South Africa Needs More Ambitious Founders

South Africa does not have a shortage of entrepreneurs. We have a shortage of ambition that is willing to look beyond what has already been proven elsewhere.

Too often, African founders are encouraged to “solve African problems” by adapting technologies, business models and products developed in Silicon Valley, China or elsewhere. There is immense value in adaptation, but it becomes limiting when it is treated as the ceiling of what African technology can be.

A VR company does not have to begin with importing somebody else’s headset. An AI company does not have to wait for the next model to be released. An African solution does not have to mean a technologically lagging one.

This talk is an argument for a more ambitious South African founder: someone willing to build intellectual property, originate new categories, pursue difficult technical problems and participate in shaping the technologies that will define the next era.

The question is not whether Africa can build what the rest of the world is already building.

It is whether we are willing to believe we have permission to build what does not yet exist.

What Would Technology Have to Feel Like for Distrust to Be Removed?

We often talk about trust in technology as if it is primarily a communications problem: educate the public, explain the technology, address concerns, repeat the benefits.

But what if distrust is telling us something about the technology itself?

As AI moves into robotics, extended reality and physical environments, people are being asked to accept systems that can see, listen, predict, act and increasingly make decisions around them. These days, technical capability can advance much faster than human comfort.

This creates a problem for founders: a technically impressive product can still fail if people do not understand it, trust it or feel comfortable having it in their lives.

So what would technology have to feel like for distrust to become unnecessary?

This talk explores trust as a design problem rather than a marketing problem, and asks what the next generation of AI, robotics and XR products should do differently if humans and intelligent systems are going to share physical space.

This is a non-technical, founder-oriented session intended for people building or thinking about products involving AI, robotics, XR or other intelligent systems. It is designed as a 20-minute talk with examples, observations and a framework for thinking about trust as part of product design and adoption.

The session does not require live demos or technical equipment beyond standard presentation facilities.