Africa’s Channel Leaders To Meet In Diani

Africa’s technology channel is under pressure. Selling boxes no longer pays the way it used to. Customers want cloud, managed services and security, and they want results, not just licences. Hyperscalers are selling direct through marketplaces. Margins are thin, and partners are asking hard questions about what vendor programmes actually give them.

These are the questions on the table at the Africa Channel Leaders’ Summit 2026, hosted by CIO Africa by dx5 in Diani on 27 November. The theme is Rewiring Africa’s Technology Channel — From Distribution to Value Creation. The summit runs on the final day of the CIO100 Symposium, which puts channel leaders in the same place as the CIOs who buy from them.

Harry Hare, Chairman of CIO Africa by dx5, will open the day by making the case for why Africa’s channel needs its own leadership stage.

From Box-Moving To Value

Vincent Entonu, Managing Director for Rest of Africa at Westcon-Comstor, gives the opening keynote on what it takes to move from shipping products to creating value. As a distributor working across the continent, Westcon-Comstor sits in the middle of the channel and sees how the model is changing on both sides.

That leads straight into the first panel and the question every partner is asking: where will the profit come from? Imran Chaudhery, Country Manager East Africa at Fortinet; Dipak Galaiya, Group Chief Commercial Officer at Computech Limited; Vincent Milewa, Managing Director of Down to Earth Technologies (DTE); and John Paul Onyango, Country Manager East Africa at Check Point Software Technologies Ltd, will talk about margins, recurring revenue, managed services, cloud, cybersecurity and new partner business models.

Selling AI That Delivers

Every vendor is selling AI. Fewer customers can point to what it has done for them. David Bunei, Managing Director of Oracle Kenya and Public Sector Leader Africa, will speak on moving AI from hype to revenue and real customer value. A question that matters as African businesses start asking for proof before they sign.

After the break, the summit turns to how technology is now bought and sold. Marketplaces and co-selling with hyperscalers are changing who owns the customer. Dennis de Weerd, MD of Incentro; Bridgit Kaate, Territory Sales Manager at VMware; and Dan Kwach, Executive at Africa Data Centres, will discuss what this shift means for vendors, distributors and the partners in between.

A fireside chat follows with vendors and distributors on one side and partners and systems integrators on the other. The topics are the ones usually raised in private: margins, incentives, partner loyalty, deal registration and channel conflict.

The Cybersecurity Opportunity

Joseph Mathenge, COO of Serianu, will make the case for cybersecurity as the channel’s growth engine. With attacks on African banks, telcos and governments rising, security is one of the few areas where demand is growing faster than the skills to meet it.

The day closes with a look at the Africa channel outlook for 2027 — where the opportunities are and what comes next.

Why It Matters

Africa’s channel is how most global technology reaches African businesses. If the channel can’t make money from cloud, AI and security, those services reach customers more slowly, cost more and come with less local support. The summit is a chance for the people who run that channel to compare notes, push back on vendors and leave with a clearer view of where their next revenue will come from.

The summit closes with the Africa Technology Awards (ATA).