A security provider for Angola’s energy and banking sectors

Angola

Venancio Epolua, general manager of G4S, talks to The Energy Year about how the company’s restructuring process has improved its operations in Angola, how it plans to expand its operations and its strategy for offering cash solutions to Angolan banks. G4S is a multinational company offering security and cash solutions in more than 100 countries, including Angola.

How has G4S’ restructuring process improved operations?
G4S is now a 100% Angolan-owned company, in compliance with local content legislation. This is essential to continue playing a crucial role in Angola’s oil and gas sector, where we cater to companies such as TotalEnergies, Baker Hughes, Weatherford and Subsea7. Thanks to this shareholder restructuring, we can now also work with banks and mining companies, which require armoured guards.
Operationally, I also reformulated the way the company works by reinforcing our presence in all provinces and empowering our teams there to enlarge our access to opportunities, which we are actively chasing. Our goal is to grow 15% annually, which will be possible thanks to this operational strategy shift that enables us to be closer to the market and our clients.

How do you plan to expand your operations?
In oil and gas, our goal is to be awarded contracts by SLB, ExxonMobil and Halliburton. We are participating in tenders, and we are confident that we can strengthen our relations with the oil and gas sector. Every month we share our risk security reports not only with our customers but also with the entire market. We bring value to the table.
A growth vector that I expect to be relevant in the coming years is technology. We expect to expand our activities from manned guards, which is one of the main segments of G4S globally, to cash solutions and alarm monitoring. Namibia, for example, has a huge operation in alarm monitoring and is the only country in Africa whose alarm monitoring business volume surpasses all others.
We certainly have the expertise to offer new technologies to our clients. We are already in talks with clients, and we can implement these new solutions in a very short amount of time thanks to our global capabilities. If I have any new projects, such as cash deposits or alarm monitoring, I will quickly get someone from Namibia to spend some time here until the project is fully implemented, and then we’ll take it from there.
Technology can make operations a lot more efficient. In fact, today it’s not possible to provide world-class security services without including technologies.

What is your strategy for offering cash solutions to banks in Angola?
Expanding our footprint into the banking and insurance markets is our number one priority. G4S has two main segments: security solutions and cash solutions. Only one of the segments is represented here in Angola, manned guards, which falls under security solutions. We’re not providing cash solutions. With banks, we can combine both segments together, where we protect people, assets and branches and also provide transport and money protection.
In 2022 we managed to obtain our first banking client, BCS. It’s the first bank we’re working with to provide security, but we also work with Caixa Angola to provide executive protection. However, this is not enough. We want to provide security to the banking sector as a whole, not just in Luanda.

What are the growth expectations for G4S?
According to our research, we are slightly below a 1.5% market share. In the next five years, we have to increase our market share by at least 8%. My ambition in the next two years is to duplicate the number of employees I have.
Currently we have 2,000 employees on the frontline, so in the next two years, I’ll duplicate that to 4,000. I’ll continue increasing the number of employees until 2025. By 2028, we expect to have around 8,000 employees. We can sustain this through new customer acquisition or through acquiring small competitors, which is something G4S has done in many countries in Africa since the market is very fragmented.

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