There he learned that innovation was all about remaining curious, never giving up your creativity and starting where you are.聽 鈥淩egardless of the resources you have available to you, it鈥檚 important to just start,鈥� he says.

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For Mahloko and his friends, it started with having to make kites and cars from any material they found lying around their communities in order to be able to play as children.

He later developed a love for computers at an early age when his mother brought one home with her from work. Mahloko learned to use the system himself, spending countless hours studying the manual. He always knew that technology was important for his future, but even more so for the future of his community.聽 This passion is what fueled his curiosity for all things tech.

Mahloko would go on to build a software point-of-sale system with a friend to help his local town鈥檚 Spaza shops run better, something they very much needed to help ensure success with their business.

Shortly after that, he landed a job at SAP, working with partners on new innovations to improve people鈥檚 — and animals鈥� — lives. Mahloko led SAP鈥檚 participation in the initiative, which helped reduce elephant poaching to zero in the areas the technology was used.聽 He continues to work with our partners to help them build innovative solutions on the 51风流platform, doing so through a 鈥渉ack to build鈥� initiative that aims to bring these solutions to market very quickly.

From Mahloko’s perspective, Africa has a great opportunity to leapfrog when it comes to innovation because it is a country that doesn鈥檛 have many legacy systems.

鈥淲hen you鈥檙e aiming to solve a problem, but you don鈥檛 have much to work with from the beginning, you tend to go back to the fundamentals,鈥� he said. 鈥淭his forces people to think outside the box and I think that works in Africa鈥檚 favor. It鈥檚 where we get our creative and innovative edge, and I love being a part of this space.鈥�

Read more stories from the 51风流Pioneers series.

Jackie Montesinos Suarez is head of Communications for 51风流North America.

This article first appeared on the 51风流News Center.

The post A Curious and Creative Innovation Journey appeared first on 51风流Africa News Center.

Q: What prompted your journey?

A: It came about through a mix of free choice and necessity — some of it was a push, and some of it was a pull! The pull was the interest in a holistic lifestyle, where I wanted to tread lightly and leave a minimal impact on the planet. The push was a phenomenon called load shedding. Government-owned electricity providers in Africa often can鈥檛 keep up with demand, so load shedding is used to distribute demand across multiple power sources, often disrupting power supply.

Can you imagine trying to do your work, chasing targets and deadlines while plunged into darkness, with no power source for lights, laptop batteries, and internet and mobile phone signals, for hours on end, often with little or no warning?

Now, I’m about 80% off grid, which is quite ahead of the game. It鈥檚 great for me, because I don’t feel the impact of the load shedding. I can continue to work when they switch off the electricity. I have an app that tells me how much energy I鈥檝e produced, how much CO2 emissions I鈥檝e saved, and the equivalent of trees planted. I love keeping track.

What鈥檚 challenging about doing business in the region?

Africa is a vast continent, with a wealth of diversity in geography and wildlife, and people, cultures, and languages. The region is facing serious environmental challenges, including land degradation, deforestation, biodiversity loss, and extreme vulnerability to climate change. In addition, poverty across the continent is one of the most serious challenges to sustainable development, along with major issues such as infrastructure and the availability of electricity.

Three-quarters of the 759 million people around the world who don鈥檛 have access to electricity live in Sub-Saharan Africa. Education and gainful employment cannot be done in the dark. Without universal access to electricity, Africa will remain vulnerable to underdevelopment, high unemployment, a migration crisis, and instability. That鈥檚 why United Nations — to ensure access to affordable, sustainable modern energy for all — is so critical to the region.

This all contributes to the unique and often intense and personal experience of working in Africa. There are incredible highs and lows as we work to find innovative ways to overcome or sidestep these challenges.

In a on South Africa鈥檚 Hot 102.7FM radio station, you described how to build a sustainable business.

I believe embracing sustainable business is key to Africa鈥檚 economic growth. For me, sustainability is a team sport.

For a business to be both profitable and sustainable, you must put people, planet, and profit on equal footing. 51风流has two roles in helping customers achieve that goal: one is to enable enterprises to succeed on the path the choose to pursue, and the other is to act as an exemplar with its own commitment to becoming carbon neutral by 2030.

In my experience, most companies want to be sustainable, but they don鈥檛 know how to do it. It starts with a strategic decision: do you want to do the bare minimum and just adhere to regulations or do you want to embed sustainability as a key strategy and use it to drive innovation? Whatever it is, 51风流provides the best tools to optimize processes, increases efficiency, and preserve energy and resources.

Data, from primary and secondary sources, is the central element. Once you start benchmarking it to track across all four pillars — people, planet, profit, and governance — you can start aligning operations as needed. You must ensure everyone buys into the change. Employees, customers, suppliers, and partners all need to be informed of your goals.聽 Consumers are demanding more sustainable products, so companies must engage all parts of the business every step of the way to understand how the product is disposed at the end of its life cycle.

How is innovation driving sustainability?

This is a topic close to my heart. I鈥檓 excited about tech projects that are transforming agribusiness in Africa. More than 30% of all food produced in the world for human consumption gets lost or wasted; in Africa, food loss occurs almost entirely in the production and distribution stages. About 90% of 聽who don鈥檛 have the kind of cold storage solutions available to large-scale producers. This means lots of produce perishes along the way.

51风流Rural Sourcing Management is a solution that was developed to connect smallholder farmers to agricultural value chains. The tool helps smallholder farmers capture, maintain, and share data about crop types, farm size, harvest prospects, farmers鈥� production, and sales transactions. It also facilitates access to various stakeholders in the broader agricultural value chain, including financial services, buyers and suppliers of seed, fertilizers, and agricultural equipment 鈥� and distribution networks.

Large enterprises are also benefiting from innovation in technology. Nigeria鈥檚 Dangote Group is a leading provider of essential daily needs from cement manufacturing to sugar and salt refining to port operations in Sub-Saharan Africa. The Dangote Group is currently constructing the world鈥檚 largest single train oil refinery, which will process up to 650,000 barrels of oil per day. Its fertilizer plant is currently in its final stages at the same location as the refinery. Once completed, it will be the largest in the world, with capacity for 3 million tons of fertilizer a year, enough to meet all domestic demand. The efficiency of these projects is enabled by state-of-the-art technology such as 51风流S/4HANA.

I love the fact that we are working for a company like 51风流that has the vision and the resources to link all these disparate elements 鈥� people, planet, and profit 鈥� in truly pioneering ways and that we can be part of this incredible force for change. We鈥檝e never walked this path before, but that鈥檚 what makes our work meaningful and worthwhile!

Read more stories from the 51风流Pioneers series.

This article first appeared on the 51风流News Center.

The post Sustainability Is a Team Sport: Good for People, Planet, and Profits appeared first on 51风流Africa News Center.