Welcome to Day Two of SATNAC 2025. ITWeb is at the Arabella Hotel, Golf & Spa, Hermanus, for day two of SATNAC 2025. I’m Chris Tredger, ITWeb’s portals editor, and I’ll be reporting to you live from the event. I’m sure we’re in for another information-packed day, keep the tab open as we tell you what’s happening throughout the day.
If you missed day one, you can check back on our coverage here.
“AI is brilliant, the problem is if we don’t govern it and teach the youngsters to use AI to improve efficiencies and generate growth, then we bring in something that is good, but we're actually exacerbating the youth unemployment problem.”
Sello Mmakau, group chief digital officer, Telkom SA, says despite challenges – including digital literacy levels, power supply shortages and the need for more widespread connectivity – Africa can, and should, aspire to establish its own ‘Silicon Valley’, technology for Africa by Africa.
Mmakau believes digital sustainability is one of the main themes being addressed at SATNAC 2025, but it is discussed with the need to contextualise for Africa.
“As we develop these solutions – AI, Large Language Models–
we need to contextualise them. Most of the models are Western-centric and therefore it is important that when we develop the models, they need to be contextualised to South Africa’s reality. You’ve got a huge population that, for example, the literacy is not where its supposed to be. When these models are developed, the assumption is that digital literacy is good enough to understand the models and be able to apply them. The reality is that we don’t have the infrastructure to accommodate some of these models.”Mmakau says Africa has competitive advantage with its youthful population, a generation that is naturally digitally comfortable and eager to use the technology. However, there is a risk – because other countries have older populations that can be replaced by AI and emerging technologies, the same cannot be said for Africa – as that will only exacerbate the youth unemployment problem.
“AI is brilliant, the problem is if we don’t govern it and teach the youngsters to use AI to improve efficiencies and generate growth, then we bring in something that is good, but actually exacerbating the youth unemployment problem.”
He acknowledges that there are barriers or ongoing challenges for digital transformation to thrive, including electrification.
“You can have the best tech in the world, but if you haven’t addressed the issue around electricity and power, you have a big problem. The second thing is the digital divide is a reality… almost 40% of South Africa’s population don’t have access to the internet and if you go to big rural areas, this percentage goes down to 23% - these are people that don’t have a smartphone, they don’t have internet connectivity and how can we expect them to be digitally included. Digital literacy is a major issue.”
Telkom SA continues to lay fibre, to invest in training, education, and rolling out AI-enabled education platforms. It places a premium on collaboration between telcos, OEMs, finance ial services providers and government to unite behind the country (and continent’s) efforts to leave no one behind in true, empowered digital transformation.
Dr Babedi Modieginyane, Specialist: Research & Innovation, Telkom SA, says in the lead up to the SATNAC conference, 200 students took part in a hackathon challenge to solve real-world challenges.
Modieginyane congratulated the students and commended them for taking on the six-week challenge, while simultaneously completing their studies.
Ten awards were presented for solutions in a range of areas, including: AI-powered career navigation for SA's youth; optimising capital expenditure in the telco industry; real-time financial fraud management; AI-driven real-time threat detection, as well as building a secure, autonomous and sustainable next-generation mobile network.
A group discussion is underway with the theme ‘Powering progress: merging digital innovation and emobility’. It’s being moderated by Kagiso Modise, Executive, Technology Lifecycle Management, Openserve, who says sustainability is about prosperity for people and the planet.
“Today, we are talking about mobility … what is the opportunity for us in SA to evolve and drive the journey towards sustainability? Mobility is becoming renewable, highly digital, greener.
“Mobility is changing. We stand at an intersection in mobility where automotive technology and renewable energy have coincided. What is it that we can do as SA, and Africa, to drive adoption of new ways of mobility to move forward?”
Modise says the reality in South Africa is that there is a lower adoption rate of electric vehicles compared to the rest of the world.
Greg Cress, Principal Director, Automotive & eMobility, Accenture, says we must adapt quickly, and first build out recharging networks. He says we need electric charging infrastructure and stations. “Right now, it’s a bit like the wild west – we have four or five charging port operators, but there’s little interoperability and standardisation, which creates a fragmented customer experience. This needs to be sorted out. If we get it right, we will see an uptick in adoption.”
Telcos collaborating with automotive manufacturers is a natural fit and could lead to innovation in this space. The panellists agree that telcos have data, network infrastructure, and edge compute capacity, including AI data centres. On the automative side, there are millions of end points, services inside vehicles that can be monetised providing gateways to converged services.
Experts add that there is scope for conversational AI within vehicles to offer ‘compute on the fly’ and mention areas of growth and innovation including software-defined electric vehicles, autonomous driving and shared data platforms between telcos and automotive manufacturers.
Keshan Athimoolam, Senior Leader, Solution Engineering – Sub-Saharan Africa at Cisco Systems, is up now. He asks if companies are truly ready to leverage the power of AI? Are they ready to adopt, deploy, and leverage AI’s full potential?
There’s certainly been AI adoption if the traffic is anything to go by. He says there has been a 1448% increase in tokens processed by AI models in the last 12 months, and 36-times increase in AI traffic as early as 2023 – 2024.
Looking ahead, Athimoolam says that 75%-plus of enterprise data will be created and processed at the edge by 2030, driven by AI inferencing.
And from Cisco research, 78% of Africa’s youth use AI tools weekly, outpacing peers in Europe and the US.
On the security front though, he says AI agents represent new risk vectors, including business and reputational harm, data security and privacy, supply chain vulnerabilities, cyber attacks and threats, and compliance concerns.
“This means you have to have a security strategy to protect your network,” says Athimoolam. “If it’s connected, it needs to be protected. Our systems and applications need to be secure. We need to protect workflows, we need to enable the development of new applications without additional risks and reduce burden on security teams. You need to protect yourself and make money.”
Speaking on the topic of shaping AI-driven networks, Luigi Re, Lead Architect, Optical Networks at Nokia in the MEA region, says networks must provide seamless, ultra reliable and secure connectivity to every part of the AI infrastructure.
He says the AI cycle is a major driver of network transformations, with the increased distribution of data centres, and, due to power constraints, the emergence of campus data centre interconnect connectivity.
Re says the opportunity for Africa lies in scaling capacity for global AI and cloud traffic – incorporating explosive traffic growth, subsea systems and SLA-driven backbones, leading to a rise of local digital transit hubs, and a need to identify strategic alternatives to Red Sea routes.
Re adds that quantum-safe optical networks are a must. That means networks that can resist attacks from quantum computers today, even though quantum machines aren’t yet sufficiently developed.
Yesterday, Serame Taukobong, Group CEO, Telkom SA, underlined the importance of SATNAC 2025 in turning global policy into African progress.
He said Africa’s digital blueprint for sustainable growth is based on the objectives to connect everyone (universal, affordable, and secure broadband), build digital skills (empower the youth with the tools of tomorrow), ensure human-centric AI (technology that serves humanity) and create open infrastructure (platforms that enable innovation and inclusion).
Against this backdrop with emphasis on why Africa’s digital moment is now, Sello Mmakau, Group Chief Digital Officer, Telkom SA led a panel discussion about digital sustainability – the African way.
Mmakau said it is important to define digital sustainability as that which is rooted in the African context - not just about high-tech infrastructure, but that which is viable for Africa.
Panellists included Nomonde White-Ndlovu, Chief Information Officer, Bidvest Bank; Dr Brenda Didi, Chief Risk Officer: Group Digital & Technology, Momentum; and Naeem Seedat, Group Executive: Digital Strategy & Venturing, Telkom SA.
Panellists agreed that technology in Africa is not just about innovation, it’s about empowerment, dignity, sustainability for the future.
They also acknowledged that AI is central to this approach, a powerful tool that can find application in agriculture, education, and healthcare.
However, as Taukobong said in his earlier presentation, the emphasis must be on human-centric AI: “AI must be ethical, transparent and inclusive. It should amplify human potential, not replace it, and human values must guide innovation.
Telkom is collaborating with partners and stakeholders. The company is building AI capability within African startups, and creating solutions for Africa, by Africa.
Seedat added: “Telkom also looks at this through a growth lens – how technology can be used to create the next set of capabilities and products, it is about reinventing the business model … it’s exciting to work on new products, we are moving beyond the prototype!”