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Oct 2026

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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.

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October 26, 202614 min

TCS+ | Vox on AI, data rules and omnichannel communication for SMEs

Phone calls, e-mails and in-person conversations were once the only ways businesses could talk to their customers. Social media changed that. Marketing, customer acquisition, sales and support now happen across a growing number of channels. That brings clear benefits, but it can also leave businesses with a fragmented communication ecosystem that hurts the customer experience. In this episode of TCS+, Natalie van der Merwe, head of telephony at Vox, unpacks why an omnichannel approach matters, particularly for small and medium-sized enterprises. Topics covered in the discussion include: * What "omnichannel" means and why businesses need it now * The benefits for SMEs and their customers * How customer expectations of business communication have changed * Why continuity across channels matters to customers * What a poor or disconnected experience can cost in loyalty and reputation * How a fragmented communication ecosystem disrupts a business internally * Whether SMEs are right to see omnichannel as complex * The role of AI in business communications * Why customers should be involved in designing new channels * The regulatory considerations businesses should keep in mind about the kinds of data exchanged on different platforms Van der Merwe also explains how to make the business case for investing in omnichannel, and advises SMEs on how to start improving their communication ecosystems. TCS+ episodes are sponsored TechCentral

October 23, 202636 min

TCS | The Cape Town firm quietly connecting Eskom, Pep and 6 000 ATMs

Réan van Niekerk Metacom has spent 25 years designing its own routers and running private networks for some of Africa's biggest retailers, without a cent of venture capital. In this episode of the TechCentral Show, founder Réan van Niekerk tells Fanie van Rooyen how the Cape Town company came to connect more than 6 000 ATMs, every Pep store in Africa and, by his account, well over half the communications Eskom uses to monitor and control electricity distribution. He explains why Metacom designs its hardware in-house instead of buying white-label Asian routers, and why one box per store works better than equipment from four suppliers. He also says satellite services such as Starlink would be a "wonderful supplier", not a threat. Van Niekerk also discusses enterprise technology spending in 2026, the AI-driven memory shortages that now force Metacom to order some components a year ahead, the company's cautious approach to AI, which keeps humans on its support lines, and why Africa is not one market. TechCentral

October 22, 202623 min

TCS+ | Boards are underestimating the cost of a cyberattack, says Arctic Wolf

In this episode of TCS+, brought to you by Arctic Wolf, Jason Oehley, the company's country sales manager, and Andre Den Hond, senior systems engineer, talk about why South Africa is bearing the brunt of ransomware in Africa and what businesses can do about it. The pair unpack an Interpol report that found 92% of ransomware detections on the continent are in South Africa. Oehley explains that the country's high connectivity, big financial services sector and large mid-market are part of the reason, along with a tactical rather than proactive approach to security. Den Hond explains how agentic AI systems can automate the attack chain, adapt when an exploit fails and never tire, putting small and medium-sized enterprises squarely in the crosshairs. Watch the video The pair also explain why the time between a vulnerability being identified and exploited has collapsed, why attackers are increasingly stealing data rather than encrypting it and why cyber insurance often doesn't cover the costs that hurt most. Other points discussed include: Why SMEs that supply bigger companies are a back door for attackers, including the recent breach of a group of South African insurers; The hidden costs of a breach, including downtime averaging 22 days, lost income, idle payroll and reputational damage; A customer that put off a security purchase because of the cost and was hit months later for much more; How to measure the financial impact of cyber risk, and why the return-on-investment argument matters at board level; Proactive versus reactive security, and why there is no silver bullet; Whether South Africa's regulators are keeping up, and the prospect of directors' liability; and Why building a 24/7 security operations centre in-house rarely makes financial sense Don't miss this practical conversation about turning cyber risk into terms that decision-makers understand. TechCentral

October 13, 202639 min

TCS | Drones, AI and the future of warfare, with Milkor's Daniel du Plessis

Milkor’s advanced 380 drone is flying for a customer in the Middle East, but South Africa’s own defence force has yet to buy one. In this episode of TCS, Milkor vice-president for Africa Daniel du Plessis talks to deputy editor Fanie van Rooyen about why, and about where drones, AI and autonomy are taking modern warfare. Fresh from the Africa Aerospace and Defence (AAD) expo at Air Force Base Waterkloof, Du Plessis explains what buyers were asking about most: drones of all sizes, data fusion and artificial intelligence. He sets out where a 1.5-tonne surveillance aircraft that can fly for more than 30 hours fits in a world of cheap, expendable drones like those used in Ukraine. He also tackles the harder questions. Who decides who Milkor can sell to, and how do South Africa’s arms export controls work? Where does a human stay in control as drones carry guided missiles and become more autonomous? Are fears about “killer robots” overblown? And how does the 380 keep flying when GPS signals are jammed or spoofed? Closer to home, Du Plessis says the SANDF is severely underfunded and that money, not interest, is what stands between the 380 and South Africa’s defence force and Border Management Authority. He warns that South Africa and the rest of the continent are not ready for cheap attack drones, but says the local defence industry has the capability to respond if government acts now. The conversation also covers Milkor’s larger 780, its new agreement with European missile maker MBDA and how much of the 380 is built in Cape Town. TechCentral

October 8, 202640 min

TCS | Frogfoot sees bigger fibre deals coming

Frogfoot plans to keep buying smaller fibre network operators in South Africa’s suburbs as the market consolidates, but CEO Shane Chorley stopped short of ruling out a sale of the business. “I’d be ignorant to say that we would ignore any offer,” Chorley said on the latest episode of the TechCentral Show – watch or listen below. “I would hope to say that we will be the acquirer rather than being sold.” Frogfoot has already bought a couple of small suburban operators and wants to acquire “as many of those smaller operators as possible”, he told show host Duncan McLeod. He expects somewhat larger networks, of more than 30 000 homes, to come up for sale in the next few years, followed in time by “a much bigger consolidation of one or two of the bigger ones”. The mooted merger of Octotel and MetroFibre had been “going on for a while”, Chorley said, and he expected consolidation among suburban operators to continue. Abraham van der Merwe, who leads Frogfoot, Vox and Hypa, said consolidation was inevitable because “infrastructure requires scale”. But he said Frogfoot was unlikely to be consolidated any time soon because its “long-term and patient” investors, among them the founders, intend to own the business for a very long time. The two spoke after a DNI-led consortium invested in the businesses in a deal valuing them at R14.4-billion. Most of the money will go into townships, where Van der Merwe said fewer than two million of 12 million to 15 million homes have fibre. Frogfoot wants to lift its build rate from about 80 000 connections a year to 360 000. That untapped market is also why Van der Merwe is not worried about operators overbuilding each other. Overbuilding splits market share and wrecks the economics, he said, and there is little reason to do it when so many homes have no fibre at all. It took about a decade to connect the 4.5 million homes in the suburbs; the township market is three times that size. TechCentral

October 5, 202644 min

Meet the CIO | Vodacom’s Mohamed Sami on the agentic future

Mohamed Sami, group chief information officer at Vodacom, says autonomous AI agents that resolve customer problems without handing them to a human are the next big shift in customer experience – and that it is closer than many think. Speaking on TechCentral’s Meet the CIO podcast series, brought to you by NTT DATA, Sami said Vodacom’s chatbots and voice bots already handle a considerable share of customer calls, while AI tools help its human agents find information without jumping between systems. “When I say it is the next big thing, it is not something that is happening in years. It’s something that is happening very soon,” he said. How autonomous those agents become, he added, depends on how much intelligence and orchestration sits behind them. Watch the episode Sami also discusses: • Where the line falls between his role and that of the group CTO as network and IT converge; • Why Vodacom is using small language models to help large models handle isiZulu, Swahili, Amharic and Egypt’s Arabic dialects; • How a standard set of AI agents across the software development life cycle is lifting developer productivity, and why it hasn’t cost software engineers their jobs; • How Vodacom is trying to stop AI token bills running away, including orchestrators that route work between expensive, cheap and self-hosted models; • Why he told the board that cybersecurity is one of the company’s biggest risks, and the programme to rebuild core platforms designed before the generative AI era; and • What it takes to be a modern CIO, and his advice for a graduate who wants his job in 20 years. Don’t miss a great discussion on technology in telecoms. TechCentral

October 1, 202628 min

TCS | Norrsken22’s Lexi Novitske on how China is winning African tech

Chinese companies have built their position in African technology one layer at a time – first phones and telecoms equipment, then fintech and now the AI models that local start-ups build on. American private capital, meanwhile, is pulling back. Lexi Novitske, general partner at Norrsken22, thinks US investors will regret it. Novitske moved to Nigeria in 2012 and has invested from Lagos ever since. Norrsken22, a pan-African growth fund backed by Nordic tech founders including those behind Klarna, Skype and Minecraft, closed its debut fund at US$205-million in 2023. It is now about halfway through deploying that capital, with no exits yet. In this episode of the TechCentral Show, she expands on the argument TechCentral reported last week: that African start-ups are increasingly building on Chinese AI models such as Alibaba’s Qwen because they are cheaper and more available, and that the US risks losing both a young, digital-first market and access to its data. In the interview, with TechCentral editor Duncan McLeod, Novitske also discusses: • How Nigeria’s start-up scene has changed since she began as an angel investor; • Why unpredictable regulation and a shortage of top talent are bigger obstacles for Nigerian founders than power cuts; • How Chinese-backed OPay and PalmPay won Nigerian fintech by absorbing years of losses, and why that now makes regulators uneasy; • Why Silicon Valley’s AI boom has drawn venture capital away from Africa, and when she expects it to return; • Why Egypt and South Africa offer the best opportunities right now, with Nigeria likely to follow; and • What Optasia’s oversubscribed JSE listing means for Johannesburg, why the biggest African fintechs are looking to New York, London and Hong Kong instead, and why one or two winners can return an entire fund. Don’t miss the discussion! TechCentral

September 29, 20261 hr 26 min

TCS | Dominic White and Adam Ely on AI agents going rogue

AI agents are no longer a thought experiment for security teams. They are breaking out of test environments, hacking real companies and, according to one of our guests, already going rogue inside large businesses. In this episode of the TechCentral Show, TechCentral deputy editor Fanie van Rooyen talks to Dominic White, MD for South Africa at Orange Cyberdefense, and Adam Ely, GM of AI security at Check Point, about the escalating threat AI poses to cybersecurity. They unpack the incident in which OpenAI’s own agents escaped a test environment and broke into Hugging Face’s systems. White argues the initial breach was far from sophisticated and questions whether OpenAI understands its duty of care. Ely explains why the incident shows that even highly skilled, well-resourced teams can’t rule out agents going rogue. They also take on the widely reported story that three Hacktron researchers used Anthropic’s Claude to take over OpenAI employees’ accounts – a story White calls “deliberately misleading”. Also discussed: • A Check Point customer running 50 000 AI agents – and what happens when they drift • Why sandboxing and human oversight are struggling to keep up • Why even security professionals end up switching off their own agents’ safeguards • The case for monitoring agents from the inside, in real time • Whether AI development can – or should – slow down • Who is accountable when an agent breaks the rules • The Manhattan Project comparison both guests reach for • What they expect to see in the next 12 months Whether you run a security team, build with AI or simply want to understand where the technology is heading, this is a frank conversation with two practitioners who see the threat from all sides. TechCentral

September 16, 202625 min

TCS | Octotel’s Trevor van Zyl on the fibre merger question

Octotel CEO Trevor van Zyl joins the TechCentral Show to talk about where South Africa’s fibre market goes next – including a potential merger with MetroFibre Networx. Van Zyl told TechCentral that Octotel and MetroFibre Networx are assessing a combination that would create the country’s third-largest fibre network operator, with both companies sitting under a common investor in an AIIM-led consortium. In the interview, he sets out Octotel’s position: just under 400 000 homes passed across the Cape Town metropole, the West Coast and the Garden Route; a balance sheet he says lets the company deploy capital when and where it chooses; and a Western Cape footprint he argues overlaps very little with MetroFibre’s. He discusses the next phase of roll-out, too. As networks push into lower-LSM areas, “the commercials and the economics start changing”, he says, and affordability now reaches well into the middle class. He rejects the idea that fixed-wireless access can substitute for fibre in dense settlements – wireless has improved dramatically, he says, “but when you look at the actual demand case and what is required in those environments, it absolutely has to be fibre”. The more important question, in his view, is how to distribute it economically once you get there. On Openserve’s move into the ISP business, Van Zyl is relaxed. He says he understands why Openserve did it, but that Octotel will not follow: “We certainly don’t want to become an ISP. We’re not good at being an ISP.” He also expects consolidation among ISPs as networks saturate, sees low-Earth orbit satellite as complementary to fibre rather than a threat to it, and will not rule Octotel out of any future move by MTN on fibre network assets. Don’t miss the discussion. TechCentral

September 9, 202643 min

Meet the CIO | Chris Shortt on what a supermarket becomes

Chris Shortt, chief technology officer at Shoprite Group, says the work of the next five years is meeting the customer at their point of need, wherever that is – and that this does not mean the end of the store. Speaking on TechCentral’s Meet the CIO podcast series, brought to you by NTT DATA, Shortt said Africa’s largest retailer is building towards a unified experience regardless of how a customer reaches it: ordering by voice from a home assistant, or walking in to choose their own tomatoes and their own fillet. “How do we blend that for you so that it’s actually how you want to do things, as opposed to how we might want you to do things,” he said. The group’s store footprint, he added, is as alive and active as it has always been, and its point of presence in communities still makes a difference to customers. Delivering on that promise rests on a real-time inventory layer, which is why modernising Shoprite’s core SAP retail platform is the largest technology project the group has running. Shortt also discusses: • How the CIO/CTO’s job has changed, with the infrastructure now simply expected to work and the role shifting towards helping business counterparts understand the art of the possible; • Why about 12 000 Shoprite employees are using generative AI, and how the gateway the group built picks the least expensive model that can handle a request; • Why his product teams now pair one or two people with several agents, and what he put to the group’s chief people officer about recruits who arrive with agents of their own; • Why he will not comment on other retailers’ ERP failures, and the “day in the life of” testing he relies on instead; • What he tells the audit and risk committee when they ask what keeps him up at night; and • The book that shaped his thinking, and the productivity habit he will not work without. Don’t miss a great discussion on the future of retail. TechCentral