Kgomotso Lekola, founder and Group Managing Director of BT Industrial Group, is a seasoned South African industrialist with over two decades of executive experience. Hailing from Soshanguve, north of Pretoria, Lekola has held top positions including CEO, COO, General Manager and Executive Chairperson at several of the country’s leading businesses.
Today, he leads one of Africa’s foremost pipe manufacturing firms BT Industrial, which employs over 200 people and operates across multiple sectors.
“We are a science and engineering-based manufacturing business,” Lekola explained in an interview. “We manufacture high-density polyethylene pipes. We also have an engineering division that designs pipe systems, and a medical division that produces plastic-based medical products.”
He noted the scale of the company’s operations, “We have implemented around one million kilometres of pipeline across Africa. To put that into perspective, that’s nearly 2.5 times the distance between the Earth and the Moon.”
Despite the challenges of South Africa’s infrastructure and energy crises, Lekola said diversification has been a key strategy.
“Much of our work supports the global energy transition from fossil fuels to electricity, which requires critical minerals like copper, lithium and cobalt. These are key in battery production,” he said. “We focus on supporting mining companies that extract these resources and explore high-growth markets globally.”
BT Industrial is expanding across the continent, with an office in Lusaka, Zambia, and another being established in Lubumbashi, Democratic Republic of Congo.
“The African Continental Free Trade Agreement is central to our growth strategy,” Lekola said. “It harmonises regulatory standards across countries, which allows products certified in one nation to be recognised in another. That eliminates the need for costly and time-consuming recertification.”
The company’s client base includes Sasol, Anglo American, Exxaro, and Netcare, and its products have reached clients across four continents.
Lekola has a strong track record of delivering complex, large-scale projects across industries including mining, manufacturing, telecommunications, media, and financial services. He is a regular guest at World Trade Organization and World Bank meetings and was named runner-up for Businessman of the Year in 2014.
“We operate in highly regulated industries where quality and safety can directly affect lives,” he added. “That’s why compliance and standardisation are at the core of our work.”
