FOR one brief moment Thursday afternoon, Mompati Nwako became the face of the next best thing in the Botswana citizen economic empowerment drive.
It happened while he was sitting on the visitor?s chair inside the Corporate Services MDs office, looking through the glass window into the picturesque view outside. With starry eyes, the RPC Data Executive Director said, ?If the Zambian deal had gone through, I would be looking through this window at my Cadillac in the parking lot outside.?
RPC Data came a close second in their bid for a lucrative Zambian government ICT tender. With the company?s landmark citizen empowerment deal concluded and promising a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, it is, however, only a matter of time before Nwako looks out through his office window and sees his Cadillac in the parking lot. Even the company stock is humming along. RPC Data shares jumped almost 100 percent from 32 Thebe a share, when the deal was initiated in May 2005, to 60 Thebe a share when the deal was unveiled last week.
RPC Data limited, Botswana?s biggest provider of international IT solutions and services listed on the Botswana Stock Exchange, last Friday announced the conclusion of the citizen empowerment agreement.
The transaction involved the acquisition of 26 percent of the issued share capital by Botswana, giving a controlling shareholding of RPC to citizens.
Overnight, Nwako morphed from a salary man to a big investor in Botswana?s biggest ICT company. The former civil servant, who spent most of his career pushing memoranda at the government enclave before joining RPC Data, is now pushing multi million pula international deals.
WEDNESDAY afternoon, I am sitting with Nwako and RPC Data Managing Director, Rob Pool, in Nwako?s office. A sealed bottle of champagne still wrapped in red ribbons is standing on his cabinet.
Nwako rummages through a pile of papers on his desk, retrieves a typed sheet of paper listing RPC Data shareholders and jabs his index finger at the two names at the top of the list: Don Properties and Bonsal Properties, the two biggest shareholders in RPC Data. The new shareholding structure betrays a quest for political correctness and power: It strikes a balance between giving control to citizens, ensuring gender balance and achieving power.
Shareholders in Don Properties are Nwako, former budgeting secretary at the Ministry of Finance and Development Planning who brings insight on the workings of the government budget into the bargain, businessman and senior partner at Collins and Newman, Parks Tafa, and renowned businessman, architect and former Botswana Democratic Party treasurer, Paul Paledi. As John Little, the man who drove the empowerment deal puts it, ?all these are tomorrow men not yesterday men.? Most of them are still in their forties, these are young turks who are tipped to guide Botswana?s fortunes into the future.
Bonsal Properties Shareholders, on the other hand, are Botswana?s influential women: former minister, Tebelelo Seretse, Mascom chairperson, former Botswana envoy to the EU and former chairperson of Botswana Savings Bank, Imelda Mathe, Alice Molefhe of Alemo designer shoe chain stores, renowned dentist, Ruth Moampe and Botswana?s ambassador Dorcus Kgosietsile.
As Botswana parliamentarians clamor for citizen empowerment and the country gears up for an IT revolution ?there is talk of improved IT infrastructure and e-commerce ? the new RPC Data make up puts it in a good standing to cash in on the country?s changing political and economic climate.
When I asked to be let in on the wheeling and dealing that led to the empowerment deal, RPC Data Managing Director, Rob Pool, leaned back in his chair and stared at the ceiling. ?I don?t think I am the right person to talk about the wheeling and dealing. The best person to talk to is John Little. Pool is dead right, his words far from being the ranting of a stuck up businessman trying to chicken out of an interview.
Pool, who started the company in 1990 as Rob Pool Consultancies, a one man consultancy operating from a medium cost house in Broadhurst, is something of Botswana?s answer to Silicon Valley?s fairy tales. Well, maybe not Botswana?s answer to Silicon Valley?s fairy tales, but over the years, he grew the business substantially taking on several employees and, in the process, becoming the distributor for the then emergent Oracle software company in 1992.
?By 1994 the company was in a position where, in order to grow and make regular and reliable profits, it needed sound financial and technical backing primarily to enable it to bid for larger projects particularly those being initiated by the Government of Botswana. In order to achieve this, 50 percent of the shares of the business were sold Qdata, an international IT business based in South Africa?, Pool said in his speech during the launch of the RPC Data empowerment deal.
Over the following few years, the business continued to grow and made regular and reliable profits. As a result, in 1999, it listed on the Botswana stock market to raise further capital for growth. The listing demonstrated the permanence of RPC Data in a market where IT companies came and went. The permanence meant that RPC Data customers, mostly government departments, were guaranteed local long term, professional and cost effective support. The company successfully implemented the Botswana government?s core financial systems comprising of GABS and Payroll valued at P35 million and P8 million, respectively, between 2003 and 2006. Both projects were completed successfully ?on time and within budget.
RPC Data was also able to develop its business regionally by opening offices both in Zambia and Uganda. Rob Pool was at the helm of the company throughout the giant leap and now holds a considerable sway in the business sector and the stock market. His analyses are respected. If Pool ever crossed his wires, the effects would reverberate across the business sector. But it is unlike Pool to get his facts wrong. With the new empowerment deal now promising bigger returns, he is even more cautious and refers queries about the inner workings of the deal to John Little, the company secretary.
THURSADAY afternoon, I am sitting for an interview with Nwako and John Little, the Corporate Services Director, who put the empowerment deal together. The two men are from two entirely different worlds. While Nwako spent most of his career as a civil servant at the Ministry of Finance, Little is an astute wheeler dealer whose string of empowerment deals have helped put a number of black faces on boardrooms of Botswana?s big corporations. Among the many deals he put together was the Funeral Services Empowerment deal. However, when the conversation turns to the RPC Data deal, the biggest empowerment deal John Little has put together so far, the two men seem like old career partners. They complete each other?s sentences. For example, when Little says, ?The future is definitely bright; it is not only Orange?s future that is bright.? Nwako would say things like, ?Oh, absolutely, there is a lot of potential.?
Asked about the wheeling and dealing behind the deal, a glint steals into Little?s eye as he chuckles. ?I am the wheeler dealer.? Little has reason to be proud of this deal. All shareholders scored big. Even smaller shareholders saw their stock grow by close to 100 percent, from 32 Thebe in May 2005, when the deal was initiated, to 60 Thebe when the deal was concluded last week.
John Little recalls the day Pool approached him with a request to put together an empowerment deal for RPC Data. Pool did not have any problem with the deal diluting his shareholding, and foreign shareholders did not mind selling their stock to citizens. This gave Little a freer hand.
Little called his friends in the business sector and at the government enclave to find out what they thought of RPC Data. Most felt that the company was controlled by foreigners. This was not good news, especially when political corridors are buzzing with calls for citizen empowerment. Little knew exactly what to do and it all jelled with his philosophy.
?I am not a communist, but I preferred wealth to be shared.? Little rolled back his sleeves and knuckled down to spreading RPC Data wealth.
?RPC Data was a sleeping giant and I wanted the deal to create shareholder wealth.?
He decided to bring in directors who would add value to the company and came up with a list of qualities he would be looking for.
?I was looking for professionalism, integrity, business acumen and understanding of government workings. I was looking for people who can open doors for RPC Data?, he says. Little, who is given to political correctness, was also keen on gender balance and decided to bring in influential women.
The result was two citizen companies, one owned by young influential Batswana men and the other by influential Batswana women, rising to take the biggest stake in RPC Data.
Having achieved this, Little wanted more. He did not only want to have citizens controlling RPC Data, he also wanted citizens running RPC Data, so he put together a new citizen board which would also reflect the company gender balance chaired by Tebelelo Seretse.
