The Cape Town information and communications technology (ICT) sector has become a globalised and leading services sector within Africa. Many software development companies in this sector have international investors, clients, suppliers, and business partners. It serves as a localised hub of diverse development enterprises, skills, and infrastructure. It is also the fastest-growing section in the Western Cape. Furthermore, within the broader ICT sector, business and software services are the highest value-add activities in the Cape Town area.
Innovation legacy of the 2010 World Cup
The 2010 FIFA World Cup left its mark on Cape Town and in fact on South Africa not only in the form of numerous humanitarian initiatives but also in lasting improvements to infrastructure and technology, notably software development. In fact, software development underpinned the operation of the 2010 football World Cup. Just consider developments such as the Event Management System (EMS) that had to be developed from scratch and which included a material management app to manage the electronic assets in the venues worth over $1 billion at the time. It’s a little over a decade later and Cape Town today is leading the charge as the software development hub in South Africa.
Cape Town’s competitive advantages as software development hub in South Africa
Cape Town is an attractive choice for tech investors and start-ups, for several reasons: The city offers a superb technology ecosystem including micro-enterprises, start-ups, software-as-a-service (SaaS) providers as well as outsourced sub-divisions of international companies such as Amazon Web Services. A number of outstanding tertiary institutions and online learning establishments that provide courses in the software development sector further support the large talent pool available in Cape Town. The sector is a favourite amongst venture capitalists and angel investors and boasts connectivity infrastructure that is internationally comparable and steady broadband costs. Cape Town has the further privilege of housing the headquarters of global internet giant and Africa’s highest-valued tech company, Naspers. These characteristics ensure a future growth of this sector that eclipses that of other service sectors in the Western Cape.
Cape Town as Africa’s Tech Capital
To solidify Cape Town’s position as Africa’s Tech Capital, the Western Cape Government, City of Cape Town, Wesgro, and major tech ecosystem enablers such as CiTi, Silicon Cape, LaunchLab and Startup Bootcamp collaborated to establish the “Africa’s Tech Capital” initiative. This new brand aims to “unite the tech ecosystem of Cape Town and the Western Cape and present a common message to the world”. The tech sector is one of the Western Cape’s competitive advantages and attracts valuable investment into the province. It also played a pivotal role in helping businesses face the challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Polymorph contributes positively to Cape Town’s innovation
Polymorph develops innovative and scalable software and IoT solutions for medium to large enterprises. We were recently profiled in an edition of Westgro’s Pioneer magazine which celebrated the leaders, innovators and trailblazers in the health tech industry operating in Cape Town and the Western Cape. We understand the unique requirements of innovation across various industries so that our clients and partners can focus on the bigger picture. At Polymorph, we have established the necessary building blocks to develop quality scalable IoT, mobile and web solutions that can collect, analyse and utilise enormous amounts of data while remaining focused on business outcomes. We have partnered with companies to develop innovative end-to-end solutions using the latest technological trends as our benchmark to develop IoT solutions, data dashboards and mobile and web apps.
