5 Strategic Shifts Defining the New African Retail Playbook
Explore 5 strategic shifts shaping African retail in 2026, from e-commerce growth and AI adoption to unified commerce and digital-first consumers.
Explore 5 strategic shifts shaping African retail in 2026, from e-commerce growth and AI adoption to unified commerce and digital-first consumers.
Jandro Saayman is the Head of UX Design at Ackermans, where he leads the customer experience strategy for one of South Africa’s largest fashion and value retail brands. With over a decade of experience spanning UX design, digital product development, ecommerce, and customer experience optimisation, Jandro is passionate about creating seamless digital journeys that balance customer needs with business objectives.
Throughout his career, he has worked across both agency and product environments, leading design teams and shaping digital experiences for large-scale platforms. At Ackermans, he focuses on leveraging customer insights, behavioural analytics, user research, and experimentation to drive meaningful improvements in online shopping experiences.
Beyond his corporate role, Jandro is an advocate for human-centred design, innovation, and continuous learning. He is particularly interested in how data, technology, and empathy can work together to create experiences that not only perform better but genuinely serve people.
Vershen Naidoo is a senior risk and security professional with close to sixteen years of experience across supply chain, logistics, HSSEQ, corporate security, and business continuity. He serves as Head of Risk and Security for the Supply Chain Division at takealot.com, having held senior leadership appointments at takealot.com, Imperial, and Barloworld Logistics. A specialist in corporate security, operational resilience, business continuity, and stakeholder collaboration, Vershen is an award-winning risk professional and a committed advocate of Zero Loss Culture across the supply chain
Yaeesh Moosa is the Head of Marketplace at Takealot.com, South Africa’s leading online retailer, where he leads the growth, performance, and strategic direction of one of the country’s largest marketplace ecosystems. With nearly a decade of experience spanning marketplace operations, merchant management, and digital commerce, he is passionate about creating scalable seller experiences that drive customer value and business growth.
Prior to his current role, Yaeesh held several leadership positions within Takealot, including Head of Merchant Operations and Marketplace Operations Manager, where he played a key role in strengthening marketplace efficiency, seller success, and operational excellence. His career began in engineering and manufacturing, where he led continuous improvement, supply chain optimisation, and business transformation initiatives, bringing a unique operational and data-driven perspective to modern retail
Hylton is the Managing Director of Toy Kingdom South Africa and a seasoned business leader with over 25 years of global experience across retail, ecommerce, fintech, automotive, and customer experience.
He has held senior leadership roles at organisations including HomeChoice, FinChoice, Truworths and Toyota Tsusho Corporation where he led large-scale transformation, digitalisation, and operational excellence initiatives across more than 20 countries.
His expertise spans retail strategy, omni-channel development, Africa expansion, mergers and acquisitions, customer experience, process optimisation, workforce management, and financial performance improvement. He is also highly experienced in leading digital transformation programmes, including automation of customer journeys, call centre optimisation, and IT system development in agile environments.
Hylton is passionate about simplifying complex business challenges and enabling organisations to achieve sustainable growth through the alignment of people, processes, products, and systems. He believes that exceptional customer experience is created when strong leadership, efficient processes, and enabling technology work seamlessly together to deliver value at scale.
Christopher is the Head of Ecommerce (Southern Hemisphere) at G-STAR, where he drives regional ecommerce strategy, sales growth, and profitability through data-driven decision-making, P&L analysis, and performance optimisation.
He has over 15 years of experience across ecommerce, digital transformation, retail strategy, and business development. Prior to G-STAR, Christopher held senior global ecommerce and data leadership roles at PUMA Group, where he led customer data management programs, supported global market rollouts, and delivered performance insights across multiple countries. He previously built and scaled PUMA South Africa’s ecommerce business from the ground up, achieving significant revenue growth and strong profitability performance.
Earlier in his career, he held leadership roles at New Balance, eComplete, RSAWEB, Crossroads Distribution, and Crixus, where he gained extensive experience in retail operations, supply chain management, digital strategy, and business development.
Barry Sickle is a South African retail entrepreneur and footwear industry veteran with over 30 years of experience building and leading successful retail businesses.
Recognised for his role in disrupting and igniting traditional footwear retail and developing high-performance teams, Barry is passionate about customer experience, leadership, and the future of physical retail.
Known for his practical leadership style, competitive spirit, and ability to inspire teams at every level, Barry is a speaker on topics including selling skills, leadership, intrapreneurship, coaching, customer experience, employee engagement, and unlocking human potential in business.
Alaine Rossouw is the Chief Operations Officer of Super-Brands Retail and General Manager of Build-A-Bear South Africa. She leads operations across Toy Kingdom, Hamleys, and Build-A-Bear Workshop, with a focus on retail excellence, customer experience, and operational strategy.
Passionate about experiential retail and people development, Alaine is known for driving high-performance retail cultures that combine operational discipline with engaging customer experiences. Her work focuses on building strong teams, elevating in-store execution, and shaping the future of immersive retail in South Africa.
Sunil is the Chief Information Officer and SVP – Business Technology & Analytics at Majid Al Futtaim Retail, and a globally recognized leader in digital transformation with more than 28 years of impact across the retail and consumer sectors. He has driven large-scale transformation programs across multiple regions, reshaping omnichannel, e-commerce, data, and supply chain capabilities for some of the most influential retail brands.
Known for translating strategy into execution, Sunil has built a reputation as a trusted board-level advisor, guiding C-suites through technology-enabled growth and enterprise-wide change.
Having earned multiple industry distinctions for his work, Sunil continues to accelerate business performance by aligning technology, analytics, and operating models to deliver measurable commercial outcomes.
Cindy Chua is the Senior Investment Lead at Jobstreet Singapore, part of the SEEK Group. She oversees full funnel marketing investments across digital and offline channels, shaping how brands connect with audiences and drive sustainable growth. Her focus is on aligning media strategy with brand and user journeys, creating meaningful engagement and measurable outcomes.
Harriet leads Singapore’s largest experience design team. She works end-to-end—from strategy to execution to enhance customer experiences and drive human-centered innovation. A natural connector, Harriet collaborates across technology, brand, transformation, behavioural science, and design to shape both present and future experiences.
Yong Yau Goh is the Chief Marketing Officer at BullSwipe, a global fintech platform that converts crypto to fiat instantly. He helms BullSwipe’s brand, marketing and communication development across its African, Middle Eastern and Asian markets, and has over two decades experience as an award-winning brand communicator. Prior to BullSwipe, Yong Yau was the Chief Marketing Officer at the AWHL Group, Singapore’s largest conglomerate of integrated health, wellness and beauty brands. Leading regional teams across diverse business verticals, he oversaw the positioning, transformation and communication strategies for the group’s flagship brands. Most of Yong Yau’s career, however, has focused on the agency’s side, where he led full-suite creative and communication teams in Singapore, Myanmar and Shanghai at the Coal Group. This was where he consulted for and engaged CEOs and senior management in some of the region’s leading corporates to take their organisations to greater heights in terms of brand direction, communication approach and business strategy — with proven results. These corporates include regional giants like StarHub, DBS, Mapletree, the Mottama Group and the METRO Group. Yong Yau is also a doctoral candidate at the Golden Gate University, where his work focuses on AI-driven marketing and communication technologies.
I lead at the dynamic intersection of business strategy, technical infrastructure, and growth operations. My core philosophy is clear: architecting autonomous ecosystems that liberate global headcount growth from revenue expansion.
By weaving together complex SaaS telemetry with unified data taxonomies spanning sales, product, marketing, and customer success, I empower enterprises to evolve from reactive reporting to proactive, automated revenue engines. I built the “Single Source of Truth” (SSOT) that offers C-suite executives the clarity needed to navigate intricate customer journeys and make pivotal, board-level decisions.
Throughout my career, I have dedicated myself to optimising the vital balance between top-line revenue generation and systemic risk mitigation. At TikTok, I mapped risk-versus-revenue trade-offs, assessing initiatives across User, Regulatory, and Platform risk vectors against Tapped, Untapped, and Lost revenue to unlock $500M in untapped platform monetisation and prepare executives for US Congressional hearings.
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