New company aims to challenge, train and excite young engineers
A consulting engineering services company that develops specialist products is the latest addition to The Innovation Hub's family of pre incubator companies. The driving force behind Africa South Technologies is Mpho Mphake, a mechanical engineer with a vision of training young black engineering students in product development - a field in which there is a severe lack of expertise in South Africa.
The company is owned by Mphake, the office and project manager, and David Sekgobela. They make use of the expertise of an independent consultant to help define objectives and compile a business strategy. Mphake is full of praise for The Innovation Hub staff who helped develop the company, channelled and shaped their ideas, and contributed skills in defining goals. As pre incubator company they now have a platform from which they can reach out to other players in the field.
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| From left to right David Segopela and Mpho Mphake Africa South Technologies. |
Mphake, who started his own business in 2001, provided product development services mainly to the transport industry. Born and bred in Pretoria, he trained as a mechanical engineer at the then Technikon Northern Transvaal. He gained his first work experience in chemical processing companies. Between 1995 and 2000, Mphake worked himself up through a series of challenging assignments from trainee engineer to manager of a food processing facility. This plant, which had been losing money at an alarming rate when he was appointed manager, was turned around by his team of specialists into one with some of the highest performing rates in the country.
The focus of Africa South Technologies is developing new materials and products and optimising and improving new products for local use. Benificiation of raw materials, and especially of locally available metals such as nickel, manganese, and aluminium with the aim to replace imported products, is also a priority.
Mphake sees the one main challenges of South Africa as creating a committed, hard-working workforce. There is a huge lack of skills, and many qualified people need retraining to face the challenges of the workplaces of the future. Africa South Technologies aims to help alleviate these problems by offering training opportunities, challenging work and job satisfaction to a core group of innovators. "We are looking at training a group of mostly black female undergraduates in product development. They will then hopefully form the core of the next generation of innovators who will be able to develop new intellectual property locally," says Mphake.
Contact
Mr Mpho Mphake
Tel [012] 349 0481/2
Cell: 084 516 5169
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