Irish companies participating in this week’s Enterprise Ireland trade mission to South Africa have secured new contracts worth more than €6m and have agreed to significant business alliances across various sectors.
Ireland’s Minister for Trade and Development, Joe Costello, TD, who led the trade mission this past week, also launched two industry expert panels, in financial services and in telecommunications, that will support Irish companies seeking to win new business in South Africa in those sectors.
Among the contracts and alliances agreed during the trade mission are:
- Digital Marketing Institute agreed to a partnership with Vega School of Brand Leadership that will see more than 3,000 students undertake digital marketing training in South Africa. Vega School will deliver the Digital Marketing Institute’s Professional Diploma in Digital Marketing programme. The institute forecasts that the South Africa market will generate revenues in excess of €3m by 2015.
- The Now Factory signed a contract with Vodacom for its Mobile Moments Vantage solution, enabling the South Africa-based operator to accurately measure the performance of its data network in real-time and optimise the customer experience of its 31m subscribers.
- Druid Software, the Irish mobile network software development company, signed a memorandum of understanding with Jasco, the South African-owned ICT converged solutions provider, to supply fixed mobile converged solutions to enterprise customers in sub-Saharan Africa.
Enterprise Ireland, in co-operation with the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade and the Embassy of Ireland in Pretoria, South Africa, organised the three-day trade mission that involved 35 companies.
The focus of the trade mission had been on the ICT, international education and financial services sectors.
Costello described the trade mission as very important in terms of deepening Ireland’s trade and economic ties in South Africa, as well as supporting the aims of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade’s Africa Strategy.
“Enterprise Ireland opened a new office in Johannesburg in February of this year that acts as a hub for supporting Irish companies in growing their trade relationships and export sales in South Africa and in the wider sub-Saharan African market of over 900m people,” Costello said.
“My department, the embassy network and Enterprise Ireland are working closely together to ensure that Irish exports to these increasingly important markets continue to grow, in line with the aims of my department’s Africa Strategy and the overall Government Trade Strategy.”
