Germans, French, Dutch and Spanish in Cape Town

I was in Cape Town last week and finally got the deal done on our new office down there.  Moving in on March 1st and looking forward to it.  While there, we got an enquiry from a company looking to set up a call centre German, French, Dutch and Spanish speakers but the staff had to be native of Germany, France, Holland and Spain.  We then looked into the feasibility and learnt that Cape Town is a destination for people from across Europe as a place to live.  Apparently Cape Town has between 40,000 and 60,000 Germans living there along with a healthy number other Europeans.  Along with excellent English and obvious cultural alignment, it’s no wonder that Cape Town is an attractive destination for European and US companies.

South Africa needs to blast open its telecoms industry

I’m working in our Cape Town, South Africa office this week.  Today we met one of the major telecoms suppliers to sort out our connectivity in the new building that we’re taking.  I remain blown away by the price of Internet connectivity in South Africa.  List price for a 1Mb is $3,000 per month!  These prices then trickle down into home broadband bundle coming in at $62 per month in a country where the average GDP per capita (in PPP terms) is $10,100 per year according to the CIA Handbook.  As a result, very few people have broadband access in their homes leaving them disconnected from the rest of the world.

I can’t understand why the South African government doesn’t completely de-regulate the market and open out the telecoms industry.  One sure fire way to kick the economy into gear is to create an environment where universal access to broadband becomes the norm.  Be in no doubt, low cost broadband and the resultant increased penetration almost certainly contributes positively to GDP growth.