South African Business 2019 edition

OVERVIEW
If developers have an opportunity to put fibre into a new township’s
infrastructure when it is built, a new level of affordability can
be achieved. DFA is active in Gauteng Province and by August 2018
had installed connections in 1 000 units.
Private companies like Vodacom allocate specific budget items
to rural access and in September 2017 it announced that it would
zero-rate its services for university student and staff who are
Vodacom subscribers. To illustrate the vastly different uses to which
technology can be put, Vodacom is also developing an affordable
sheep-tracking collar with farmers in the Eastern Cape.
Statistics South Africa reports that nearly 60% of households
in the Gauteng city region have direct access to the Internet. This
provides an opportunity to both the private and public sector, but
also a challenge to ensure that government improves its online
services. More than 1 500 kilometres of network fibre has been connected
throughout the province, with 1 066 sites such as schools,
health facilities, libraries and community centres giving community
members and entrepreneurs the chance to be connected with the
digital world. The aim is to have 100% broadband connectivity in
Gauteng by 2020. A provincial government initiative known as
eKasiLabs Innovation Centres supports entrepreneurs and young
people with good business ideas.
Both Johannesburg and Tshwane have free Wifi networks with
Tshwane’s covering 780 zones in places such as libraries, educational
institutions and clinics.
The Small Enterprise Development Agency runs ICT incubators
in several parts of South Africa. The SoftstartBTI ICT incubator is
in Midrand and Tuksnovation, a high-tech incubator, is at Pretoria
University. In the Nelson Mandela Bay Metropolitan Municipality
there is the SEDA Nelson Mandela Bay ICT Incubator (SNII). A new
research and development laboratory was established by SNII in
2016, focussing on apps, mechanical and technical prototypes and
software solutions.
SNII also hosted a national conference on “Universal Affordable
Access to Communications in South Africa”. An example of
ONLINE RESOURCES
Cape Innovation and Technology Initiative: www.citi.org.za
Independent Communications Authority: www.icasa.org.za
Information Technology Association of South Africa:
www.ita.org.za
State Information Technology Agency: www.sita.co.za
Technology Innovation Agency: www.tia.org.za
what can be done to reduce
telecommunication costs in
rural areas was presented by
the University of the Western
Cape, who teamed up with the
Mankosi community in a rural
part of the Eastern Cape to
create the Zenzeleni Network.
This is essentially a community
telecoms company where local
calls are free, data is considerably
cheaper and calls to other
networks half the normal cost.
The Universal Service and
Access Agency of South Africa
(USAASA) is providing connectivity
for schools in five provinces
and smart devices have been
distributed to schools.
There are many opportunities
for employment in the sector.
It is ironic that in a country
with a very high unemployment
rate, the Johannesburg Centre
for Software Engineering (JCSE)
in 2016 put the number of vacancies
in software and application
development, cloud computing
and information security
at 40 000 (Sunday Times).
Training is available from
organisations such as the Quad
Digital Academy, a Standard
Bank initiative, an ICT Incubator
in Port Elizabeth run by the
Small Enterprise Development
Agency (Seda) and from the City
of Johannesburg (which runs a
digital intern programme called
COJEDI). Scarce skills training is
offered by the City of Cape Town
(in partnership with SAP Africa)
in software programming. The
programme is called “Western
Cape Skills for Africa”.
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