Under the glimmering chandeliers of the Inanda Club’s Polo Room, IT leaders gathered on 13 November for the 2025 CIO Awards, the most glamorous night in the digital calendar.

Johnson Idesoh, group CITO at Absa, has been crowned CIO of the Year at the 2025 CIO Awards.

At the first-ever IT Indaba, Callan Abrahams, AI executive at iOCO, challenged South Africa’s tech community to think bigger. She framed her session themed The Data Journey of South Africa, as a call to action to not debate AI in abstract terms, but to apply it to real problems facing the country.

The first-ever IT Indaba brought together Josh Souchon, IT executive at Opp-Gen; Faith Burn, CTOO at Landbank; and Mary Mahuma, CIO of Philip Morris Southern Africa who explained what it really takes to build a lasting IT career.