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I volunteered at a Startup Weekend in Johannesburg last year and do agree with this statement. With that being said I do think that the investors or starting t

I volunteered at a Startup Weekend in Johannesburg last year and do agree with this statement. With that being said I do think that the investors or starting to get more tech savvy. My family on my fiancee's side is from South Africa and I regularly travel back and forth between South Africa and the US. Whenever I'm there I try to line the trips up with tech conferences and/or local meetup groups. South Africa has a strong tech community that is doing really interesting things. The thing that surprised me was that on my last trip I found out that one of my fiancee's family members is a investor in a startup. This guy is not very tech savvy, but even he could see the possibilities. Does the community still have a ways to go, yes. But with that being said I do think they will get there. Also, the stuff happening in Cape Town is really exciting.

buyx 13y ago
South Africa has serious structural issues preventing a tech revolution: a rotten school system, a welfare-based economy with a tiny tax base, that is dependent on credit-driven consumer demand rather than production, underinvestment in infrastructure, and government with a huge mandate, that is too timid/rent-seeking to change things (heaven help us if our Proportional Representation system fragments into something like those of Israel or Italy), big business that has a long tradition of collusion and price-fixing, a white minority that is hell-bent on maintaining the status quo, and a union movement that cripples job creation. Previously, South Africa was a resource-driven economy - there are limited traditions of entrepreneurship. The chances are good that the African startup revolution, if it comes, won't start in South Africa.