The emerging markets pose an extremely volatile, uncertain, chaotic, and ambiguous business environment to leaders, both in government and in the private sector.
Surviving in such an environment requires more than just great leadership skills and industry insights but also a will of steel and a healthy dose of passion and empathy, which David Mba General
Manager ICT, Cloud & Data Centre Business Enterprise seems to have all.
Born in Lagos, the business capital of Nigeria, David Mba comes from a religious family of a disciplined military father and mother who is a Church Deaconess.
Childhood experience for Mba was more of a humble loving family with a disciplined attitude to life, influenced by religious beliefs. Young Mba, was indeed, an out-of-the-box change thinker at a very tender age.
“I grew up dreaming of becoming a great leader, a successful change agent, very passionate and full of love for humanity. I like to always think outside the box in my quest as a solution provider in whatever capacity I could” Mba tells Exepreneur.
David Mba holds a Bachelor of Science with honors in Survey & Geo-Informatics Engineering, an attempt in Master’s in Information Technology, attending Oracle University and Huawei University programs, as well as several global certifications in his field, lots of professional Certificates, training, more training, and most importantly rich hands-on experience for working with many global leading companies. His mantra is “never stop learning”.
Mba always believed in good education being the foundation or bedrock to greater life accomplishments or achievements but not necessarily as a yardstick for success, but says he wasn’t that determined until the death of his father in his first-degree graduation which changed his entire life and made him the focused man he is today.
“The death of my loving father at my first-degree graduation changed me to a more determined, focused, result-oriented, and positive person with trust. It dawned on me that it was time for me to pick up all his advice and run like a man in a world full of uncertainty and opportunities”
Today, Mba is an emerging market growth expert, responsible for defining and communicating strategic product or business ideas that are designed to meet customers’ value expectations, profit, reputation, and trust.
Strong technical skills in senior management, ICT, innovations, marketing, business intelligence, sales, and project execution background in various telecommunications technologies which drive his current role with PNG DataCo. Mba says he is also interested in building new business models in the wireless market space.
Given his range of skills and expertise, Mba has worked with some of the largest multinational companies before joining PNG DataCo.
Before the glamour and camera flashes of the sophisticated corporate world and of course, the perks and privileges, Mba, like many other powerful and successful corporate executives in PNG and around the world, started with a humble beginning as he recalls.
“I got my first job while I was rounding up my final year project defense with Reliance Telecommunications Limited.
“I graduated from the University of Lagos, and we have this culture where top companies come on campus during project defense to scout for brilliant young graduates for their management trainee program.
“I was lucky to be one of them although, it’s well deserved based on my performance”
From the humble beginning, Mba went on to work with British American Tobacco and he credits his team for successfully implementing the business support system known as RCS8, which he says is currently in use without external lead support.
Mba also with Digicel PNG where he was the Head of Products and Value-Added Services. He reckons that an interesting hub for innovations, project delivery, smartphone acquisition drive, data initiatives, and most importantly the popular 1Tok Bundle series introduction.
One of the career highlights he says was working with Etisalat (Telecom Company) as a product manager specialist where he championed many successful data-driven innovative projects in Nigeria and even in Dubai.
He also had a long career with Reliance Telecommunications Limited where he started his career and rose to the position of Head of Department within 6 years from graduation.
I was a project maestro from the onset with several successful projects and business turnaround.
Today, David is the brains behind the ongoing Digital Transformation of DataCo, the launch of an integrated business management system with Microsoft Dynamics 365, Data Centre Construction launch, Cloud Platform launch, ISO 27001 certification, Partnership with Microsoft, VMware, AWS, Google, etc.
Asked about what he does daily, his response is;
We do lots of alignment sessions, project review and implementation meetings, customer requirements updates, and innovation roadmaps. It’s basically a project-oriented and innovation management daily routing path. They say success leaves tracks. What can we learn from Mba?
“As an aspiring leader, you must have the drive and passion to work with people and help people develop.
“You must start making a difference in other people around you even without a formal appointment.
“An aspiring leader should constantly learn and should love to see others grow and learn. Being a successful leader has a lot to do with what difference you have made in people’s lives and how your actions, words, or even silence inspired them to do better and become a better version of themselves.
“Get inspired by legends, be trustworthy, truthful, respectful and dependable”
On a deeper level, the success of any magnitude and in any form, including business leadership is driven by strong ethical leadership principles. Mba runs DataCo based on the following leadership principles he highlighted for Exepreneur.
· Empower and development
· Vision
· Communication
· Reinforcement and influence.
· Empathy
· Humility
· Passion and commitment
· Respect
And that is the story of David Mba, an emerging markets growth expert and the current General Manager ICT, Cloud & Data Centre Business Enterprise of PNG DataCo.
