Cobus van der Merwe is a former army man who has managed to carve out an impressive second career in defence technology. He’s an experienced negotiation team leader in both partnership establishment and contract closure in land warfare and aviation systems. He is currently a senior executive specialising in electronic warfare at Saab Grintek Defense, based in Centurion, South Africa.
Cobus has extensive experience in leading defence-level operational test and evaluation teams and performing customer value engineering. In this conversation, taped a couple of months ago, Cobus shares insights gleaned from an extensive defence career which straddled the seismic shifts which occurred within South Africa’s socio-economic landscape over the last three or four decades.
Theme music by Brian Lupiya. Used with permission.
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Cobus van der Merwe is a former army man who has managed to carve out an impressive second career in defence technology. He’s an experienced negotiation team leader in both partnership establishment and contract closure in land warfare and aviation systems. He is currently a senior executive specialising in electronic warfare at Saab Grintek Defense, based in Centurion, South Africa.
Cobus has extensive experience in leading defence-level operational test and evaluation teams and performing customer value engineering. In this conversation, taped a couple of months ago, Cobus shares insights gleaned from an extensive defence career which straddled the seismic shifts which occurred within South Africa’s socio-economic landscape over the last three or four decades.
Theme music by Brian Lupiya. Used with permission.
Eline Blaauboer is Managing Partner at both TBL Mirror Fund and Safaricom Spark Venture Fund. She’s worked in the venture capital and private equity sector in both Europe and Africa for last 14 years— gaining loads of experience with new investments and portfolio management, negotiation and structuring of investment rounds and deal flow generation.
Her latest undertaking is something called 'Africa Tech Ventures' - a fund focussed on investing in and accelerating the growth of disruptive tech-enabled start-ups and businesses in Sub-Saharan Africa. Eline and her team at Africa Tech Ventures are currently in the process of fundraising and on the look-out for investors interested in collaborating with them.
Theme music by Brian Lupiya. Used with permission.
Additional music by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com).
African Tech Conversations
Cobus van der Merwe is a former army man who has managed to carve out an impressive second career in defence technology. He’s an experienced negotiation team leader in both partnership establishment and contract closure in land warfare and aviation systems. He is currently a senior executive specialising in electronic warfare at Saab Grintek Defense, based in Centurion, South Africa.
Cobus has extensive experience in leading defence-level operational test and evaluation teams and performing customer value engineering. In this conversation, taped a couple of months ago, Cobus shares insights gleaned from an extensive defence career which straddled the seismic shifts which occurred within South Africa’s socio-economic landscape over the last three or four decades.
Theme music by Brian Lupiya. Used with permission.