00:00 Africa Tech Festival, the continent's biggest technology trade show, wrapped up on Thursday.
00:04 13,000 participants in Cape Town in South Africa looking to do business with the African
00:10 tech sector. It's set for another year of growth despite a downturn in the rest of the
00:15 world. Some of the biggest opportunities are in connectivity. That was explored by our
00:19 tech editor, Peter O'Brien, as he spoke to the Director General of the South African
00:25 Communications and Technology Department about her hopes for the growth of the sector on
00:29 the continent.
00:31 And I appreciate the fact that you have both big enterprises as well as your small, medium
00:36 enterprises and start-ups participating at this Africa Tech.
00:41 When the whole world is talking about artificial intelligence and that's what's buoying up
00:45 tech investment elsewhere, really looking around this conference, people are mostly
00:49 interested in connectivity. So do you think that Africa and South Africa specifically
00:55 can really compete when it comes to AI globally?
00:59 It is correct that the focus would still be in terms of digital infrastructure rollout.
01:04 The continent is only sitting at about 36 to 40 percent connectivity in terms of individual
01:11 household mobile, meaningful connectivity. So we have to start there. And basically,
01:18 if you're going to roll out anything even such as AI, you will have to make sure that
01:21 you've got your digital infrastructure in place first.
01:25 And just finally, back to the conference. Obviously, we noticed that Huawei is one of
01:29 the main sponsors and is a big presence still in Africa. While where we're from in Europe,
01:34 it's been kicked out completely over Syrian espionage fears. Is that now a question that's
01:40 been put to bed for the South African government? You kind of decided, look, we've not seen
01:44 any evidence we're going to continue working with Huawei?
01:47 Look, our policy as government has always been net neutral. So it's irrespective. We've
01:55 always looked in terms of the best solutions that will respond to our country. So if the
02:02 Huawei products are able to meet that, I don't think there is a problem. But we've also taken
02:10 our own initiative. We've got other structures within our country. We've got a number of
02:14 regulators, both within the ICT sector, as well as the South African Bureau of Standards.
02:20 So they actually do the type approval to make sure that the equipment, they sign it off
02:25 from a security perspective and also meets the minimum requirements for it to be utilized
02:31 and to operate in South Africa. But equally, we've worked with other international structures
02:36 under the ITU, as well as even within Europe. And up until now, there hasn't been a report
02:43 that has given indication that the Huawei systems compromise the security of the devices
02:52 or the equipment that they deploy. So until such time that we are able to find facts or
02:59 evidence of such, I don't think there is.
03:01 But I also want to emphasize that if you look there, you'll see, we've had a very good,
03:08 strong participation from Cisco, from Ericsson, from Alcatel, and many others. So I don't
03:16 think it's necessarily that there's one singular dependency.
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