The Western Cape is Africa’s leading digital hub with the Cape Town/Stellenbosch tech eco-system being the most productive on the continent. Cape Town is also fast establishing a reputation as the Cloud Computing hub of Africa, with a number of new data centres currently being built.
Reasons to invest
Cape Town is ranked in the top 30 cities at the forefront of global tech (released in February 2019 by Saville consulting). There is a distinct and established culture of tech innovation and entrepreneurship in the city, so it’s little wonder half of emerging tech companies in South Africa are based in the Western Cape. One need only look at a few of the tech success stories to see how this sector is flourishing: Yoco (Fintech), Aerobotics (Artificial intelligence), SweepSouth (Digital services), Yuppiechef (ecommerce), Recomed (Health & Biotech) and Dataprophet (Artificial Intelligence).
Half of the top universities in Africa are from South Africa with two of the top 3 universities being located in the Western Cape (QS World Ranking, 2020).
South Africa was also the largest African destination for Foreign Direct Investment into research and development activity between 2003 and 2018 valued at US$345m with 13 investment projects.
Why Cape Town and the Western Cape?
- We are home to global tech giants like Amazon. The Amazon Africa headquarters is located in Cape Town, employing more than 4000 people.
- Naspers, one of the 10 largest tech investors in the world, is headquartered in Cape Town.
- Availability of highly skilled IT personnel.
- Home to four major tertiary education institutions: University of Cape Town (highest QS World Ranking amongst African universities); University of Stellenbosch (3rd highest QS World Ranking amongst African universities; University of the Western Cape (17th highest QS World Ranking amongst African universities); and, Cape Peninsula University of Technology.
- Cape Town is the 6th most affordable city compared with the other 30 top global tech cities.
- Cape Town has more than 25 co-working spaces and more than 20 local and international accelerators.
- The Cape Innovation & Technology Initiative (CiTi) is regarded as one of the oldest tech incubators on the continent. It has incubated more than 2 000 businesses and supported more than 3 000 entrepreneurs.
- The Western Cape’s Software & IT services received the 2nd largest FDI by projects (66 investment projects) behind business services (75 projects), between Jan 2003- December 2018 (FDI Intelligence, 2019).
- Healthy competition in the telecom market including local representation of the leading global operators.
- The Western Cape is connected to the world via multiple submarine cable networks.
- Ubiquitous fibre networks available on an open access basis: Extensive FTTB (fibre to the business) and FTTH (fibre to the home) coverage, plus multiple carriers on the ‘golden triangle’ of Cape Town, Johannesburg and Durban.
- Widespread coverage at 4G, with 5G being rolled out.
- Several thousand WiFi hotspots.
- Fibre optic networks from multiple providers including Openserve, Liquid Telecom, Dark Fibre Africa, Octotel and Cybersmart.
