With more venture capital invested here than anywhere else in South Africa, the Mother City is home to some of the most exciting start-up businesses – companies that are not just making money, but also creating wealth in which communities can share.

“It’s difficult to create wealth just for yourself,” observes Martin Feinstein, managing director of Traction, an organisation that designs and implements programmes for entrepreneurs and small businesses. “As a successful entrepreneur you also tend to create it for your partners, employees and customers. Besides the innovation, competition and cheaper prices, entrepreneurs also create other entrepreneurs.”

Bruce Wade, founder of Entrepreneur Incubator and Academy believes that entrepreneurs provide one of the most dynamic answers to unemployment.

“For every one person you employ, you’re supporting seven others. That’s huge,” Bruce explains. “The entrepreneur industry is critical to job growth in the city, but it’s a tough market out there. Half of all entrepreneurs and small businesses fail before three years and a further 90% before the first ten years.”

Cape Town supports small business

That’s why the City of Cape Town is committed to supporting small businesses: “Every person in Africa who has a business idea and who needs a launch pad should know that they can come to Cape Town,” affirms Alderman Belinda Walker, mayoral committee member for economic, environmental and spatial planning. “This city must be known as having the best-developed entrepreneurship ecosystem in the country.”

Already Cape Town is seen one of the most nurturing urban centres for entrepreneurs. Why? “Things work better here,” Martin explains. “The city makes sure that the by-laws are kept, and this makes it a cheaper, more efficient place to live. Inconvenience is a tax on your time, and if the city can save you that time you can spend more of it making your business work.

“Furthermore, the geography of Cape Town creates nurturing and inclusive environments for small businesses. That’s why it’s also important to grow the residential component of the CBD. This helps Cape Town becomes the 24-hour city.”

Do you want to be part of Cape Town’s entrepreneurial community helping create a more inclusive city? Read the resources available from Cape Town Entrepreneurship Week 2011 and check out the central city publication Your Business magazine for tips on making entrepreneurship work.

Three ways to help start-ups 

Bruce Wade speaks about what three things could change to make starting a business in Cape Town easier:

• The regulatory environment: “Businesses, no matter how small, fall under the same regulations as a large corporate. And anyone making under R15-million each year is a small business – that’s more than a million a month! This forces the average person to comply with stringent labour and tax regulations. It took me 14 months to start a small business. In that time I couldn’t open a bank account, I couldn’t register for tax, I couldn’t pay my employees.”
• Tax breaks: “Tax breaks could also encourage an entrepreneurial environment. Firms that make below a certain amount shouldn’t pay tax. This is international practice and should be introduced here.”
• Immigration: “Immigrants in Cape Town are often highly skilled people who aren’t allowed to work. We need to make their skills available to employers.”

Connect on Twitter

• Bruce Wade (@bruce_wade)
• Entrepreneurs thinking big (@ideateblog)
• Your Business magazine (@yourbusinessmag)

How can Cape Town be more supportive of start-ups and new business – and how can those businesses in turn help create widespread wealth and opportunity? Leave your comment below or send them to info@capetownpartnership.co.za.

More reading: Cape Town’s favourite coffee spots that provide free internet access 

This article first appeared in the November issue of City Views: Cape Town as an innovative design city.

 Photo by Bruce Sutherland, City of Cape Town

By 2014 the City of Cape Town intends to put in place around 300 kilometres of fibre-optic cable, and already many kilometres of cable have been laid.

Communication drives innovation

What does this mean? “We need to communicate to innovate,” explains Steve Vosloo, a researcher who looks at the intersection of mobile phones and development in Africa. “When entrepreneurs don’t need to think twice about calling 20 customers in a day, that will open a floodgate. Those accessing the internet off their phones, like informal traders, could really benefit from free, or really cheap, broadband access.

“Lots of innovation is happening totally under the radar – in people’s garages, in backyards, in shacks – but these are all pretty small-scale and the lessons aren’t really communicated out. If you can provide a network to connect these people – help them research what others are doing, find that someone down the street who is working on the same thing – then good ideas can be amplified and businesses scaled up. The glue of it all is cheap, reliable internet access.”

Internet access has become a business-critical service in our modern society. Our local internet prices are among the highest in the world and they are a real barrier to economic growth. To bring down the cost of broadband, three components need to be understood – international bandwidth, national bandwidth, and the last mile link. Currently access to all three components is very expensive, and so the broadband infrastructure project was initiated as the most feasible way for local government to help. The project is implementing an extensive and low-priced fibre-optic network that will function as the last mile link between the 600 government buildings in the city. Key to this is that telecoms providers would then be able to rent surplus capacity on the City fibre network.

The Fringe: connecting to huge bandwidth

Making this extra capacity available for city businesses is vital for economic growth. “We expect to be able to make fibre available to businesses near the end of the year,” says Leon van Wyk, telecommunications manager for the City of Cape Town. “There is quite a significant demand, and it’ll be important for us to make it ready once we can support and maintain it properly.”

What of national and international bandwidth? “To bring the price down on international bandwidth would mean first making it more accessible through undersea fibre cables,” Leon explains. “This is happening already with the SEACOM cable north of Durban and the West Africa Cable System which is set to be live between Yzerfontein and Europe. National bandwidth must become cheaper and the only way of doing this is through competition. At present there are only a handful of national operators but hopefully the burgeoning national fibre networks that are coming online will stimulate some serious competition and drive down prices.”

If communication is vital for innovation, will there be better broadband in The Fringe, Cape Town’s up-and-coming design and innovation district? “The City is looking at the possibility of servicing the area with a concentrated fibre network that may be connected to each and every building in The Fringe,” says Leon.

Chris Vermeulen, general manager of the city’s best-known tech incubator, the Bandwidth Barn, hopes to be based in this innovation district soon. Why? “Connected to the fibre network, The Fringe will be a truly collaborative environment. If it really works out and becomes a highly connected hub, we’ll see a lot of magic happening there. It’s a great idea to set aside somewhere where we can have a lot of collaboration between design and creative innovation. There are so many examples of this kind of development; the world over there are huge success stories. It would be a great boost for entrepreneurs if we produce more success stories and heroes.”

To get connected to The Fringe District community and events see the website: http://thefringe.org.za/

If you’re interested in setting up shop in the area, contact Yehuda Raff: yehuda@capetownpartnership.co.za

Connect on Twitter

• The Fringe (@fringedistrict)
• The Bandwidth Barn (@Bandwidthbarn)
• Steve Vosloo (@stevevosloo)

This article first appeared in the November issue of City Views: Cape Town as an innovative design city.

Original photo by Bruce Sutherland, City of Cape Town

Through awareness, education and collaboration, grounded in robust debate facilitated by respected sustainability professionals and thinkers, conference organisers want to help transform South Africa and the continent.

Daily activities

• Day one is themed around awareness for change, and looks to provide critical insights into and analysis of sustainability challenges
• Day two will look at inspiration for change, and review case studies and stories of change
• Day three will look at tools for change, teaching delegates practical steps to implement change in organisations as part of 16 breakaway think tanks.
• Take a look at the complete daily  prospectus.

Other events at the conference include the awarding of a $1-million prize to a top Change Agent on the continent as part of celebrating, inspiring and sharing “resilient and meaningful change in Africa”.

Taking to the streets of Cape Town

SOA2012 aims to be more than just a talk shop, and is as such staging a city-wide festival for change aimed at inspiring the community at large, and increasing awareness of our natural and social environment through the arts – film, food, performance, music and fashion.

How can you get involved?

Connect with Sustain Our Africa online through their website and blog or find and follow them on Facebook and Twitter.

To find out more information see the overview presentation of SOA activities. If you don’t need any further convincing register for the SOA2012 conference online.

Presented annually by the Africa Centre – an organisation that explores how contemporary pan-African art, culture and intellectual pursuit can be a catalyst for social change – this year’s festival is curated by Jay Pather, director of the Gordon Institute for Performing and Creative Arts at UCT.

Infecting the City 2012: What’s to come

Some of the works on show include Nicola Hanekom’s Lot (watch the teaser); a piece by Cape Town City Ballet; Vincent Mantsoe and Mandla Mabotwe collaborating with a choir; as well as a little something from the Cape Town Opera. Diana Page’s Ek Se, a voice performance from the city’s rooftops, and Erin Bosenberg’s Spaces, a multimedia documentary project, will also be featured.

Make sure you catch these performances and more from 6 to 10 March 2012 in Cape Town’s city centre. (Watch Creative Cape Town’s Facebook fan page to see a schedule of events as soon as they’re available.)

More about Infecting the City

Read these City Views interviews with Tanner Methvin of the Africa Centre on opening up the city through art and Jay Pather on creativity and collaboration. And then be sure to check out Infecting the City online, through Facebook and on Twitter (@infectingthecit). Alternatively, call the Africa Centre on 021 418 3336 for more details.

First image: Erin Bosenberg at the Cape Town Station taxi rank. Second image: a scene from Nicola Hanekom’s Lot.

He speaks about what creativity, collaboration and conversation have to do with city spaces and urban development.

How long have you lived in the city centre?
I moved here in about 2006 from Durban, where I also lived in the city centre – I was born there. I’m a great purveyor of city centres – and why lies in my great idiosyncracy: I don’t drive. I’ve spent time in places where I simply didn’t need to drive, one of them being New York. And the city has always fascinated me as a living space – where you have your social and living space side by side, and you constantly have to take care of recreating self.

You must walk the city a lot. Any walks you’d really recommend?
I walk everywhere, and almost always walk for business – to appointments, to the office, back home. But when I do get to walk for pleasure, I love to walk Sea Point Promenade, Newlands Forest, up Table Mountain, along Kloof Street and Kloof Nek over the mountain to Camps Bay, particularly on a cloudy, poetic day.

Why do you choose to live in the Central City?
Living in the city is challenging, but it’s a wonderful challenge. It’s a way of developing my own sense of the world. Living in the CBD, I’m constantly in the world, a part of everything going on, and I really like that. It’s both elevating and assuring for me. Suburbs determine the kind of people you meet. In the city, there are always accidents, moments of serendipity. Here, in the city, I feel like I’m part of something global, something bigger. It’s interesting how surprised people are when they come up to my apartment – surprised that life in the city can be both engaging and comfortable.

What brought you here?
I was appointed an associate professor of drama at UCT, which I worked at for four years. Then in 2010 I was responsible for postgraduate studies for drama, and for the last year, I’ve headed up GIPCA – the Gordon Institute for Performing and Creative Arts – where I’m responsible for fostering interdisciplinary dialogue.

What does your work entail?
GIPCA is close to the city, and so has lots to do with it. The objective of the events we stage – and we stage one every month – is to involve the public in an open and discursive way, to have collective conversations. Earlier this year we held a series on film and dance, and how film, particularly that made available through social media, is democratising this elitest of art forms. Earlier in the year we debated issues of race and identity. Soon we’ll run a series around climate change.

So part of what you do is make art more inclusive?
Art can play a role in making city spaces more welcoming – especially art in public places – but artists have been playing to a very particular crowd for some time – to the educated, by which I don’t mean the intelligent. People are intrinsically intelligent, but may not be schooled in artistic codes. By not using more obscure codes that have developed within disciplines, you can still make work accessible without dumbing it down.

What are some of the international cities you love, and what can Cape Town learn from them?
Places like Maputo and Havana – cities concerned with development that haven’t forgotten their social conscience. I love Edinburgh because the people there often use words like “take care” – and I really value this idea of a place where people look after each other. Berlin is a city that really confronts heritage with a contemporary sensibility. What Cape Town and South Africa can learn from Berlin specifically is how to be unstinting in its confrontation of the past while finding ways to work through it.

What can and should Cape Town become?
The challenge of urban development is that we need people of great sensitivity developing our city space – we shouldn’t simply ape the gentrification of the rest of the world. Development can be a double-edged sword, and needs to be balanced with the preservation of the soul of a place. It’s arguable that New York is as cutting edge as it used to be, given how gentrified it’s become. South Africa is still seen as a highly creative nation able to solve great problems with great flair and insight into the human condition. But we need to listen to our people more, to collaborate. The wave in the late ’90s was because we started to speak to each other – that’s when we became known as the miracle nation with miracle cities. We are straying away from that, taking these freedoms for granted.

He speaks about city identity, and the urban space that Cape Town has the potential to become.

What’s African about Cape Town?
It’s hard to answer a question like that because Cape Town can be nothing else but an African city, by the nature of its geography. The question also presumes that there is something specific or particular that makes a city African.  How can that be? African cities don’t function within some specific set of parameters; they are as diverse, complex, and different as the people who occupy them.

What defines Cape Town’s city centre?
Cape Town’s CBD is by far one of the most interesting spaces in the city. One of the things that I love about the CBD, that makes it such an interesting space, is its silence and its activity – and the divergence between the two. The CBD is really quiet sometimes, and vibrant and active others. Its ability to be both by turns – and unexpected turns – is amazing. I love moving through the city at different times of day to experience the very different energy. Another thing I really appreciate about it is the mix of old and new, formal and informal. It feels like an opportunistic space – with possibilities for every type of person. A place where innovation and evolution are still possible and welcomed.

What can the Central City be?
The size and layout of the CBD provides for unique access to public space and ways to navigate and function on foot. That’s a rare thing – particularly in this country. But I don’t think that our public spaces function in ways that are genuinely public. The CBD’s public space often becomes a pass-through space, experienced in a transitory or migratory way. In that way people move through it on their way to someplace else and do not claim these spaces as their own. There are unspoken social norms and rules that people are reading and interpreting – or misinterpreting – that prevents us from realising the possibilities of our communal existence. Part of our work at the Africa Centre is to explore how these public spaces become shared and present something different within them.

How does public space become shared?
One of the ways we do this is of course via arts and cultural practice. Our public arts festival, Infecting the City, does shift how people experience the space that they collectively own, by looking at what art and public art can do to build connections between people and place. These expressions of art allow people to feel places, and experience spaces that they otherwise wouldn’t. It helps them to understand where their feet are planted in a particular way, to see the extraordinary in the ordinary – it allows that 3D moment that doesn’t happen very often. In staging this festival since 2008 we’ve learnt a number of things – most importantly to factor in the dynamics of how people move within the CBD and when. Where they naturally congregate and where they are prepared to go if encouraged. In 2011, 30% of our audience just happened upon the performances – that’s 30% of 25 000 people.

Could you tell us about some of the Africa Centre’s other projects?
Because the Africa Centre functions at a pan-African level – a lot of what we do is in the virtual domain versus the physical domain. One example is WikiAfrica, which aims to redress the critical imbalance of factual information about historic

EXHIBITION
7th Jan – 9th Feb 2012 at Frieda’s on Bree
15 Bree Street, Cape Town
This exhibition by GHIA HUMAN has no theme or concept as such, but the collection is a process and journey of creative self-discovery, each piece with it’s own story, some more significant than others. Some of the paintings in the exhibition play with the idea of creating affordable art that appeals to a less conservative art audience, a younger ‘street’ generation. The series of works is in itself an experiment of technique, form, investigating texture and the emotive artistic process.

EXHIBITION PARTY
26 January 2012 from 6:30pm to 12pm
RSVP Ghia Human 083 669 2714
ghia@bizmoggi.com
www.bizmoggi.com
www.friedasonbree.co.za

Don’t miss local stars like Ringo Madlingozi, Auriol Hays, Odidi Mfenyana, Kim Cloete and Ingrid Paulus, Chris van Niekerk and Casper de Vries.

Visit www.suidoosterfees.co.za or www.facebook.com/Suidoosterfees or call 021 446 1558.

Infecting The City is by far the largest and most diverse annual public arts festival in South Africa. This year, celebrated local and international artists will create artworks that unlock the communal spaces in the Cape Town City Centre. The art will encourage audiences to see, hear and smell the extraordinary by taking a fresh look at the Mother City, its citizens, and themselves in radically different ways.

Prepare to see Cape Town in a whole new light! For more information, visit http://www.infectingthecity.com, like the Festival on Facebook, follow ITC on Twitter (@infectingthecit) or call the Africa Centre on 021 422 0468.

Honest Chocolate
Chocolatiers Michael de Klerk and Anthony Gird opened Honest Chocolate on Wale Street in August this year – and their product is not only handcrafted, but also created using raw (as in unroasted) organic Ecuadorian cacao. The chocolate is kept as pure as possible, with no preservatives, artificial flavouring or emulsifiers used. Dairy is also omitted, and instead of processed sugar, Honest uses agave nectar as a sweetener, which has a very low GI. R42 gets you a chocolate slab (with delightful themed wrappers by Cape Town illustrators) or chocolate spread that can be used on anything from fresh bread to fruit; R45 gets you a box of four bon-bons.
66 Wale Street
T: 021 423 8762
www.honestchocolate.co.za

BLANK{space}
Sometimes a heartfelt note says more than anything money could buy. If words are your gift, Charlene Walton of BLANK{space} has some beautiful gift tags and postcards – punctuated by original illustrations, fun typography and beautiful letterpress – on which to put them. The paper is made of 50% recycled post-consumer waste and 50% FSC-certified pulp. R45 gets you a set of five gift tags, R90 a set of five postcards with envelopes.
71 Roeland Street
T: 021 461 9031
http://blankspace.co.za

Streetwires
Streetwires doesn’t just create contemporary African wire and bead craft – they create jobs for the formerly unemployed. Enter the bright orange building on Shortmarket to be part of a long-term (market) solution and get your choice of working wire radios, picture frames, vases, egg cups or creative sculptures. Prices range piece by piece, but you’re sure to find something under R100. African Christmas decorations, perhaps?
77 Shortmarket Street
T: 021 426 2475
www.streetwires.co.za

The Designer-Maker Market
Freeworld Design Centre will be hosting an artisan market for festive season gifts – which starts at 15h30 on 14 December, but runs from 10h30 until late on both 15 and 16 December at the Freeworld Design Centre courtyard. This event also forms part of WalkCapeTown, a post-World Cup initiative that aims to re-energise the Fan Walk through public events and ultimately enhance the cultural life of the city. Designer exhibitors are all being handpicked by Lauren Shantall (formerly the curator and manager of the Design Indaba Expo).

Who will be there that fits our criteria? The exhibitor list is still being confirmed, but two names come to mind:

Wild Olive handmakes all-natural, organic soaps and cosmetics while creating jobs. A big bar of soap is R30 and comes so beautifully packaged that extra wrapping would just be going over the top.

Heath Nash has become a household name for his beautiful light sculpture made from recycled plastic. Look out for his bargain bin to score on high-end design.

Freeworld Design Centre
71 Waterkant Street
T: 021 427 8918
www.freeworlddesigncentre.com

Looking for more places and spaces to get eco? Check out Cape Town Green Map to explore the city’s green geography: www.capetowngreenmap.co.za.

Tips for green gift wrapping: reduce, reuse, recycle
In the United Kingdom alone, around 83 000 000m² of gift wrap winds up on rubbish heaps after the holiday season (according to Planet Green). How can you avoid shiny wrapping paper and plastic coated ribbons and tape while still making your green gift look good? Ute Faure, founder of Green Elephant Collective – which promotes local designs, products, artisans, and designers – gives her top tips.

• Keep any gift bags given to you from friends, they are so easy to reuse. There’s no harm keeping branded gift bags either – your best friend surely won’t mind receiving a new paper back in a Body Shop bag?
• Jazz up your packaging, whether bag or box, with organic elements: A sprig of rosemary or cluster of lavender makes for a beautiful embellishment.
• Keep a box of ribbons, lace or buttons to pretty up your present; no one will know whether the ribbon on that box has been recycled or not!
• In the same theme, repurposing paper products from around the house, such as old road maps, wallpaper, or sheet music is a unique way to give second life to something that may have just been thrown out.
• Avoid tape by wrapping books, bottles and other items with simple shapes in paper, then folding the edges to secure. Recycle a sticker to secure the fold.
• Alternatively, go naked! Sometimes a gift is too lovely to be hidden behind packaging, in which case, don’t hesitate to hand it over unfettered by adornment.
• Instead of just dumping large boxes and bubble wrap in the bin, recycle them as wrapping. And now that you’ve saved a tree or two, know that you’ve also saved some money.

Visit www.greenelephantcollective.co.za to see more local, green design with a purely South African aesthetic.

These articles first appeared in the November issue of City Views: Cape Town as an innovative design city.

Photos by Caroline Jordan.