One of South Africa’s greatest entrepreneurs, Koos Bekker, is stepping down as CEO of Naspers, a company he helped build into the monster it is today. Click for more, as well as our interview with Koos.

This, from Fin24:

Koos Bekker Naspers CEO Koos Bekker is stepping down and will be replaced by Bob van Dijk, the company announced on Saturday.

“In view of our strong development focus on ecommerce, the board believes that Bob has the skills to lead us into the next phase of our growth,” said Ton Vosloo, Naspers chair.

Van Dijk takes over on 1 April.

The company said Bekker will stand down from the Naspers board for a year, to allow Van Dijk the space to settle in with both Naspers top management and the board. He will stay on the Tencent board.

In a further change Vosloo will stand down as chair in April 2015, when Bekker will succeed him.

Van Dijk, 41, holds an MSc Econometrics from Erasmus University Rotterdam and an MBA from Insead in France. Among other experience, he headed up eBay Germany, that group’s biggest market outside the US, and was COO of Schibsted’s Classifieds.

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Wow, this really is the end of an amazing chapter. I’ve always marvelled at how Koos has managed to see things before they become overly apparent. I was told a story about when he went to the East to investigate satellite TV operations, as MNET and DSTV were picking up. While there, he stumbled upon 10cent, which Naspers invested in heavily and has now turned into their most successful shareholding. They own China’s equivalent of Twitter, as well as tech products like WeChat.

Below is an audio interview we did with Koos a couple years back, discussing technology and the future.

But before that, Koos was recently featured on Forbes:

South African media tycoon Koos Bekker has run Cape Town-based Naspers since 1997. Bekker has transformed the storied publisher into a new media powerhouse, with investments in China, India, Russia and other countries in Eastern Europe, Latin America and Africa. That includes stakes in China’s Internet and instant messaging leader Tencent Holdings (run by Chinese billionaire Ma Huateng), Russian Internet giant Mail.ru and Brazilian magazine publisher Abril. During his tenure, Bekker has overseen a rise in the market capitalization of Naspers from about $600 million to $40 billion – all the while drawing no salary, bonus, or benefits. He is compensated via stock option grants that vest over time. Naspers stock is up 70% in the past year. Bekker’s net worth has crossed the $1 billion mark for the first time. Bekker was a founding director of African mobile telecom firm MTN. His Babylonstoren estate, nearly 600 acres in South Africa’s Western Cape region, features architecture dating back to 1690, a farm, orchard and vineyard, a 14-room hotel and a restaurant.

CLICK HERE TO LISTEN TO OUR INTERVIEW WITH KOOS BEKKER

And here’s another interview he did On Acquisitions, Operations in China, E-Commerce And The Death Of Print