I was invited to be a guest speaker at Cape Peninsula University of Technology (CPUT), Graduate Centre for Management, Certificate Award ceremony tonight (19 June 2013). Below is the text of the talk that I delivered.....
Thank you for inviting me to this event. I am honoured to be here with you at your awards ceremony.
I run a company called African Ideas. We are a strategic consultancy helping governments to accelerate the benefits of ICT-enabled change through transformation of the public sector and the wider economy.
Our name embodies the principles that we believe in and strive towards - African Innovation, African Development, African Empowerment, African Action and African Solutions.
We believe in the ripple effect – dropping a stone or even a drop of water in a pond, causes ripples to emanate from the source, getting bigger and bigger the further away from the source they get. This is a powerful example of small changes causing large and far-reaching effects. At African Ideas, we specialise in working with our clients to identify these ‘big lever’ projects – the projects which, when embarked upon, will set the necessary ripples in motion to drive change and transformation throughout an eco-system. In this way we aim to have a profound effect on the society in which we operate.
A few days ago, there was a very interesting article in the MIT Technology Review that I am still trying to get my head around. The article was titled “How Technology Is Destroying Jobs” and was clearly of interest to me, as I have always had the view that technology can have a massive impact on social and economic impact in our country. I was starting to wonder if some of the luddites that we seem to have in charge of our country might have it right after all, and if I might have it wrong.