Sparc Systems (Africa) Ltd. has won the best firm of the year accolade during this year’s ICT Association of Malawi (ICTAM) Corporate awards held in Lilongwe.The company also won the best infrastructure firm accolade.

But behind Sparc's success is its Group Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer with over 12 years' experience in the IT field giving strategic direction and leadership of the company.

With Phiri at the helm, Sparc has done a number of designs and IT systems implementations across Africa for banks, telecommunications and government systems.

A graduate of the University of Malawi with a first class honours degree; he is a recipient of numerous awards and certification on Leadership and Enterprise ICT.

A visibly excited Phiri described the feat of being awarded the ICT firm of the year as unprecedented and a very encouraging development for his team.

He admitted it’s not easy being an entrepreneur in Malawi but that challenges are opportunities in disguise to innovate and find new solutions.

“As entrepreneurs, you should look at these challenges and create innovative solutions and be able to push them into other countries. They say if you are at the base, your next step you will be going up. So as long as you’re in Malawi, we are able to innovate and bring these serious solutions in Malawi and operate anywhere,” he said.

Phiri says he usually tells his team their aim is not to win awards but to provide the best services and solutions for customers.

“And those solutions as we go out there then the customers are recognising and saying, we thought these things are only done by people from outside; these guys are able to do here. I think that’s why we end up being nominated the best ICT firm.

"Based on our impact, people are voting for us then you find the judges are also looking at the solutions that people have voted to say this is the best solution; the judges also pick at that.

“Because as we’re designing our solutions we normally don’t target Malawi; the solutions that we’re doing in Malawi it’s something that we’re able to scale globally. Based on that, we’ve been able to win these awards over some years”.

Phiri cited banks and telecommunication companies as some of the sectors using some of its solutions which can be used in the civil service as well.

According to the CEO, if government is on track, the private sector will be able to come up with digital technology space initiatives.

With a history of implementations of IT support services in 10 African countries, the leading multi-product and multi-division system integration company operates across Africa with five physical offices spread across Malawi, Zambia and Rwanda.