“We’re incredibly excited about Cape Town becoming a destination for young people around the world. Cape Town has become Africa’s largest start-up scene,” Wesgro CEO Tim Harris
said at the Growth Innovation and Leadership Africa 2016 conference, in Cape Town.
He said home-grown companies from Cape Town were moving into Africa and going global. These included online retailers like Takealot and Zando, as well as mobile payment solution company Yoco, online education provider GetSmarter and nutrient recycling
business AgriProtein
Harris said Cape Town had stiff competition from Nairobi, in Kenya, which was in contention to be the digital capital of Africa, but he believed the Mother City had the edge with its “unparalleled infrastructure base” and world-class universities.
The 11 000 students at Western Cape universities from other African countries also presented a great opportunity for them to serve as ambassadors for the region..
“If you are in retail, agroprocessing and agribusiness, or in the asset management space in Cape Town, you are at the centre of Africa.”
New sectors such as renewable energy, business process outsourcing (BPO) and the oil and gas industry were also driving momentum in the Western Cape.
Of the 150 000 people migrating to Cape Town over the past decade, 70,000 had moved from Gauteng, bringing with them their skills, experience and capital.
However, many people still commuted between Cape Townand Johannesburg, taking the ‘red eye’ for the working week in Johannesburg.
“The Cape Town to Johannesburg commute is the tenth busiest commuter route in the world for a reason,” said Harris.
Wesgro was also trying to connect Cape Town more easily with the rest of Africa and internationally through direct flights from Cape Town to Nairobi, Frankfurt and Dubai.
