Chef Tips With Lesego Semenya

In this instalment of #AndilesTake, I catch up with my mate, Chef Lesego Semenya, a year and a half or so after he first shared the vision for his LesDaChef fine dining brand with me.

I’m fascinated by the level of focus and intentionality this Soweto-native, and Prue Leith Chefs Academy graduate in Centurion brings to his culinary hustle, and I take great pleasure in celebrating the fact that since we last spoke on mic, Les has been named one of the Mail & Guardian’s Top 200 Young South Africans, dubbed a rising star by House & Leisure, appointed consulting chef to a number of leading luxury gourmet food and drink brands, recruited as resident culinary expert at a handful of South Africa’s leading radio stations and tv networks, extended his reach on social media and now serves as a judge on SABC 3’s prime time tv show, Top Chef South Africa.

That said, I consider his greatest achievement to be the fact that despite all the success he’s enjoyed, Les remains as genuine and down-to earth as when I first met him at a killer gourmet home cook-out he hosted six odd years ago.

My First VR Interview

Check out my very first VR interview, courtesy of Julian Von Plato, the kleva behind BalconyTV Johannesburg and many other cool projects. In this chat I share about my journey to becoming an entrepreneur, broadcaster and new media specialist, as well as give my top tip to youngsters who aspire to having a successful career in media. Let’s go! 🚀

Delusions feat. Toro Orero

This episode of the #AndilesTake Podcast explores the importance of delusion, and it features the live wire that is Toro Orero, the Nigerian-born Managing Partner of Silicon Valley-based venture capital firm, DraperDarkFlow.

One of the key things Toro and his partners at DraperDarkFlow look for in a startup founder that they might invest in is a sense of delusion. He believes that being a little nuts is often a good indicator that someone has what it takes to change the world.

I’m totally with it!

So Much To Say… Not!

So, I’ve decided to pick up where I left off in terms of the audio journal I started just over 18 months ago.

Technically, this is Episode 1 of the 2nd Season of the #AndilesTake podcast series. Except as you’ll gather in this instalment, I’m still trying to figure out what it is I’m actually trying to say, and why. I feel like once I properly get my thumb on that, the name of the podcast will change.

In the meantime, consider this a personal invitation to join me in discovering what stories are worth telling, what issues are worth talking about, and ultimately what’s worth living for.

I’m extremely grateful to PJ Lebea and Andre Blaze Henshaw for sharing their stories on this episode. Do listen in, if only to hear some of the rather special personal insights they were kind enough to share with me.

 

Dominique Collett-Antolik and Brandon Doyle Talk 2015 African Fintech & Telecoms Trends

Over the next four weeks the we are taking a much-needed break.

Cue peaceful ocean sounds

But while we’re away, in place of our regular programming, we’ll be sharing exclusive content from the Annual Round-up 2015 event we hosted at the Wanderers Club, Johannesburg on November 26th 2015. The Event was powered by the good people at Opera Africa, who are totally all about helping us “do more” (on the web).

This week, we kick things off by sharing a stimulating panel discussion around tech in enterprise facilitated by Tefo Mohapi— featuring Senior Investment Executive, RMI Holdings and former co-founder of the hugely successful fintech startup Tyme, Dominique Collett-Antolik and CEO & Founding Partner, Convergence Partners, Brandon Doyle.

Another great reason to listen in is to find out if you’re one of the two lucky people who’ve won a Google Cardboard virtual reality viewer in last week’s competition, sponsored by Google.

Being Unemployable With Alan Knott-Craig Jr

Our final guest on Season Two of African Tech Conversations is the “unemployable”, disruptive force that is Alan Knott-Craig Jr.

It’s natural to assume that Alan Knott-Craig Sr (his father) paved the way for his son and namesake, Alan Jr to become one of the most well-recognised personalities on South Africa’s tech scene.

And while it’s impossible to disregard the advantages of having such an experienced and well-connected man for a father, Alan Jr has long proved his mettle as a startup founder and gone on to carve out his own success.

Prior to founding Free WiFi non-profit, Project Isizwe, Alan Jr founded World of Avatar and served as CEO of Mxit. Prior to that, he was Managing Director of iBurst, as well as Chairman of Cellfind.

At Project Isizwe— where he’s currently CEO, he’s poised to hand over the reins to Zahir Khan, so he can focus his energies on steering his latest venture— WiFi network startup, HeroTel.

There’s no doubt that when it comes to speaking his mind with little or no filter, Alan Knott-Craig Jr proves that the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. Happily, that attribute makes him a very interesting subject indeed.

Enjoy the conversation!

The Angani Saga Sets Silicon Savannah Ablaze

Kenya’s tech scene aka Silicon Savannah is on fire! At least, that’s according to commentators like Brenda Wambui, who’s recent blog posted on Medium threw serious shade the way of some looming figures in Kenya’s tech ecosystem following the diabolical fallout at cloud services firm, Angani.

It turns out that some of the details surrounding this story that we reported on some weeks ago— details whose validity we later questioned, might in fact be accurate.

In this week’s episode of the African Tech Round-up, Tefo and I analyse the state of investor-founder relations at Angani in the light of Brenda’s candid piece, which clearly defends the honour of the company’s founders. We’ll also try to determine whether the allegations of corruption and abuse of power she levelled at the company’s investors are justified.

Massive Downsizing At iROKOtv and South Africa Considering Police Body Cameras

It’s been a super-busy week for the team at the African Tech Round-up.

I’m back from a week-long medical leave of absence due to eye surgery I had done on my left eye. The experience has left me grateful for the gift of sight and the many other (not to) simple things in life that we often take for granted. It’s also been humbling to witness first-hand (excuse the pun) how technology enables truly miraculous things when harnessed with wisdom and finesse.

“Enjoy the little things, for one day you may look back and realise they were the big things.”  — Robert Brault

We’re also happy to have our content producer, Peter “The Enigma” Peele back from a a hectic trip to Dubai where he attended GITEX Technology Week 2015. We managed to convince him to jump on the mic with us this week and share some highlights from his trip.

Then my co-host, Tefo Mohapi, not only delivered a talk and facilitated a discussion at the the Thabo Mbeki Leadership Institute’s Leadership Conference this past week (the dude got to even have dinner with former South African President Thabo Mbeki himself), but also attended the Brand Africa 100 Awards. You can look forward to hearing Tefo give us the low-low on all that in this week’s episode.

Nevertheless, this week’s show is chock-full of important digital, tech and innovation news from across the African continent— not least, the unfortunate rumoured in-fighting and financial distress at Jason Njoku’s media startup, iROKO Partners, and the fact that the South African Police Service is contemplating the adoption of body cams to monitor its officers. Be sure to listen in for more on that, and a whole lot more.

Everything Is Difficult & Other Nuggets Of Wisdom From Nic Harry’s Tech4Africa Talk

My co-host on the African Tech Round-up, Tefo Mohapi, was invited to speak at Tech4Africa 2015 last week. He shared on the important work that he and his team at iAfrikan are continuing to do in spearheading the ground-breaking Report Xenophobia campaign.

While at the event, Tefo was lucky enough to sit in on a talk by Nic Haralambous, who opened his talk with this outlandish statement, “I believe everyone who starts a business is a bit broken.” Nic is the founder of Nic Harry— a successful Cape Town-based “luxury men’s sock company” he built from scratch.

“I believe everyone who starts a business is a bit broken.” –Nic Haralambous

Nic’s thought-provoking views on the realities of startup life and what it takes to succeed as an entrepreneur sparked a great conversation that Tefo and I had on this week’s show.

Also, do listen in for the low-low on all the cool stuff members of the team at the African Tech Round-up will be getting up to in the final quarter of 2015.

What’s The Big Fuss About Apple Ad Blockers?

As an avid consumer of new media, it’s hard not to love the ad blocking features Apple has worked into iOS9, and the clever ad blocking apps that are selling like hotcakes on mobile app stores everywhere.

But content publishers are claiming that ad blocking is tantamount to taking the bread out of their mouths, and warn that ultimately you and I will suffer as great content— traditionally funded through ad revenue, will no longer be viable to produce. Meanwhile, it doesn’t help that fake media traffic schemes— powered by bots, are eroding the confidence we all have in the internet’s ability to deliver an efficient and integrous way for advertisers to display ads to targeted audiences.

In this week’s discussion, Tefo Mohapi and I weigh the pros and cons of ad blocking, and discuss how this might shape the future of advertising on the web. Publishers will no doubt need to tweak their business models if they are keep the lights on. It will be interesting to see whether these developments lead brands and publishers to look to native advertising to save the day.

Also in this week’s African Tech Round-up, all the week’s biggest news from across Africa:

• South African JSE-listed tech firm, Altron is poised to sell its Autopage subscriber base for an estimated $108 million,
• Ethiopia rings in the New Year with the launch of Chinese-built light-rail system,
• Groupon is to withdraw from Morocco as part of its global rightsizing efforts,
• MultiChoice throws disgruntled Kenyan DSTV subscribers a bone by adding more channels to its “Compact” offering,
• Kenyan ISP Zuku is keen to woo customers to subscribe for its video-streaming service,
• A major survey reveals that there is a growing cyberbullying epidemic among South African teens, and
• Infamous South African Twitter personality, @PigSpotter’s identity has been revealed.