Mortimer Hope

Mortimer has over 20 years’ experience in ICT policy development across the African continent and is a respected regulatory and industry leader in the field. Mortimer leads Policy Impact Partners’ Africa Team and has proven success in engaging with policymakers and stakeholders to achieve clients’ objectives.

Mortimer has a deep understanding of both the regional drivers that impact policies and the specific in-country contexts that shape them. Through his experience in public and private sectors, he has developed a keen sense of how to align the positions of industry and regulators.

As Head of Africa for the GSMA, he was responsible for advancing mobile’s policy agenda in the region and developing effective and sustainable relationships with government departments, legislators and regulators. He led the GSMA’s public policy team in Africa and directed the operations of its regional office in Nairobi, focusing on priority issues such as spectrum, infrastructure sharing, taxation and mobile financial services.

Prior to the GSMA, Mortimer spent ten years at Vodacom South Africa where he was responsible for all technical regulatory matters, and for policy support to Vodacom’s operating companies in Lesotho, Mozambique, Tanzania and Democratic Republic of Congo. Over this period, he played an instrumental role in helping the mobile industry secure digital dividend spectrum at the 2007 and 2012 UN World Radiocommunication Conferences.

Before joining the private sector, Mortimer spent six years in engineering and management positions at the Independent Communications Authority of South Africa.

Mortimer has an MSc in telecommunications engineering from the Moscow Technical University of Communications and Informatics, and an MBA from the University of Pretoria. He is registered with the Engineering Council of South Africa, is a Fellow of the South African Institute of Electrical Engineers and is also a member of the Institute of Directors of Southern Africa.