To go global, SA tech needs local customers

South Africa does not have a shortage of technology talent. We have engineers, software developers, entrepreneurs, researchers and innovators capable of building world-class products. What we appear to lack is confidence in them, and we have an expensive habit of treating a foreign logo as a certificate of competence.

The first question is often, which international platform should be bought, not whether a South African company can solve the problem. The local option must prove itself. The international brand arrives ‘pre-proven’ by reputation.

What makes matters worse is that some people in positions of influence understand this, but still favour legacy international technologies partly because those skills make them more internationally marketable. Naturally, there is an incentive to build expertise around technologies with the biggest international employment market.

There is nothing wrong with that ambition. But what is best for an individual’s career is not necessarily what is best for the company making the purchase, or for the country trying to build its own technology industry.

What happens as a result is that local tech industry loses confidence in itself, because it thinks, “maybe we’re just not good enough” when they are; because once you compare products pound for pound, then you see just how good your product is.

And that is the problem government can help solve.

My proposal is straightforward:

Government should create meaningful tax incentives for companies that buy qualifying South African-developed technology. Local technology procurement should contribute meaningfully towards empowerment. And where a capable local alternative exists but an organisation still chooses to buy internationally, there should be an economic consequence to that decision.

B-BBEE recognition should reward organisations that help build South African technology capability through their procurement practices.

If government gives companies a meaningful incentive to buy qualifying South African technology, that money stays active in the South African economy.

The local technology company hires people. Those employees pay PAYE. They buy houses, cars, food and services. The company buys from suppliers, grows, pays tax and, hopefully, starts exporting. South Africa’s economy grows as a result.

We already understand this principle with physical products. Governments use tariffs and duties because importing something has an economic consequence.

Technology should not magically escape that conversation because it arrived through an internet connection instead of a harbour.

In return, South African technology companies benefiting from these incentives and major contracts would have a responsibility to hire, train and develop South African graduates and school-leavers, especially young people who would not otherwise get that opportunity. Build them into your business and grow their skills.

Those commitments should count meaningfully towards empowerment.

You create somebody who has a skill, an income and experience. Five years later that person may be leading a team, building a product or starting another company. That is how you create an industry.

That is the cycle we need to establish.

Every technology purchase is an economic decision

Technology companies do not become world class in PowerPoint presentations. They become world class through customers, difficult deployments, failures, fixes and the relentless irritation of the real world.

Each contract improves the product. Each implementation develops skills. Each reference site makes the next sale easier.

If you never give South African companies those opportunities, they never get the chance to grow. Too many already struggle to win the backing of their own market, never mind convincing international markets to buy from them.

We are starving our technology companies and then complaining that they are not big enough to trust with large contracts.

Look at our banking sector. South African banks are well regarded internationally. If a local software company can go into Europe and say that a major South African bank runs its technology, the conversation changes immediately.

The international buyer is no longer being asked to gamble on an unknown South African company. Somebody credible has already taken that risk.

And South Africa has already proven that it can export technology.

World Bank data shows South African ICT service exports grew from approximately US$71- million in 2020 to around US$1.7-billion in 2025. The world is already buying South African technology capability.

The question is how much more could that number grow if our own government and businesses actively backed South African technology.

A lack of local support is making it unnecessarily difficult for South African technology businesses to build scale here. Entrepreneurs increasingly look overseas because, if they cannot grow in their own country, eventually it makes sense to export their businesses somewhere that will give them the opportunity.

Silicon Valley Bank recorded 1,991 new tech unicorns globally in the last 10 years of which 11 were African. The World Intellectual Property organisation recorded 1,290 globally active unicorns in 2025, including 158 in China, 66 in India and 9 in Africa, with South Africa having only one homegrown unicorn: Tyme Group.

StartupBlink’s August 2026 global startup Ecosystem Index lists Tyme Group as South Africa’s only unicorn even though South Africa is the leading startup country in Africa. Tyme Group became a unicorn in 2024 after a US$250-million funding round led by Latin America’s Nubank, which valued the business at US$1.5-billion.

The South African government also counts Go1 as a homegrown unicorn because its co-founder Melvyn Lubega, is South African. But Go1 was founded in Australia and therefore does not qualify as a South African-founded unicorn.

And that is one of our biggest problems.

We should be exporting our technology, not having to export the entire company that builds it. That is why creating stronger local demand matters. But how we create that demand matters just as much.

South Africa’s experience of state capture demonstrated what happens when public procurement is distorted by private interests. The answer cannot be to replace one form of favouritism with another. Local technology must still compete on merit. Transparent procurement, proper governance and genuine competition are non-negotiable.

But neutrality does not mean pretending all economic outcomes are equal. The answer to bad procurement is not foreign procurement. It is good procurement: transparent, competitive and based on merit.

Then use those contracts to build people.

The Institute of Information Technology Professionals South Africa’s (IITPSA) 2024 ICT Skills Survey highlights another side of the problem, specifically addressing the brain drain. Citing UN data, it reports that 914, 901 South Africans had settled abroad by the end of 2020. It also notes that digitally skilled South Africans working for multinational technology companies are increasingly being poached, transferred or promoted abroad.

Since COVID, however, remote work has become globally standardised by many companies, and South Africans no longer have to immigrate for their skills to leave the country. The IITPSA cites a 2023 Playroll report estimating that, out of approximately 120,000 software developers in South Africa, around 40% are working remotely for overseas companies. Its own survey produced a more conservative figure, with 10.9% of respondents saying they were working remotely for overseas employers or clients.

And although we have seen a healthy increase in school-leavers going on to study ICT across South African universities, the number of graduates is still much lower than in other major fields.

IITPSA found that South Africa’s proportion of STEM graduates was lower than most of the countries it benchmarked. If the graduates we do produce are increasingly drawn into overseas companies, the local industry continues to lose the very skills it needs to grow.

This is exactly where government can connect technology policy with youth employment.

Real work. Real experience. Real skills.

What we need is a growing local technology industry with enough real work to encourage more school-leavers to study ICT, more graduates to enter the industry and more experienced professionals to build their careers in South African technology companies.

That requires more than producing skills. It requires creating an economy in which those skills have somewhere to go.

Other countries have already shown what deliberate investment in domestic technological capability can achieve.

China did not simply accept that advanced technology permanently belonged to somebody else. Its Made in China 2025 strategy was designed to strengthen domestic manufacturing, innovation and technological capability.

When Huawei’s access to US-origin technology was restricted, it continued building its own ecosystem, including HarmonyOS, which now extends beyond phones into other smart devices and parts of the automotive market.

Then look at China’s wider automotive industry.

In 2024, China overtook the European Union as the world’s largest exporter of cars. In 2025, it exported more than 2.5 million electric cars.

Twenty years ago, how many people would have predicted that China would become one of the world’s major automotive technology powers?

That is the point.

Industries do not permanently belong to the countries that currently dominate them.

But you have to give your own industry the opportunity to develop.

“Necessity is the mother of invention.”

People innovate when they have a reason to. Countries do too.

Reliance on imported technology by default removes necessity, becoming the fast food of industrial policy: quick, familiar and much easier than cooking for yourself. Live on it long enough, however, and eventually the health problem belongs to you.

None of this means foreign technology is bad. That would be foolish and economically self-defeating. International technology and international partnerships remain essential where they provide better capability, transfer knowledge or help South African companies reach international markets.

This is not an argument for buying local regardless of quality. Mediocrity wrapped in a South African flag is still mediocrity. Compare the products properly. Give capable South African companies the opportunity to compete. Reward organisations that invest in local technology. Use those contracts to train graduates and school-leavers.

Build the skills here.

Build the intellectual property here.

Build the companies here.

Then export it.

Bottom line: South Africa needs to stop being an employee in the global technology economy and become an employer.

Create the incentive. Reward local procurement. Link it to meaningful empowerment and youth employment. Give South African companies the customers they need to grow into exporters.

We have the skills. What we need now is the confidence – and the policy – to grow them.