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Wickneil Chivhayo’s emerging ISP trading under the babe name IMC Communications, and purportedly the sole distributor of Starlink in Zimbabwe, has appointed well known tech executive Denny Marandure as its Managing Director
The move comes at a time when StarLink has announced that it will start its operations in the third quarter of this year in Zimbabwe .
interestingly Marandure was once the managing director of the biggest home based ISP in Zimbabwe (ZOL Zimbabwe ) before it was bought by Liquid Inteligent and his bounce back speaks to direct competition albeit using an none existent, emerging company.
On Nov 2021 Liquid Intelligent announced the appointment of Mr. Denny Marandure to the position of Chief Executive Officer for Raha Limited, Tanzania. Denny Marandure joined Liquid in 2014 as the CEO of ZOL Zimbabwe until 2019 when he moved to Liquid South Africa as Group Executive Cloud and Digital Sales and then subsequently as Group Executive Enterprise Sales.
. IMC’s says they picked Marandure for his experience at ZOL in rolling out fibre-to-the-home in Zimbabwe.
“Denny brings a lot of passion, value, unique leadership qualities and energy to the internet service sector and we have no doubt that under his stewardship, Starlink will be a game changer in the ISP sector in Zimbabwe and will play a pivotal role in achieving the vision 2030 as outlined by President Mnangagwa,” IMC said in a statement. The company plans to start selling Starlink kits in Zimbabwe in the third quarter of 2024.
IMC, tied to scandal-hit businessman Wicknell Chivayo, was unknown in the tech space until President Emmerson Mnangagwa’s Twitter account announced it as the “sole and exclusive local partner” of Starlink in Zimbabwe in May.
In December last year, another local ISP, Dandemutande, had announced that it had reached an agreement with Starlink “to be able to resell their services in the country” once the SpaceX company had been licensed, adding to the mystery around IMC’s involvement.
Starlink uses distributors to reach business customers in some of the markets it operates. Among these are Paratus, which distributes Starlink kits in Zambia and Mozambique, and Karibu Connect, the Starlink reseller in Kenya. Competition in providing satellite connectivity is increasing.
In May, Liquid Intelligent Technologies announced a distribution partner agreement with Eutelsat Group to distribute Low Earth Orbit (LEO) satellite services in Africa. This service will rival Starlink, especially for business customers in Africa
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