Plato hails digital status of Cape Town

MAYOR Dan Plato welcomed a report naming the city as Africa’s leading digital city.

“It gives me great joy to see Cape Town being named as Africa’s leading digital city. We offer a place for innovation, with the necessary infrastructure and tools to grow as a tech hub.

“This is a reflection of our government’s commitment to creating an environment conducive for job creation, leading to many continuing to see Cape Town as an opportunity city,” Plato said.

CCID chairperson, Rob Kan, said Cape Town emerged as Africa’s leading tech hub, with the city employing more people in the sector than anywhere else on the continent.

“To this end, the City and the CBD has geared itself to accommodate an emerging, digitally savvy population that requires a business environment that offers good broadband connectivity, co-working spaces, accessibility, and quality of life.

“The City Centre has all these, and as a recognised digital city, the Cape Town CBD is well placed to support this vibrant new way of working,” he said.

Mayoral committee member for economic opportunities and asset management James Vos said the City’s enterprise and investment department prioritised support to the tech sector to support enterprise development, mentorship programmes, skills development, and training programmes for the ICT industry.

He said these interventions also helped to boost the attractiveness of Cape Town as a tech destination, stemming the loss of professional skills, and attracting inward investment, facilitating job creation and prosperity through technology.

As part of the City’s efforts towards supporting innovation, Plato said it invested more than R1 billion into the development of a telecommunications network to provide a data connection to various City buildings and locations

The Broadband project, a multi-year project to build a metro area telecommunications network to serve the City’s residents, has so far connected 300 City-owned buildings with broad-based access, and is expected to be connected next year.

However, Plato said the city’s biggest challenge was providing housing to the expanding number of residents.

He said more needed to be done to improve the lives of residents to help them access opportunities.