Sandiso Sibisi
Startup companies must not be confused with small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), highlighted Co-Open Innovation Studio director Sandiso Sibisi at the South African National Space Agency's second Space for National Development Conference, in Pretoria, on Thursday. She explained that there was a difference between startups and SMEs. Startups created new products, new services and new markets. SMEs did not do all these things.
There were thousands of SMEs in South Africa, but only hundreds of startups. And in the area of artificial intelligence, the country had only about ten startups.
"We've got a real deficit of startups in the country," she reported. A big problem for local startups was the country's "education gap" -- the poor quality of much of the education system, including at the tertiary level.
Access to data was another issue. South Africa had to sort out its telecommunications spectrum, to release wavelengths for data transmission.
The local private sector remained limited in terms of its diversity. And, for startups, there was a problem in scaling-up their activities. There was a lack of venture capital investors in the country willing to back startups.
Until the country solved these problems, it was going to stay an adopter of technologies. And South Africa could not take a leading position in the Fourth Industrial Revolution unless it established the proper foundations first -- "building up from the ground".
Innovations that are not used by people are not innovations, she warned. And, "[y]ou can't be good at everything!"