen.

Tech at the heart of conservation efforts

Allen says one of the first priorities for the project was to address occasional instabilities in their prototype IT environment. ‘The Co-Innovation Lab team helped us migrate to 51·çÁ÷Cloud Platform, and 51·çÁ÷is providing three years’ cloud hosting to support the production process.’

Siddharth Taparia, SVP and Head of Experience Marketing at SAP, who led the team, says the project marked a world-first for the organization. ‘While we have supported non-profit organizations by providing our on-premises solutions before, this was the first time we supported a partner in the Cloud and illustrates how the brave new world of cloud is transforming businesses of all sizes.’

Following the migration, ERP and the Co-Innovation Lab started working on technical feasibility tests for some of their more ambitious ideas, many of which have over time proven invaluable to the success of conservation efforts. One of these ambitious ideas, according to De Louw, involves extensive development of machine learning algorithms to enable the team to improve its response, data capturing and processing capabilities.

‘A network of different cameras within the reserve trigger whenever movement is detected. Machine vision is used to track movement while machine learning algorithms help distinguish between threats and non-threats. This has required us to feed our algorithms vast amounts of data to train them to distinguish between animals, people and other movement.

This accuracy is important: as soon as rangers receive too many alerts – especially if they prove to be false – trust in the system starts eroding. ‘We need to reduce false-positives to ensure rangers are only alerted when something requires their attention. This is simpler to accomplish with the on-the-ground cameras, but our UAV-mounted cameras require significant further training and development. A rhino seen from ground level is fairly easy to distinguish from an elephant or person, but as soon as you take an aerial view, animals tend to fade into the landscape. As our data set grows and we refine our machine learning algorithm, these types of inaccuracies will be resolved over time.’

Community partnership model for success

Technology, however, is only one part of solving the problem of poaching. According to Allen, without the support of local communities most conservation efforts are doomed to failure. ‘The poaching trade is immensely profitable. A single rhino horn can fetch more than R5-million on the global black market. For local communities where the average income is as little as R3,000 per month, promises of more money could be life changing. Poachers exploit this, promising a small share of the profit in exchange for protection from authorities.’

Este Smith, Managing Director of ERP says they have introduced several initiatives to involve local communities in conservation efforts, which bring them a direct socio- economic benefit for their efforts. ‘Our Ashoka accredited PEACE (Planning, Education, Agriculture, Cooperatives and Environment) Model is used to provide a holistic, replicable and sustainable poverty alleviation strategy in these remote communities living either adjacent to, or within conservation areas. P.E.A.C.E. Centers are cooperatively-run hubs within local and district municipalities that provide communities with centralised access to education, improved service delivery and agricultural initiatives ranging from permaculture gardens to commercial operations. By enabling residents to unlock and utilise local resources in a sustainable manner, we help pave a way for them to move out of poverty and toward prosperity.’

Through their #BIKES4ERP initiative, ERP has donated more than two hundred bicycles, to aid community member movement and help children who live far from the nearest school get to class more easily. A ’study-to-own’ contract was set with each child to empower them to attain an education – if they attend school for a number of years, ownership of the bicycle will transfer to them. #BIKES4ERP has had a positive effect on the academic achievements of the recipients, ensuring that they are able to get to school more easily – saving precious time and effort, and based upon records kept to date the pass rate of the schools where the bikes are deployed grew from below 50% to more than 85% in 2019.

Through our We Code program, which is held in partnership with local high schools, we are also providing coding training to local youth,’ says Smith. ‘The course allows young people to learn coding in a way that is exciting and relevant to them, for example through programming drones, which builds important digital skills while also enhancing the relevance of other subjects such as math and science.’

According to Smith, the We Code program also potentially holds direct benefits for ERP. ‘One of the main constraints to scaling our conservation model is the lack of drone pilots. By investing in local youth skills development, we could also create the next generation of drone pilots to support similar conservation efforts across the country – and later, in other parts of Africa.

Smith explains that in the wake of the economic devastation caused by the novel coronavirus-related government shutdown, ERP has funded and mobilized a multi-location logistics effort to feed indigent people in communities adjacent to its land-based projects.  In the month of May, several hundred thousand meals will be distributed to 9 locations near conservation areas that ERP is either leasing, negotiating to lease, or simply safeguarding with drone technology. The feeding program will soon be extended to cover an area Zimbabwe, where ERP is currently exploring conservation land deals.

ERP will eventually deploy its technology model to other conservation areas in South and Southern Africa. ‘We are already working on opportunities to scale our solution to reach other reserves. Through a range of community initiatives, we hope to mobilise local communities to support conservation efforts while also unlocking greater skills development and economic opportunities in the process. With our partners at the Co-Innovation Lab, we will also continue to refine the technology underpinning our efforts to protect some of our continent’s most majestic endangered animals.’

The post Co-innovation Paves the Way for Protection of Africa’s Endangered Wildlife appeared first on 51·çÁ÷Africa News Center.