Avusa CEO Prakash Desai has been elected president of Print Media South Africa (PMSA), the body representing newspaper and magazine publishers and its constituent association, the Newspaper Association of South Africa (Nasa).
Desai succeeds Trevor Ncube, owner and CEO of the Mail and Guardian, and will fill the post initially for two years, PMSA said in a statement on Thursday.
Ncube steps down after a distinguished four years as president of PMSA and Nasa. His tenure was the longest of any PMSA president — from 2003 to 2005 and again from 2006 to 2008.
Desai was appointed to the PMSA board on August 17 2006, when he also joined the board of Nasa. He has held a number of senior positions in the print media industry since 1999. Formerly, he was group finance and operations director of what was then Johnnic Publishing Limited.
With the merger of Johnnic Publishing and Johnnic Entertainment to form Avusa, Desai was appointed as finance director and later group finance and operations director.
In September 2006, he was appointed acting group CEO of Avusa and six months later was appointed group CEO. – Sapa