I speak to developers, architects, business leaders, policymakers and students about building software that lasts — and about the digital infrastructure and institutions that Africa’s future depends on.
Sessions listed on the official event programme. The proposed topics further down are offers to organisers, not scheduled sessions.
Africa Tech Festival 2026
Nerina Room, CTICC 2, Level 1 · Cape Town
Masterclass 2: AI, Digital Transformation & Startups
A masterclass for architects, engineering leaders and senior developers on what changes when AI becomes a structural part of a system rather than a feature added to it.
View on the festival programme (opens in a new tab)Africa Tech Festival 2026
Stage 2, CTICC 1, Hall 3 · Cape Town
Satellite, 4G & 5G and AI & Network Optimisation (Next Gen Networks)
A panel on moving AI in Africa from potential to impact — and on what it takes for the continent to build, scale and own its AI future.
With Daniel Thebe (Uhuru Consumer Electronics and Isidima Brands), Xoliswa Desiree Mpati (Bio-Lumen) and Gauravjeet Singh Reen (Taylor & Francis Group India).
View on the festival programme (opens in a new tab)
Africa Tech Festival is held annually at the Cape Town International Convention Centre and brings together technology, telecoms and digital-economy leaders from across the continent. The 2026 festival runs from 17 to 19 November.
Topics I offer to organisers. They are proposals, not booked sessions, and each can be shaped for a keynote, masterclass, panel or lecture — for technical or general audiences.
Adding a model to an existing application is easy; designing a system around AI is not. This session looks at where AI belongs in an architecture, how to define its boundaries and contracts, how to evaluate and observe its behaviour, and how to keep people accountable for the outcomes.
How to build for the web, Android, iOS, Windows and macOS from one codebase without the codebase collapsing under it: shared cores, platform services behind interfaces, adaptive layouts and testing on real devices. Drawn from the book Cross-Platform Powerhouse.
What it means for a country to depend on technology it cannot control, and what it would take to change that — infrastructure, open source, procurement, skills and institutions. An African argument with relevance well beyond the continent.
AI governance is usually discussed as a matter of principles. In practice it depends on infrastructure: where data is held, which platforms systems rely on, and who can audit them. This talk connects policy frameworks such as POPIA to the engineering decisions that make them enforceable.
Lessons from building a South African technology company: choosing problems worth solving locally, owning your data and infrastructure from the start, and why ecosystems — not individual startups — are what compound.
Hloriso Mohale