Morne van der Westhuizen

Morne is a Partner in Kuunda Holdings and Director at Kusenga Consulting. Kuunda incubates mobile financial services solutions and provides consulting services in the informal market sector with Clients in South Africa, Mozambique, Tanzania, Uganda, Nigeria and the DRC, whilst Kusenga provides specialised data science consulting to a range of clients in South Africa. He is also currently a Senior Data Science Consultant for IFC World Bank, where he is involved in data projects spanning 12 African Countries, focusing mostly on financial inclusion, FSP, and DFS providers. Previously he was the Head of Data, Internal Engineering and Business Process Automation at Zoona – a mobile payments service provider with operations in Zambia and Malawi – and one of Africa’s most exciting startups. His interest in analytics spawned a career that has seen him working as BI Consultant to some of the biggest insurance and investment companies in South Africa. He studied B.Comm. Mathematics (Actuarial Science) from the University of Stellenbosch, and B.Comm. Management Accounting from UNISA. He is also an internationally certified QlikView Developer and Designer. The realisation that there is a huge gap in the market for qualified and experienced people with strong business background, got himvstarted on this eight year journey in the field of data analytics. His vast financial- and management experience has made him a specialist in bridging the gap between Data Analytics and the crucial adoption by business users, by having a rapid prototype and -development approach to data. At Zoona – he have been responsible for setting up the Data Analytics function from scratch, building it up to a team of 6 that has become core to the company’s functioning – and helped drive a data centric culture in the organisation.