Multinational firms operating across the African continent have to contend with global geopolitics in addition to fragmented local regulation as they deploy capital and move goods and services across 54 unique country markets.
Firms that base their operational decision-making on risk intelligence enjoy a clear edge over their competitors.
“The only certain thing we are faced with on a daily basis is uncertainty; as risk leaders, and as executives and leaders of organisations, we have to be able to quantify those uncertainties,” said Institute of Risk Management South Africa (IRMSA) president Nicola Comninos, delivering introductory remarks at a recent IRMSA executive engagement session held in Johannesburg.
The event was promoted by IRMSA as an exclusive leadership forum focused on foresight, resilience and strengthening decision-making confidence and also served to formalise a partnership between IRMSA and Moody’s. This was aimed at advancing risk-intelligent practices across South Africa and the broader continent.
“Our partnership with IRMSA is a signal of our intent to deepen our collaboration with key players in the African continent, and recognise that IRMSA is a critical voice for Africa’s risk community,” said Ighosime Oyofo, director: relationship manager, large corporates Europe and Africa at Moody’s, during a brief speaking slot.
Redefining risk leadership
Sanjay Bhana, IRMSA vice-president and programme director, commented on the need to build resilience and sustainability in a “brittle and anxious” world. He qualified the uncertainty comment with a broader challenge to rethink how risk leadership is defined, asking the hybrid audience to identify long-held assumptions about risk leadership that should be unlearned to remain relevant in a non-linear world.
Oyofo, in turn, singled out information as the underpin for risk intelligence. He said that information helped firms to “see the interconnected risks and the exponential issues” they deal with on a daily basis. More importantly, he acknowledged modern risks as geography agnostic.
“You may be tempted to think that risks that happen in Africa do not happen elsewhere, or that certain types of risks that are more prevalent in other parts of the world are less prevalent here – we do not believe so,” Oyofo said. “There is nuance, there are differences, but the truth of the matter is that risk is interconnected.”
Addressing risks at scale
Moody’s role in the partnership was framed as helping risk practitioners to answer three important questions:
(1) Who are we doing business with?
(2) What are the risks of doing business with the people or entities thus identified? and
(3) How do we address those risks at scale?
“If you know some element of history and current events, and you are able to look at trends and analysis, then you will be better informed going forward,” Oyofo said.
His core contention was that companies trading across Africa face interconnected risks including credit constraints, currency volatility, ESG considerations, regulatory shifts and supply chain fragility.
Africa’s growing risk management sophistication
Africa was described as “a centre of gravity for global growth” and its institutions praised as ambitious, world class and staffed by an increasingly sophisticated risk management community. Moody’s contended that African risk management should be localised and forward-looking while aligning with international best practice.
Comninos, who also serves as chief risk officer for Johannesburg Stock Exchange-listed Purple Group, described the IRMSA-Moody’s partnership as an exceptional development for an institute whose core purpose is to deliver value to members and ensure they are empowered to make risk-intelligent decisions.
“We see Moody’s as a risk-intelligence leader, globally, and the partnership brings that insight into South Africa and into the African continent ‘fit for purpose’ for each one of its 54 countries,” she said.
From reactive to predictive risk management
The better-known ratings side of the Moody’s offering was described as the “tip of the iceberg” in a research-backed capability spanning hundreds of factors and data points across reams of structured and unstructured data. The argument was that firms should engage more deeply with the IRMSA-Moody’s collaboration to put tangible numbers to the myriad operational uncertainties they face.
The extent of the solution crystallised during a longer presentation by Sapna Amlani, senior director: industry practice lead supply chain at Moody’s. Her emphasis was on moving organisations from reactive responses to predictive decision-making, supported by integrated data that surfaces early-warning signals across supply chains, counterparties and corridors.
Amlani offered practical examples to illustrate the point. A South African retailer was said to have identified distress signals in a tier-two supplier and lined up an alternative source before disruption hit, protecting continuity. A Johannesburg manufacturer reportedly used live port and rail data to reroute via Maputo during congestion, safeguarding a product launch.
The message was consistent: risk-intelligent firms need to put in place mechanisms to shorten response times when disruption occurs. Her broader argument was that modern risk does not present in isolation and that firms need to keep a close, real-time watch on key metrics such as beneficial ownership, cyber vulnerability, ESG factors and sanctions exposures. By consolidating these signals into a single view, organisations can respond earlier, reroute faster and contain losses before operational disruption causes financial or reputational damage.
Operational discipline and the application of risk intelligence carry clear consequences for insurance pricing and capacity across the continent. In higher-risk corridors, insurers are placing greater weight on how convincingly firms can demonstrate that they understand their exposures and have tested their response to disruptions. Evidence of structured stress testing and supply chain oversight increasingly influences underwriting discussions, tying resilience more directly to financial sustainability.
Building a risk-intelligent future
In closing the programme, IRMSA chief executive officer Yvonne Mothibi linked the partnership to a broader ambition for African and South African firms. Referencing the region’s history of ratings pressure and institutional downgrades, she suggested that embedding stronger risk intelligence frameworks could, over time, help “flip the signs” and change the trajectory of institutional performance across the continent.
She described the engagement as the beginning of a long-term collaboration, noting that discussions had been underway for more than a year, and positioned the partnership as reinforcing IRMSA’s drive to integrate strategy, risk and resilience by aligning Moody’s risk intelligence capabilities with the institute’s mandate to guide South African firms in embedding risk management into core operating frameworks.
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