Dr Cleopas Sanangura

Cleopas is an acknowledged expert in areas of financial Economics, Public finance, corporate strategy, corporate finance, economic research and analytics, corporate risk advisory and corporate governance (investor relations); advising organisations operating or considering investments in emerging markets with over 25 years executive and board experience. He has held a number of senior executive positions including with leading merchant banks (TSB Lloyds, Barclays and ABSA), listed mining house based in Johannesburg, South Africa and with Messer Griesham Germany responsible for Africa and Asia markets. During his time with Messer Griesham he built the company’s partnerships in Asia and then led its expansion to Algeria, Egypt, Namibia, Zimbabwe, South Africa, India, Indonesia, Iran and Japan. He later headed the corporate finance business unit at Africa Resources Limited, a Johannesburg and London Stock Exchange-listed resources company before he became the CEO. He has been on the forefront in advocating for Strategic Consumer Behaviour on the Value of Operational Flexibility, strategic formulation and corporate governance for the organisations he led. He was involved with modelling traditional and flexible production methods, Value creation flexibilities as well as consumer and supplier purchasing modelling.

Cleopas is a member of the IoDSA Corporate Governance Network (CGN) working on reviewing research papers on Risk, Financial Markets, board dynamics, performance and Corporate Governance. He is currently working on publishing two papers on Corporate Governance in the financial services and Not for Profit sectors.
As a Corporate Governance subject matter expert Cleopas has sat on different boards assisting on turning around the organisations while creating shareholder value.

Cleopas is a board member for Legal Aid South Africa, Independent Audit Committee Chairman for National Gambling Board (NGB), Chairman of Dawn Inc and former Board Member of National Metrology Institute of South Africa (NMISA), Northern Cape Economic Development Agency (NCEDA), independent chairman of the audit committee for Road Traffic Management Corporation (RTMC) and Board member for South African National Blood Services (SANBS) and Chairman of the Audit, Risk & IT Governance. He is also the former Audit Committee Chairman of the City of Johannesburg’s social housing company (JOSHCO), Johannesburg Fresh Produce, Johannesburg Tourism Company (JTC), as well as a member of the City’s group audit committee, Independent Audit Committee member for Social Housing Regulatory Authority (SHRA), Audit Committee Chairman of Gauteng Departments of Infrastructure Development, Transport and Roads and Cooperative Governance, Traditional Affairs and Housing and former member of the Gauteng Provincial Government Audit Committee. He is the founder and CEO of Dawn Holdings Pty Ltd which has subsidiaries, Brevimode Pty Ltd, Ringdrive Trading Services, Rebohle 2 Investments Pty Ltd and Dawn Advisory Services (Pty) Ltd a leading financial and corporate strategy group based in Johannesburg, South Africa, with a client portfolio of business and governments across Africa.

Cleopas is a Chartered Director of South Africa [CD(SA)] and a graduate of Harvard Business School (Senior Executive Development Programme – Africa), Nottingham Business School (NBS) where he graduated with a Doctorate in Business Administration(DBA) majoring on financial Economics, governance and risk in emerging markets. He also holds an MBA (Corporate finance) specialising in emerging markets from NBS. He is a Fellow of the Institute of Chartered Secretaries & Administrators (FCIS), Fellow Chartered Institute of Business Management (FCIBM-SA), Associate of the Institute of Chartered Certified Accountant (ACCA-UK).

In 2013 Cleopas started the UKZN Post Doctoral Programme and was later appointed as a Research Fellow and Doctorate Supervisor at GIBS. Cleopas is a Supervisor for DBA and PHD research students at University of Stellenbosch (USB) Graduate School, UKZN Graduate School and GIBS Business School. Besides his busy schedule Cleopas finds time to work with poor communities on community development programmes and setting up sustainable Cooperatives. He is passionate about empowering disadvantaged communities. He plans to open a private high school with a sports academy and later a University.

Research Interests:
Public Sector Accounting and Financial Management: Integrating insights from economics, business, financial economics, and political science. To have a clear picture of developments in public financial management, a multidimensional perspective of the field is needed, since governments—unlike for-profit organisations— serve multiple and often conflicting interests.

Corporate Governance: Corporate Governance has brought together the most active and influential policy makers, practitioners and experts on corporate governance in the region, as well as from OECD countries and relevant international institutions. The challenge remains that failures continue to happen and skills are
limited who are gurus in this field.

Risk Management: risk management research identifies, develops and tests innovative tools, methods and technologies used to solve and prevent complex environmental problems to safeguard human health and the environment. Risk management is an important part of planning for businesses. The process of risk management is designed to reduce or eliminate the risk of certain kinds of events happening or having an impact on the business.

Corporate strategy: Many business leaders talk about treating human capital as a strategic asset, but few companies put the idea into practice. African countries are battling to develop strategies, which will assist to develop and grow the economies. Cooperative & SMME Development: Consults on sustainable Cooperative and SMME development especially in poor communities. 95% of the JSE listed companies generate 86% of their revenue from poor communities justifying the business case that poor communities can be sustainable on their own by industrialising these communities.

IT Governance: Effective and efficient use of IT in enabling an organisation to achieve its goals is now a business imperative and competitive tool. IT demands governance as a process in which organisations ensure the effective evaluation, selection, prioritisation, and funding of competing IT investments; oversee their implementation; and extract (measurable) business benefits position companies at the edge of success where board members need to be aware of and have competence in. Businesses should assert data governance at the board level, then at the executive committee level, and then at the CIO and IT data management levels. Data governance can yield revenues and profits.