Helping expats share ideas

TODAY’S million pound question: how many sons and daughters of Africa are among the total of 191 000 millionaires living in London, as reported in Friday’s Guardian. Actually the real question is: will they ever return to share knowledge and expertise and help build businesses at “home”?

Donovan Neale-May told the SA Innovation Summit in Cape Town on Thursday about another way in which Africa’s brain drain is being reversed. He was talking about Sable Accelerator, of which he is the managing partner, a kind of global match-making service for African business. Sable puts African businesspeople in contact with fellow Africans in the diaspora who are keen to provide support in the form of funding, access to markets, management support, techni- cal assistance or any other help they need.

Neale-May left South Africa a few decades ago, but ended up building successful businesses abroad, in both the UK and in the US. In 1974, he told his employer, Donald Woods, the former editor of the Daily Dispatch in East London, that he was going to Italy “to play and coach rugby for a season”. He ended up staying away for a lot longer but maintained his ties with Africa, as many do.

Neale-May made the point that more than half of Silicon Valley start-ups were launched by immigrants.

South Africa’s estimated 1.2 million expats represent a vast repository of experiential knowledge and Sable gives local businesses access to a network of highly connected South Africans, he said. – ANA