Johannesburg – South Africa, 19th August 2015: Yesterday, the inaugural day of the African Business Continuity and Emergency Response Summit, witnessed a unique exchange of ideas, experience and knowledge on the need and importance of establishing and implementing BCM processes within the organization, in order to combat and cope with any internal or external threat or crisis.

The summit was opened by the event chairman - Akintade Ayelomi,Head Business Continuity Management - MTN Nigeria,followed by the first session on the “Role of Emergency & Disaster Management Services in the region”, presented by Tshepo Makola, Head Emergency Management Services-City of Johannesburg-Municipality.

Dr. Clifford Ferguson, Director Strategy & Policy-Government Pension Administration Agency, elaborated on disaster management within the public service with emphasis on National disaster framework, regulation act and synergy within public structures for integrated disaster recovery solutions.

Impact of gender and identity, with special reference to the City of Tshwane Municipality services, was presented by Thambatshira Tshifaro, Disaster Management Officer from the Municipality, which is the Supporting Partner of this Summit. Neville van Rensburg, Chair at South African Medical Rescue Organisation, addressed the audience at the special presentation on managing and coping with three disasters simultaneously.

Intelligence-led approach to political and security risk management, was explained in the exclusive Joint Presentation from the Risk Management Partner of this summit - Rhula Intelligent Solutions and Focus Africa.
In this presentation Nigel Morgan, Executive Chairman at Focus Africa and Joe van der Walt, Director at Rhula Intelligent Solutions elaborated on:
*Understanding the political environment and its cultural nuances
*The role of corporate social responsibility in mitigating risk
*Anti-bribery / corruption, due diligence, know-your-client and source of funds

During the post lunch session, Gwen Linden, Head BCM - Johannesburg Stock Exchange,focused on work models and mind maps for crisis management scenarios and managing incidents in a time critical world. Practical application of technology and how it's helped international businesses to transform BC Programmes from best practice concepts and principles into world-class BC operations, was explained in a presentation by Charles Boffin, Founder of Clearview Continuity (Exhibition Partner).

Akintade Ayelomi, in his presentation addressed the concern in African business pertaining to technological infrastructure. A bane in African business & how IT service continuity and business continuity should co-exist was
the prime focus Dika Modise' s presentation. Dika Modise is the Manager of Information Risk, Security & Compliance at Eskom.

The concluding session of the first day was the interactive roundtable discussion on “Cloud is a Silver Bullet for Business Continuity”, which was joined by Neville van Rensburg, Thambatshira Tshifaro, Dika Modise and moderated by Akintade Ayelomi.

Today, the second day of the summit promises exclusive sessions and presentations from ASIS International South Africa, South Africa Institute of Security, Anglo American, Standard Bank Group, Eco Bank, eThekwini Municipality, South African Airways, Barclays Africa, Sasol and many more.