Zoom Fibre CEO Mohammed Manjra talks about connecting the missing middle and building Smart Cities

Published: June 22, 2022, 5:44 a.m.

Mohammed Manjra is the CEO of Zoom Fibre, a fast-growing and agile fibre network provider that will pass 100,000 endpoints by the end of June 2022. Manjra has been in this role since November 2020 and was awarded the South Africa CEO of the Year Award by CEO Global in 2021. Prior to his appointment at Zoom Fibre, Manjra was approached to start Vumatel in 2014, with the goal of deploying the first true Fibre to the Home (FTTH) infrastructure in South Africa. He spent three years as the Vumatel Implementation Director and during this time, Manjra and his team broke records by passing more than 850,000 homes across more than 550 South African suburbs. In this What’s Next interview, Manjra meets with Aki Anastasiou to discuss how Zoom Fibre is serving the missing middle. He talks about how important it is to cater to the middle- and low-income areas in South Africa and how much demand there is for the service. Manjra then tells us about the Saldanha Bay Smart City project and highlights the challenges of building public-private relationships when developing Smart Cities. He also discusses the citizens’ app launched by Zoom Fibre and announces that it has officially gone live in several South African towns – including Saldanha Bay – as part of its Smart City project. Finally, Manjra talks about how Zoom Fibre’s young team has enabled it to achieve its many milestones.