TECH & THE DESIGN INDABA: Taking stock of our creative enterprise potential

The recent Design Indaba highlighted the creative elements of South Africa’s entrepreneurial culture. With some tech exhibitions and a keynote address from Google’s Robert Wong, any of us familiar with California could easily have felt were at a high tech US convention.

Emerging markets are a big deal, and the rhetoric of talk on our part of the world’s pro-Africa do-gooders has been met with a sobered, but an awareness of the opportunity for outside investors as they realise that Africa is not merely a charity case but a land of good business opportunities. Indeed New York-based Tiger Capital’s stakes in a number of local ecommerce outfits is testament to the confidence of outside players, who could easily have concentrated their efforts in any other larger markets.

And even if the bigger picture shows the majority of South Africans are still outside the mainstream of the world’s technology market, the country’s technological research and quality standards are world-renowned. South Africa has developed a number of leading technologies, particularly in the fields of energy and fuels, steel production, deep-level mining, telecommunications and information technology.

With positive international sentiment, one thing remains for South Africans: think big. It’s a message Google’s Roger Wong drove home at the Design Indaba and a key reason for Silicon Cape’s very existence. It’s a message Twangoo lived out, crediting a Silicon Cape networking event for the eagerness of their founders to play amongst the world’s leaders.

And while foreign exchange controls do make launching international companies a little more complicated than necessary, when it comes to the ease of doing business South Africa ranks in 34th place, above developed countries such as Portugal (37) and Spain (38). On the major emerging markets front, we are ahead of Mexico (44), China (83), Russia (106), India (120) and Brazil (122).

 In reality, there is a pessimism that still pervades in some quarters, but it seems less to do with our ability and more with our attitude. A number of locals have written to us, and are of the view that too many in the Cape - and our country as a whole - are still too parochial in their approach. In my opinion, Silicon Cape is designed to be one part of a global community and not simply aligned to the country or continent. Boundaries are constructs eliminated in the virtual world.