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David Frankel played a pioneering role in the commercial development of the internet in South Africa as co-founder and CEO of Internet Solutions.
Since then, he’s gone on to a successful investing career in the US, where he is co-founder and managing partner at Boston- and New York-based Founder Collective, a seed-stage venture capital fund whose successful investments have included Uber Technologies, Brontes (sold to 3M) and PillPack (sold to Amazon).
Frankel, widely regarded as one of the most successful entrepreneurs to come out of South Africa’s technology industry, joins TechCentral editor Duncan McLeod on TCS Legends to chat about:
• His career, and how the Internet Solutions opportunity came about;
• What it was like in the early days of the internet in South Africa;
• The fight he led, with Mark Todes, against Telkom’s attempts in the 1990s to monopolise the internet industry – and how the industry won the battle;
• The cast of characters at Internet Solutions, including brothers Ronnie and Alon Apteker, that made it a special place to be at the time;
• Whether he was really offered the job of CEO of Dimension Data;
• His studies at Harvard Business School;
• The creation of Founders Collective, and why Boston is a great place for a tech-focused venture capitalist to be; and
• His views on South Africa in 2024 and his continued connection to the country.
Don’t miss this insightful interview with one of South Africa’s leading entrepreneurs, exploring the role he played in the heady days of the internet in South Africa and what it took to build a successful investment career in the US.

We apologise for the audio quality issues in this episode.

In this special episode of the TechCentral Show (TCS) – presented by MTN Business – Duncan McLeod chats to two South African biohackers, Daniel de Kock and Jarryd Bekker, about why they have voluntarily installed microchips in their bodies.
Respectively the chief technology officer and CEO of Riot Network – the wireless broadband specialist that is building low-cost networks in underserviced areas, including Olievenhoutbosch in Gauteng – they tell TechCentral about why they chose to implant the chips and what they’re used for.
The pair, who both profess a desire to receive brain implants from Elon Musk’s Neuralink, explain how they started augmenting their biological bodies with electronics, what’s involved, the information they’re able to glean from the chips, and where the fusion of human biology and electronics is headed over the coming decade.
In the interview, Bekker and De Kock unpack how electronic circuitry in the human body can help detect and manage serious health issues, and the impact this could have on fighting disease and prolonging people’s lives.
The two discuss a range of issues related to biohacking, including:
• What’s involved when it’s time to upgrade the chips;
• How one goes about having them installed;
• The growing online biohacker community;
• Integration with artificial intelligence; and
• Much more.
Don’t miss this offbeat but fascinating discussion!

From the internet of things (IoT) to private 5G networks, MTN Group has a lot to offer public sector organisations, according to David Behr, CEO of MTN Converged Solutions.
Behr, a stalwart of the local ICT industry and a recent recruit to MTN, tells TechCentral’s TCS+ business technology show about the solutions that MTN Business offers its government clients, including smart government solutions, IoT (for example, for smart metering) and private 5G (which has strong applications in areas such as healthcare and education).
Although some government processes have been automated successfully and improved using technology, many areas of the public sector are still quite manual and paper-based, and modern technologies offer an opportunity to reduce administrative overheads and improve service quality for South African citizens, Behr explains in the interview.
In this episode of TCS+, Behr unpacks:
• The state of spending on ICT solutions in South Africa’s public sector, and where spending should be directed;
• What further role technology can play in improving government’s work and the effective management of government services;
• The role of private 5G networks in the public sector;
• The state of cybersecurity in government and what more can be done to protect public sector systems from attack; and
• The public sector opportunity in the rest of Africa.
If you work in the public sector, be sure not to miss this important conversation.

TechCentral is thrilled to bring you an interview with Mike Lawrie, a pioneering figure at Rhodes University who helped bring e-mail and later the internet to South Africa.
In this episode of TCS Legends – the podcast series that features interviews with (and about) some of the leading figures who helped shape South Africa’s technology sector into what it is today – TechCentral editor Duncan McLeod sat down with Lawrie to chat about the ground-breaking work that happened at Rhodes University in the early days of the internet.
In this episode, Lawrie shares wonderful anecdotes about that time at Rhodes, and why the Eastern Cape university was able to achieve things its bigger rivals in the cities couldn’t – or wouldn’t – during the height of apartheid.
Lawrie remembers many of his colleagues at Rhodes at the time, and the role they played in connecting South African universities to e-mail, and later to the internet.
Episodes 1 and 2 of TCS Legends featured well-known investor and businessman Duarte da Silva, who reminisced about some of the business leaders that helped build South Africa’s tech industry. Episode 3, featuring Hein Engelbrecht and Carlos Vizcarra, turned the focus to the late Mustek founder David Kan.
TCS Legends is a by-invitation-only, editorially driven tech show that builds on TechCentral’s credible, market-leading podcast productions.
TCS Legends is powered by Mitel. For all your unified communications and customer experience needs, visit Mitel.com.

Paratus Group is rapidly emerging as a major player in the telecommunications industry in Southern Africa. But who’s behind Paratus, and what’s its history?
From landing Google’s Equiano subsea cable in Swakopmund and building a new fibre route between South Africa and Namibia – providing a new data corridor between Gauteng and the world – to working with Meta Platforms to wire up Zambia and building expansive satellite ground stations, the Namibian-born group has its eyes firmly set on becoming a significant telecoms player in the region.
In this episode of the TechCentral Show (TCS), TechCentral editor Duncan McLeod chats to Paratus Group chief commercial officer Martin Cox about the company’s origins (although founded in Namibia, it cut its teeth in Angola), its current footprint and its future growth plans.
Among other topics, Cox discusses:
• The impact of the recent subsea cable breaks in West Africa and the role of diverse routes in reducing the impact;
• Paratus’s new fibre route from Swakopmund to Johannesburg, which runs through Botswana – its significance and what was involved in its construction;
• The group’s footprint in South Africa, including its new satellite ground station in Irene, near Pretoria; and
• Paratus’s culture, and why its management team is happiest in “the trenches”; and
• Whether a listing for Paratus Group could be on the cards at some point (its Namibian operation is already listed in Windhoek).
Don’t miss the discussion!

A dusty township in Gauteng is the site of a South African-developed mesh network that could change everything. Read the full story at https://techcentral.co.za/internet-revolution-in-olievenhoutbosch/241698/