Roald Kvevli

roald@acaciaeconomics.com

+27 11 880 1673

Roald is a telecommunications consulting professional.

His focus lies in areas such as telecommunications business and technology strategy, telecommunications technology rollout and planning, telecommunications network and product costing, telecommunications cost optimisation, business planning and modelling, and network systems integration.

Roald has extensive experience in telecommunications, most recently as an independent consultant with KraftTech and as a non-executive director for the firm. Roald has also gained experience through his position as an associate director with KPMG where he built up the telecoms expertise within KPMG and established a greater technical competence within this area. He held a position as a principal consultant with ICON corporation with the responsibility to lead consultation assignments in areas of strategy, product development, costing and valuations, and high level network design. Roald has also held the position of National manager for the business and logistics support of the network group at MTN South Africa. Roald has extensive experience as a Systems Engineer and project manager from his time at Advanced Technologies and Engineering.

Rahma Leuner

rahma@acaciaeconomics.com

+27 11 880 1673

Rahma is a senior economist at Acacia Economics. Her focus areas include competition/antitrust economics.

Rahma has worked on expert economic reports for mergers and abuse of dominance cases, policy responses in the healthcare, mobile data and electricity sectors, market inquiries on data services, online platforms and healthcare. She has conducted an impact assessment, and a concentration and participation tracker report for South Africa.

Rahma holds an MSc in Applied Economics from the University of Cape Town, an MSc Economics from Tilburg University in the Netherlands, a BCom (Honours) degree in Economics from the University of Cape Town and a BCom in Philosophy, Politics and Economics from the University of Cape Town.

Dr Ryan Hawthorne

ryan@acaciaeconomics.com

+27 11 880 1673 / +27 83 445 2185

Dr Ryan Hawthorne is a director of Acacia Economics and is an economist working on competition and economic regulation. His focus areas include competition/antitrust economics and the economics of telecommunications regulation.

Ryan has led the economic analysis of a range of telecommunications regulation projects in a number of countries, including the market enquiry into mobile broadband for the Independent Communications Authority of South Africa (ICASA), and the recent spectrum licensing valuation and invitation to apply for ICASA. Ryan has also led the economic analysis for a number of major competition cases for Acacia as well as in his role at the Competition Commission of South Africa, including in the telecommunications, dairy, news media, forestry, grocery retail and automotive components sectors. Ryan has also worked on a number of competition and regulation matters in the telecommunications sector, including in leading the economic analysis for the margin squeeze complaint against the fixed line incumbent in South Africa, Telkom, and leading key aspects of investigations relating to wholesale access to mobile networks in a number of countries. He has also been engaged in strategy development in the telecommunications sector.

Prior to this he worked at Neotel, a large telecommunications provider (now Liquid Telecom) in a number of capacities including leading projects on expanding broadband networks. Before working at Neotel, he was a senior economist at the Competition Commission of South Africa. This followed work as an economic expert on competition cases with the specialist economic consultancy Johannesburg Economics, of which he was a founder.

Ryan holds a PhD in economics from the University of Cape Town, a Master’s degree in Economics from the University of the Witwatersrand and a BBusSc (Hons), University of Cape Town. He has presented a number of papers at conferences and has several publications.

Sha'ista Goga

shaista@acaciaeconomics.com

+27 10 590 6192 / +27 79 963 5684

Sha’ista Goga is an economist with a focus on microeconomic policy, competition and economic regulation. She is a director of Acacia Economics.  

Sha’ista holds a Master of Philosophy in Economics from the University of Oxford, where she was a Rhodes Scholar as well as a Bachelor of Economic Science and Honours in Economics from the University of the Witwatersrand (with distinction).

Sha’ista has provided advice on competition to various companies, regulators and multilateral institutions. This includes analysis and advice to clients on both mergers and prohibited practices cases in industries such as telecommunications, healthcare, broadcasting, publishing and printing, industrial components, and agriculture. Sha’ista has also advised multilateral and regional organisations on the development and implementation of competition policy and has been active in training authorities and regulators. Sha’ista is currently a Part-time Member at the Competition Tribunal. Sha'ista has extensive experience on economic regulation, particularly in the healthcare, financial services, ICT, and energy sectors, and has advised on various sectoral inquiries in Southern and East Africa. She has also acted as an economic expert in contested matters before the High Court.

Sha'ista has research and consulting experience within both the corporate and non-profit sectors. She is currently a part time member of the Competition Tribunal, a Research Fellow at the Centre for Competition Regulation and Economic Development (CCRED) at the University of Johannesburg and an associate researcher at the Southern Centre for Inequality Studies at the University of the Witwatersrand. Her current research interests include the relationship between competition and inequality and competition in digital markets and its impact on development.