Angela Matlapeng

Student

Angela Matlapeng NASIG 2023 Student image

Angela Matlapeng is a versatile professional who earned her honors degree in Computer Systems Engineering (CSE) from the University of Sunderland in 2015. She received the Best Student Award, having attained the only First-class in her cohort in CSE and the Computing faculty. Angela has 7+ years of experience in the ICT industry, is a Cybersecurity Expert currently tenured at BOCRA as a Computer Security Incident Response Team (CSIRT) Analyst since October 2018 and is a member of the SADC Regional CSIRT Task Force. She is also an Envoy for the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) Women in Cyber Mentorship program. Recently during the Africa DNS Forum 10th Anniversary held in October 2022, Kenya, Ms. Matlapeng was recognized with an Excellence award for demonstrating innovation in maintaining the resilience and sustainable development of Africa's Domain Name System (DNS) industry.

 

Angela is the Chairperson of the Botswana Accountancy College (BAC) Alumni Association. She has partnered with BAC since 2019 in a 5-year long initiative – the Angela Matlapeng Women in ICT Award aimed at women's inclusion in ICT by bringing awareness about gender inequality issues in ICT and recognizing and highlighting achievements of female graduates in Computing courses at BAC. Above recognition of excellence and tangible gifts, the initiative also intends to equip the graduates with skills necessary for corporate world entry delivered through a guided peer-to-peer mentorship program she leads within the recipients' community, emphasizing soft skills and changing the mindset for personal branding. She also introduced commemorating the international GirlsinICT Day in BAC, first celebrated online in April 2020. 

 

Ms. Matlapeng began her career as a Junior Software Engineer in June 2015 at SDK Digital Lab. While at SDK, she focused on developing enterprise desktop apps, corporate websites, and mobile applications, including tech-driven marketing solutions such as BrandBox, Feedback Master, the digitalized Spin the Wheel, and the Scratch and Win games used for digital product activation. She was also part of the team that successfully developed a mobile app that was deployed to celebrate Botswana's 50th Independence Anniversary in 2016 - the BOT50 app. Later Angela joined ZHE Pty Ltd as Management Trainee: In-house Software Development in 2017. She developed an e-commerce platform among the few in the country and integrated it into waybill software to enable parcel tracking. 

 

2018 Angela joined BOCRA and assumed an interim position managing the country's critical internet infrastructure - the .bw domains (bw ccTLD) for 3.5 years. During this time, she drove initiatives to market and grow bw domains resulting in doubled domain registrations of 10,000+ during the covid19 pandemic. As part of this role, she took part in policy development and multi-stakeholder engagements leading to her appointment to the board of the regional organization of ccTLD Managers known as the Africa Top Level Domains (AfTLD) LTD. After a year at AfTLD, Angela was appointed the Vice Chairperson serving the organization from June 2020 to December 2022. While at BOCRA, Angela formed part of the team that established the Communication Sectorial CSIRT, the first of its kind in the country. In this unit, she currently carries incident response roles, cyber threat intelligence, vulnerability assessments, and cybersecurity awareness and training. Angela also shares her knowledge extensively through contributions to policy, frameworks, and guidelines development, presentations and webinars, and written articles locally and in working groups within international organizations such as the AU, ICANN, FIRST, ITU, ISOC, and others. 

 

She enjoys reading, live music, outdoor activities, networking, acts of kindness, mentoring, and problem-solving games in her spare time. She is also enthusiastic about diversity, inclusion, equity, and a sense of belonging in the workplace and is zealous about AI/ML and Big Data. 


Favorite Quote: "The true meaning of life is to plant trees under whose shade you do not expect to sit." 

Personal Mantra: "Feel the fear, and do it anyway."