Israeli owned Magic Software South Africa (SA) is expanding its African business as it has signed on mobile operator MTN Rwanda and Nigeria’s Petroleum Equalisation Fund (PEF) as customers.

Israel’s Magic Software Enterprises -- which is listed on the NASDAQ and is a global provider of cloud and on-premise application platform and business integration solutions -- bought a controlling share in its South African distributor Magix Integration in January 2011.

Subsequently, Magix Integration was renamed Magic Software SA and it operates from Johannesburg.

In July this year, Magic Software SA appointed Satson Global Network (Satson) as a partner and reseller in Nigeria.

And following this development, Magic Software SA has won customers in Nigeria and Rwanda.

Daniel Hall (pictured), who is the country manager for Magic Software SA, has told ITWeb Africa that Nigeria’s PEF and MTN Rwanda are using Magic’s ‘xpi’ integration offering.

The xpi offering integrates the likes of differing enterprise resource planning (ERP) applications and customer relation management (CRM) apps via ‘pre-built’ connectors.

This offering then helps businesses quickly connect divergent applications without depending on a developer.

MTN Rwanda, for example, is using xpi to connect its Sage 500 ERP application with the mobile operator’s billing system.

Meanwhile, Magic Software’s motivation to expand into Africa comes as Hall has said the South African market is approaching maturity while businesses in the rest of Africa are looking to affordably fastrack their integration capabilities.

Hall added that the Israeli deal to acquire Magix in 2011 also spurred on a greater global expansion drive for the South African unit.

“That obviously opened up the opportunity and capability for us to move outside of South Africa perhaps in a more aggressive way than what we had up to that point,” Hall told ITWeb Africa.

“Our value proposition is speed of deployment and price.

“So, Africa is very well suited to that. They need good technology, they need great technology, but they need to get it in quickly,” Hall added.

Apart from targeting Africa with its xpi offerings, Magic Software SA is also looking to sell its ‘xpa’ mobile solution across the continent.

The ‘xpa’ offering helps enterprises develop applications on various smart device operating systems without having to rebuild the apps using different programming languages, such as Java, each time.

The xpa applications are developed natively but then served up in a hybrid medium. The xpa apps also connect to business processes and even enable offline usage, Hall has told ITWeb Africa.

Magic Software, though, has not found a customer for xpa in Africa yet, but Hall said plans are in place to target the continent with the service.

And regarding Magic Software SA’s future plans in Africa, Hall told ITWeb Africa that Uganda, Kenya and the Southern African Development Community (SADC) countries are in the company’s sights.

Currently, Magic Software SA has two partners in Rwanda, one in Nigeria and another in Tanzania.

“Our focus for 2014 is to get into Africa as aggressively as we can with both of those platforms and to get traction with our partners and their customers.

“We want penetration; that’s a big thing for us,” Hall concluded.