Why Silicon Cape rocks

IT TOOK a while for the South African financial media to cotton on to the Silicon Cape venture capital and innovation initiative, but when the heavyweights joined the fray, people listened.

For those who aren't up to speed, last week in Cape Town the Silicon Cape initiative was kicked off by Justin Stanford of 4Di Capital and tech entrepreneur Vinny Lingham. The idea was that they would create a community of innovators and investors and try to bring them together, along the lines of Silicon Valley in the US.

Initially, it sounded a little grandiose and an excuse for a get-together in Camps Bay, but it quickly morphed into quite a big deal. Five hundred venture capitalists and innovators attended the event, which had presentations by heavyweights like Remgro's Johann Rupert and Western Cape premier Helen Zille.

As usual there were plenty of naysayers who shot down the concept before it had even made a start, and I think there was a reason for that.

While there was a lot of talk bandied around by the tech bunnies about a "cool" venture, there was less focus on why the initiative was important. I think that's an area that needs to be explored.

At the moment South Africans are living through some pretty rough times.

We grumble about jobs, service delivery, high telecommunications costs and Eskom's submissions to parliament on energy costs.

Grumbling won't create jobs

There is not a lot to be cheerful about.

Yet we still find time to criticise other people for spending time, energy and money to put together an initiative of this nature - a project effectively pulled together by two South Africans and a small support crew.

From it flowed many good ideas, interaction with senior government representatives and the announcement that R4m had been invested in two start-ups - Skyrove and Springleap.com.

These are important developments for the country. If we don't foster a culture of innovation in South Africa, we'll be going backwards - fast.

If this type of initiative is not pushed - and pushed hard - we are going to sit a year from now, bemoaning the fact that electricity and telecommunications costs make it prohibitive to do business in South Africa. We are going to complain that legislation makes it tough to invest in new businesses or expand beyond local borders.

Most importantly, South Africans are going to blame everything from black economic empowerment to the recession to the big, mean corporates when they can't find jobs for themselves and their children.

And this employment angle to me is the most critical take-away from all of this. The two guys who got the funding sell online T-shirts and install Wi-Fi hotspots. A couple of weeks before, Invenfin bought into an online chess gaming initiative.

Not only do they create jobs, but they create ones which didn't exist a few years ago. These jobs in turn create opportunities for designers, software technicians and so on.

If you need to ask yourself why initiatives such as these are so important, maybe you need to look beyond the day after tomorrow and work out what the country holds without these innovators.

- Fin24.com