There aren't too many 100-year-old IT companies around.

But IBM recently celebrated its centenary, and Oliver Fortuin, who heads the local subsidiary, said the occasion will be marked by a number of initiatives.

Fortuin started his career at IBM more than 18 years ago, although he had to leave the company when it divested from SA during the height of the sanctions years.

He said that for its celebrations, the local subsidiary was planning a volunteer programme. So far this year, IBM staffers have clocked 2.5million hours of volunteer service. Each employee under Fortuin's watch will be obliged to spend a minimum of eight hours painting and upgrading nursery schools or taking on community projects.

The largest, partnering with NGO Habitat for Humanity, will deliver 10 homes over the coming month.

IBM centennial celebration highlights will include:

•  A book called Making the World Work Better: The Ideas That Shaped a Century and a Company, which chronicles change over the past century;
•  Short films to celebrate the company's culture and innovations and clients who have defied conventional wisdom through new approaches to building their business;
•  Volunteer work;
• A series of business and academic forums through which IBM will convene key influential meetings to spur conversations about future advances in science and technology and how they will affect fields such as healthcare, the environment and the IT industry; and
•  A lecture series and a forum on the future of leadership.

Fortuin believes that in this century Africa will move to the latest ''smart'' infrastructure as the continent seeks to enter the modern era.

He says the situation in the rest of Africa is more extreme than in SA in terms of lack of infrastructure and health issues. The ability to combat these problems hinges around governance, infrastructure and technology being pervasive enough to deal with them.

''Concepts such as a 'smarter planet' will be key to turning the continent around," Fortuin said.

He said IBM would play a central role in making SA's new infrastructure ''smart'' and thus ''future-proof''.

"Most governments, including SA's, are very much awake to the fact that they have to look 10 to 20 years ahead even as they roll out infrastructure currently, so that dialogue is happening naturally. And yes, we're very much acting as an adviser," he said.