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STUDY ABROAD OPTIONS
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 CITI’S PETER FRAMPTON This coming week sees the opening of Cape Town’s Bandwidth Barn and we interview the Chief Executive of CITI Peter Frampton who got the initiative off the ground.An entrepreneur and dreamer at heart, Peter qualified as a CA in Australia. He spent more than a decade there and in New Zealand where he started and operated various businesses. He came back toCape Town in 1998, to realise his vision of transforming the Western Cape into a creative and innovative information technology hub. The Bandwidth Barn (see issue 51), on Cape Town’s foreshore, houses young IT companies, who have bandwidth, capital and a strong networking base, to help develop and keep intellectual capital in SA. Peter was named Western Cape IT personality of 2000 by the Computer Society of South Africa (CSSA) for his work in developing CITI as a vehicle to create jobs and prosperity in South Africa. What are the advantages a company would get from being in the Bandwidth Barn? Affordable rent, always-on internet access, shared meeting rooms/reception services/phone answering etc, community and the opportunity of collaborating with other tenants, and short lease commitments suitable for startup companies, and the motivation of a buzzing environment. What services are you running for those not actually based in the building? CITI - the Cape IT Initiative - serves tenants and all other members of the IT industry. Our services fall into three main categories: networking and industry promotion through events, marketing etc; capacity building to address skills shortages through education programmes and motivating against growth barriers such as high telecommunications charges; and supporting entreprenuers by eg. finding venture capital, consulting; workshopping their business plans etc. How much of the space is already let? All the space is let and we are building more offices and extending the area we have leased. We have more demand than space.By end of June we will be operating 2400 square metres. How much has the development cost and who has put up the money? The capital cost of developing the Hive has been provided by the Department of Trade and Industries’ sector partnership fund, with a grant of R1 million. and a half million rand sponsorship from UUNet sa made the whole project doable for CITI. Operating expenses are covered by tenants at cost. The hive is a wholly owned subsidiary of citi which is a registered non-profit company. How does the Bandwidth Barn fit into CITI’s wider strategies? The barn is a beacon of the vibrancy of the Western Cape’s IT industry. It serves as a node of the industry and a focus point for all sorts of other activities.It houses CITI and other IT organisations such as the Black IT Forum, the IT Association, the ICT training authority, bridges.org etc. CITI’s vision is to have a whole lot of barns, in Cape Town, in Muizenberg, in Stellenbosch, and in the eastern and northern cape provinces. We are also supporting people who want to create a CITI-type organisation and bandwidth barn in Gauteng. There is much in the specialist press about cutbacks and closures in South Africa, especially in the dot.com field. How has this affected the sector in Cape Town? South Africa never got as hyped as the USA, so there’s less far to fall. The market sentiment has moved against IT companies though and all the listed companies are down substantially. However CITI suppports many very small companies that are focussed on offshore markets and often use offshore capital for their development (revenue in pounds and dollars, costs in rands is our mantra!!) These sorts of companies are facing a more challenging fund raising environment, but then it was never easy anyway. If their business model was sound in the first place, then nothing changes. We are a development agency with a long run development horizon. We are looking to create a vibrant industry over the next 10 to 20 years. There will be ups and downs in this journey. Tne niche that is very important and that will get hotter and hotter is mobile and sms services. The move to 2.5g and 3g will support this. When do you think the ICT sector in South Africa will start to grow again? We believe it is still growing and maturing.Perhaps the relevant question is when will the US and global IT market take an upturn. What is the one thing the South African government could do that would help the "new economy" expand? Liberalise the telecommunications industry so that we have competitive internet and telecommuncation charges. (And if I am allowed another: allow fast track immigration for IT workers.) What is your favourite web site (other than your own)? Economist.com !!! or cellular.co.za if i had to pick a local site.
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This page last updated on January 28 2004.
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