TechCentral, the South African source for news on technology, reviews and opinions, has named Brian Herlihy, president of SEACOM as the Newsmaker of the Year 2009. TechCentral ICT newsmakers of the year are people who have made the headlines in 2009 and who “happen to be people who made a real difference” in technology.

TechCentral writes: “We think the SEACOM president is the obvious choice for Newsmaker of the Year. The $600m undersea cable project has brought international fibre connectivity to countries in East Africa for the first time and finally broken Telkom’s stranglehold over international bandwidth in SA.”

The SEACOM team had to deal with many technical issues as well as Somalian pirates and the complexities of regulations and legislation across the different African territories.

One of the notable facts is that Brian Herlihy pulled off the project on budget and more or less on time.

Brian Herlihy: “This year represented the culmination of a very long journey for SEACOM, one that has been filled with excitement, success and a fair amount of stress. Despite encounters with pirates and construction delays we managed to bring the cable to life within four weeks of our original ready for service date; while there were many who doubted this could be done, we are very grateful to all of those who never lost the faith and continued to believe in us.