Jury Panel

Sithembile Songo has been crowned as the Cyber leader of the year 2024 in Africa, CISO of the year 2024, one of the 20 influential women in Africa, Top 50 cyber professionals, Top 50 manufacturing leaders, Top 100 global women in cybersecurity, international speaker, Top 100 influential women, mentor and is serving as a member of the board and advisory board member. She holds a Master of Science in Information Security from the University of London. She has spoken at major local, national and global IT and cyber security conferences.

She has been specializing in information security for more than 20 years now and her experience is augmented by several executive leadership roles in both public and private sectors, including Financial, Telecom, Public Sector, Consulting firm, Energy sector and other State-owned entities.

Sithembile currently works as the Chief Information Security Officer, CISO, heading the information security pillar at the state-owned energy entity, which produce 95% of South Africa’s electricity. Her strategic role primarily focuses on protecting the national critical infrastructure from potential cyber-attacks, thus preventing a negative impact on the economy. She also enables secure business operations, including secure generation, transmission, and distribution of electricity, which depend on operational technology (OT) that largely depends on secured computer networks and systems to produce electricity.

Noluvuyo Gqadu is an award-winning technology professional with over a decade of experience in IT, spanning higher education, financial services, and mining. She has held roles in IT support, business analysis, project management, and IT management. Passionate about using technology for social good, she has contributed to EdTech, children’s mental health, and social entrepreneurship initiatives.

As the founder of CodeNgwana, she is committed to equipping African children with digital skills through coding and computational thinking. She also serves on the boards of Waves for Change, Dlala Nje, and TeamPact and mentors at the Miller Center for Social Entrepreneurship under Santa Clara University in Silicon Valley.

Recognized for her impact, Nolu has received numerous accolades, including:

• 2024: Sunday World Heroic Woman
• 2023: News24 Young Mandela
• 2023: TransUnion Rising Star Award Winner
• 2021: Mail & Guardian 200 Young South Africans
• 2020: Womandla STEAM Award Winner
• 2019: Inspiring50 Winner

A thought leader in the tech space, she has give a TEDx Talk (“Coding for kids as the New African Language”) and at the World Innovation and Technology Congress in Malaysia.