Mohamed Ameen Dabhelia – 2018/02/26

CEO of Google Cloud Partner Siatik Brett StClair says the time for South Africa to transcend in to a ‘digital revolution’ is now.

StClaire says that even though data costs are high in the country, nothing can stop the digital revolution from happening.

“We have over 28 million South Africans with access to data, using this every single day, so the revolution is on.”

According to StClaire the major hurdle to cross now is getting ‘South African businesses to provide South African digital services to our own people.’

However, the first step is getting past our government.

“There needs to be another set of initiatives within government to help South African businesses truly understand the power of the internet.”

StClaire says Wifi networks need to open up, in order to create faster broadband solutions.

“We’ll get a helluva lot more data, but a lot of infrastructure needs to be built in order for that to happen.”

StClaire adds that he personally works on a 60-hour rule to eclipse the rest of the world’s five days problem solving normality; he says if we do this, South Africa will be able to catch up with the rest of the world.

“Doing things within 60 hours helps you focus on the problem and solve it quickly or more importantly, develop a culture of being fine with failing in that time.”

StClaire says they have an opportunity to re-educate the workforce digitally so that as a population they will be able to contribute meaningfully to a new digital economy.