Africa is seen to be just at the beginning of the digital ecosystem, but among the few leading the continent’s digital innovation drive is the young South African entrepreneur, Dr. Mandla Lamba.
“Driven by the purpose of God,” said Dr. Lamba, he envisions seeing African people economically free through pursuing the materialisation of dreams using innovation and creativity and “not be reliant on natural resources and government contracts.”
The Chief Executive of Africa’s first electric vehicle manufacturing company – Agilitee Africa, maintains that “using ingenuity, creativity and innovation to break the mood that holds Africa back” is descriptive of his person.
Now aged 36 years, Dr. Lamba says poverty, lack and pain led him into entrepreneurship and “yet the purpose of God for my life led me to the green revolution.”
“Seeing our people suffer from losing jobs, hiking petrol prices, salary cuts and power outages are ills that the continent has been suffering from and these have delayed the civilisation of African people and I know I was to fix this particularly.”
This quest led to the conception of the company which is currently breaking bounds in green technology innovation, on the sub-Saharan continent, Agilitee Africa. Started in 2015, the formalisation of the company was done in 2018.
Dr. Lamba observed that the journey has not been easy, having faced a lot of twists and turns, and ups and downs, but it has now recorded a lot of successes amid the pain.
“The story of Agilitee has been that of not amplifying problems and challenges at the expense of the goodness of God. What gave us the strength was the fact that 5 years ago there was no Agilitee and here we are today with this great company, yes, we have had to fight a lot but we can’t complain about it because we are grateful for the blessings we saw in the deep of tears.”
Agilitee the first electric vehicle manufacturer in Africa, it is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Agilitee (Pty) Ltd a global player in the Electric Vehicles and Green Technology space.
The company is at the forefront of the 4th industrial revolution in electric vehicles, artificial intelligence and more importantly, green technology which is the future.
“We aim to change the continent to driving clean energy solutions and carbon reduction. The Agilitee team is pioneering, researching, importing, assembling, manufacturing, and franchising electric vehicles technology.”
The Electric Vehicle solutions include battery swapping stations and solar charging facilities, across Africa.
It also recently manufactured the first full AI TV that has telematics for voice recognition and instruction in Africa and the third in the world.
Dr. Lamba contends that “except for some small racial barriers in South Africa, I believe Africa as a continent is the best place to be alive in today.”
His counsel to young African dreamers is to “chase your dream that is inspired by the things you are passionate about, and not leave your passions and pursue what you saw others do.”
He explains that this is “because you will end up being a second-rate version of someone else and God created you to be the first rated version of yourself. The world is not looking for another version of someone else as it already has that, it is looking for you and the real you will do what you good at even with a little effort.”
