Kathy Gibson reports from SATNAC 2014 – While technology is important in enabling transformation, it is useless unless we bring people along with it – and South Africa has an obligation to nurture its talent.
This is the word from Saki Missaikos, MD of Internet Solutions, who points out that the telecoms industry is defining the continent’s economy.
“Technology is so pervasive – it touches everything we do, every day. We talk about the sexy stuff like the apps, but it’s not possible without connectivity. And this is a massive obligation we have as an industry.
“If we are not working together to break down barriers we will be stuck where we are today – and we are not in great shape.”
He cites the example of Tristan da Cunha, which became connected and today has access to the best healthcare and education – and better bandwidth to large parts of South Africa.
“Our obligation is to provide the connectivity,” Missaikos says. Currently, the need is for social connectivity, he adds, although the bandwidth intensive applications will come later.
“We might think the lower LSM people don’t want connectivity. Well I’ve got news for you,” MIssaikos points out.
While technology is at the centre of the new world, it is bound up with the economy and society.
“The country is not in great shape at the moment,” he says. “But now is the time that we should be investing in entrepreneurship.”
This is because innovation tends to follow recessionary periods, and technology waves can be mapped to global recessions or crashes, Missaikos says.
“We are losing our entrepreneurs. We have made investments in the universities, but the real challenge is to keep them here. And not to bring them into organisations to build higher walls.”
He urges South African companies and individuals to leverage the current crisis to develop new products, services and innovations.
While we used to talk about business to consumer (B2C) and business to business (B2B) organisations, Missaikos says there is a new trend towards end to end (E2E) customer experiences.
“Companies like Uber have fused technology and people; with the virtual and the physical coming together,” he explains. “The key metric for them is the client experience.
“But this all needs connectivity – it is very important.”
The step change in the technology, he adds, is the advent of mobility. “Most people will have their first Internet experience on a mobile device especially in Africa.”
For customers, their experience is now available at the touch of their mobile phone button.
Uber is a great example, Missaikos says, with a great physical user experience delivered via the mobile phone.
Co-incidentally, South Africa entrepreneur David Frankel, best known to locals as the founder of Internet Solutions, was a seed investor for Uber.
South African telcos are hiding behind excuses to not provide connectivity, Missaikos says, and they face the danger of being overtaken by new entrepreneurs, in the same way that other industries are under threat by new business models.
“Our barriers will be broken down – if not by us, by someone else.”