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This is the main feed for all of TechCentral's shows and podcasts, including TCS - The TechCentral Show and TCS Impact Series. Never miss anything we produce and publish by subscribing to this feed.

  1. 3d ago

    TCS | Herotel CEO Van Zyl Botha on beating Starlink to South Africa

    Amazon’s Leo satellite constellation is coming to South Africa in 2027 through Herotel. TechCentral deputy editor Fanie van Rooyen speaks to Herotel CEO Van Zyl Botha about Evry, the brand that will sell Amazon Leo to South African homes, and about how a company with no local licence walked into a market that has kept Starlink out for years. Botha explains why low-Earth orbit satellite technology changes the equation for anyone living beyond the reach of fibre and fixed-wireless services. He addresses the awkward questions directly: • How does Amazon get in without giving up 30%? • Does a wholesale-retail split leave anything behind in the country? • Would he sign the same deal with Starlink tomorrow? • What about the regulatory asymmetry? Also covered: what Evry is likely to cost; why studies on the market’s size range from 480 000 to 2.4 million potential customers; why Herotel is taking registrations for a service that has not launched commercially anywhere; whether Evry will cannibalise Herotel’s own fibre and wireless base; what Vodacom’s stake in Maziv means for Herotel’s independence; and why LEO satellites are viable now when the idea is 40 years old. Don’t miss the discussion! TechCentral

    TCS | Herotel CEO Van Zyl Botha on beating Starlink to South Africa

  2. 4d ago

    Meet the CIO | Derek Wilcocks on how AI personalised Vitality

    Discovery group CIO Derek Wilcocks on personalised Vitality, the limits of AI coding and why growth beats cost-cutting. Derek Wilcocks, group CIO at Discovery, says AI has finally given the group the ability to do something it has wanted to do since Vitality launched more than 25 years ago: personalise it. Speaking on TechCentral’s Meet the CIO podcast series, brought to you by NTT DATA, Wilcocks said Personal Health Pathways is built on AI models trained on member data collected since 2000, and used only with a member’s consent. For most of Vitality’s history, the targets were identical for everyone. The programme can now suggest a walk, a glucose test or a cancer screening rather than a run. Wilcocks spent 23 years at Dimension Data, now NTT Data, where he ran Internet Solutions, served as group CIO and led the Middle East and Africa business as CEO. He was the 12th person to join Internet Solutions and founded a subsidiary that sold the first firewalls into South Africa’s banks. He joined Discovery in 2018. In the discussion, he is candid about the limits of AI in software development. Discovery is measuring efficiency gains of roughly 20-25% in some areas from AI coding tools, but developers in large corporates were spending only a quarter to a third of their time writing code to begin with. Senior developers use all the major agentic coding frameworks, though the group has spent heavily on guardrails constraining what those tools are allowed to do. Wilcocks also discusses: • Why Discovery’s health and life businesses buy no traditional enterprise software, developing everything from scratch; • Why he thinks Elon Musk is right about the direction but wrong about the timing on the end of source code, and the three problems standing in the way – explainability, efficiency and maintainability; • Why the decade in which knowing how to code was enough to walk into a job has come to an end; • How a federated model with around 14 CIOs across the group is held together by mandatory central security, privacy and ethics functions – and what happened when Discovery’s data scientists were asked to simplify the AI rules written for them; • Why he sees AI at Discovery as primarily a growth story rather than a cost-cutting one, with staff retrained and redeployed rather than cut; and • His route into computers, from a Commodore Vic-20 with 4KB of memory to the father who cured him of wanting to be an electrical engineer. Don’t miss any of the other great interviews on TechCentral’s Meet the CIO. TechCentral

    Meet the CIO | Derek Wilcocks on how AI personalised Vitality

  3. 5d ago

    TCS | Money just became native to the internet - Steven Boykey Sidley

    Steven Boykey Sidley has been a chief technology officer at a Fortune 500 company, a private equity investor, a videogame designer, a jazz musician and, for the past four years, a professor of practice at the University of Johannesburg. He is a partner at Bridge Capital, heading its futures advisory, and the author of eight books – two of them on bitcoin and crypto – with another due in October. TechCentral deputy editor Fanie van Rooyen spoke to him about the moment money finally became native to the internet, why the South African Reserve Bank appears to be walking in the opposite direction, and what AI is quietly doing to science and schooling while everyone argues about chatbots. TechCentral

    TCS | Money just became native to the internet - Steven Boykey Sidley

  4. Aug 6

    TCS+ | How AI is turning hardware into a subscription service

    For most of business history, buying technology meant owning it. Capital was set aside, servers and laptops were hauled into the building alongside the software licences, and the business then sweated those assets for as long as it practically could. In the age of AI, that logic is starting to break. Kit bought today can be obsolete in two or three years, chips are in short supply and the companies pulling ahead are no longer those that own the most but those that can adapt the fastest. In this episode of TCS+, Shane van der Merwe, head of technology finance at Merchant West, explains why the shift from owning technology to simply accessing it is gathering pace. Van der Merwe unpacks: • What is driving businesses to let go of owning their technology stack; • Why hardware — the physical "tin" — has been the last thing to move to a subscription model, long after software did; • Whether this is a corporate trend only, or whether cash-conscious SMEs are moving too; • How the rise of AI is accelerating the move away from owned kit; • The global chip-supply squeeze, and the tiering that can leave South Africa further back in the queue; • Whether being in the cloud is a competitive advantage in itself; • What obsolescence really costs a business, even on equipment that is already "paid off"; • How the shift from capex to opex changes the balance sheet — and what happens to the IT team; • What a Merchant West solution looks like end to end, including how Popia-compliant data destruction is handled when old kit is returned; • The circular-economy angle, in which returned devices are given a second life rather than being scrapped; and • How getting this right frees up cash and keeps a business competitive in its core operations, not just its IT. Don't miss the discussion. This promoted content was paid for by the party concerned. TechCentral

    TCS+ | How AI is turning hardware into a subscription service

  5. Jul 30

    TCS+ | iStore Business on why Apple makes sense for SMEs

    For small and medium enterprises, technology must do one thing above all else: get out of the way. Unlike large corporations with dedicated IT departments, SMEs run lean – and every hour spent wrestling with systems is an hour not spent on the business itself. In this episode of TechCentral’s TCS+, brought to you by iStore Business, Sudesh Pillay, executive head of iStore Business South Africa, and Tamia Nontsikelelo, founder and CEO of womenswear label Tol’Thema, explore how SMEs can make smarter technology decisions and why the Apple ecosystem is increasingly the answer. They discuss: The pressures SMEs face and why low-maintenance, cost-effective technology is critical to their survival and growth; How Tol’Thema uses iPhone and Mac in the day-to-day running of the business, and the practical value they deliver to customers; Why historically fragmented SME IT is giving way to integrated ecosystems, and what is driving the shift; The total cost of ownership case for Apple hardware, and why the premium price tag isn’t the whole story for budget-conscious businesses; How Apple’s on-device AI, built into its silicon, helps SMEs future-proof their hardware investment; The support iStore Business provides to ease hardware transitions and reduce the disruption of moving staff onto a new operating system; Why native security and data protection features matter enormously to small businesses with no dedicated IT or compliance function; and Which software and AI subscription costs SMEs can avoid by making better use of tools built into the Apple ecosystem. Pillay also explains what happens when an SME’s needs outgrow out-of-the-box solutions, and how iStore Business provides the specialist support to scale with them. Don’t miss this practical conversation about technology that works for South Africa’s small businesses. TechCentral

    TCS+ | iStore Business on why Apple makes sense for SMEs

  6. Jul 30

    TCS | Icasa's rules skip the real bottleneck: ACT

    Communications regulator Icasa’s draft rapid deployment regulations – a critical intervention for the sector – risk failing unless the regulator brings municipalities into the process, according to Nomvuyiso Batyi, CEO of the Association of Comms & Technology (ACT). Speaking on the TechCentral Show with TechCentral editor Duncan McLeod, Batyi said Icasa had consulted network operators and fibre companies but not the South African Local Government Association, which represents the municipalities that will have to apply the rules. “You cannot just develop regulations without talking to all the parties,” she warned, arguing that Icasa should follow energy regulator Nersa’s approach to municipal engagement. Asked when final rules might realistically be in place, she said 24 months – provided Icasa works through local government first. On enforcement she was more optimistic. Section 21 of the Electronic Communications Act, amended in 2014, already empowers Icasa to set uniform procedures for permits and approvals at a reasonable fee, she said. “A lot of people may have missed the amendment.” The gap is dispute resolution: the draft assumes disputes between licensees, leaving operators without recourse when a municipality refuses a way leave. At Icasa’s public hearings this month, ACT proposed binding municipal deadlines, deemed approval and damages claims for failing to respond to requests in time from telecoms providers. ACT also objects to the detail in Icasa’s proposed national infrastructure database. Batyi supports mapping in principle but said the granularity sought would expose competitively sensitive information and create construction mafia and cybersecurity risks. Beyond rapid deployment, Batyi listed four priorities on her plate: the newly finalised Rica framework agreement on Sim card verification, licence renewals by 2028, Icasa’s end-user and subscriber charter regulations and the Electronic Communications Amendment Bill – which she described as “embarrassing” in its current form. ACT represents Vodacom, MTN, Telkom, Cell C, Rain and Liquid Intelligent Technologies. – © 2026 NewsCentral Media TechCentral

    TCS | Icasa's rules skip the real bottleneck: ACT

  7. Jul 28

    TCS+ | A smarter approach to cloud for South African businesses

    South African businesses are spending millions on cloud – and many have very little to show for it. That is the uncomfortable starting point for this episode of TCS+, in which Nkosinathi Ndlovu speaks to Joel Chacko, executive head of department for cloud services at Vodacom Business, and Jonathan Oaker, founder and CEO of CloudZA, about why the promise of cloud still isn’t matching the reality for so many organisations – and what it takes to close the gap. Chacko and Oaker discuss why cloud has moved from the server room to the boardroom, with business resilience, agility and AI readiness emerging as the new drivers. They also examine why pressure to “move to cloud” can run ahead of strategy, leaving costs to climb faster than returns. The pair also cover: • Common pitfalls behind cost overruns, including poor governance, skills gaps and the slow adoption of cloud-native thinking; • Why hybrid and multi-cloud architectures have become the baseline, and the strategic drivers behind that shift; • The mindset organisations need to thrive in the cloud; • What to look for when choosing a cloud partner; and • What businesses should stop doing immediately, and where to redirect that energy instead. Don't miss the discussion. TechCentral

    TCS+ | A smarter approach to cloud for South African businesses

  8. Jul 23

    TCS | How Optasia lends billions to people banks can’t see

    Optasia is on target to distribute more than US$6-billion in credit across its markets in 2026 – and it carries every cent of the default risk itself. In this episode of the TechCentral Show, CEO Salvador Anglada unpacks how the JSE’s biggest recent fintech listing actually works. Formerly known as Channel VAS, Optasia was founded in 2012 as a single-country airtime credit provider. It listed on the JSE main board on 4 November 2025 at R19/share – top of the range, and oversubscribed several times. FirstRand took a 20.1% stake ahead of the IPO and has since raised it to 26.1%. Today, Optasia’s AI-driven credit decisioning platform operates in 38 countries through mobile operators – MTN and Vodacom among them – and financial institutions, serving more than 120 million monthly active users and making 1.5 billion credit decisions a month. Microfinancing now generates 72% of revenue, overtaking the airtime advance business on which the company was built. In the interview, with TechCentral editor Duncan McLeod, Anglada discusses: • What happens in the 30 seconds it takes an unbanked customer in Accra to get a loan – and why partner banks, the “lenders on record”, carry none of the risk; • The algorithms behind it: more than 5 000 data points per customer, models tailored to each market and a blended default rate of just 1.2% on unsecured loans with no collateral – and no blacklisting of defaulters; • Optasia’s plans for South Africa, where Anglada sees 15-20 million people without proper access to credit – and why local banks will be the channel; • The Nigerian regulatory dispute that suspended its airtime credit services – a suspension Anglada calls “a little bit aggressive”; • Why Optasia chose the JSE over London, and how it works with FirstRand; and • The road to 2030: new markets including Ethiopia, Egypt and Mozambique, plus SME lending, buy now, pay later and a “virtual credit card” now in testing. Optasia reports interim results in September, with revenue guided up by more than 50%. Don’t miss the discussion! TechCentral

    TCS | How Optasia lends billions to people banks can’t see
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About

This is the main feed for all of TechCentral's shows and podcasts, including TCS - The TechCentral Show and TCS Impact Series. Never miss anything we produce and publish by subscribing to this feed.

Information

  • Creator
    TechCentral
  • Years Active
    2017 - 2026
  • Episodes
    150
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © NewsCentral Media
  • Show Website
    TechCentral (main feed)

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