FLF26 Business and Tech

Did you know that AI helped to win the 2023 Rugby World Cup for South Africa? That Africa led the way in small language models? That AI has been supporting farmers in Kenya for the last decade? After reading, you will understand the present and future of AI, and The Hitchhiker’s Guide to AI: The African Edge particularly the distinct advantages presented by and for AI on the African continent. The book draws on the author’s many years of direct access to global and regional leaders in using AI, from Africa to the Middle East to North America to Europe and Asia, and it provides unique perspectives on generative AI, as well as practical advice for using it. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to AI is useful for consumers, academics, professionals and anyone in business who wants to get up to speed quickly and practically. It also entertains and inspires anyone who is curious about AI or already engaged in its possibilities. What can business learn from the use of AI in sports? How can educators embrace AI as a tool rather than a threat? When will AI truly transform health, travel, agriculture, entertainment, shopping and personal services? This book has the answers.

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Imagine starting with a bold mission in 2012: to achieve financial inclusion through a multi-country bank. Within a decade, this vision becomes one of the fastest-growing fintechs in the world. Now, picture starting this business in South Africa, a country the IMF ranked as the hardest place to do business out of 49 countries surveyed. Imagine having the foresight to partner with a family-owned food retailer to establish a low-cost, physical banking footprint. Such success didn’t go unnoticed and one of the world’s largest banks acquired the company. A clash of cultures followed and, just four years later, the divestment. Despite the risks, one of South Africa’s wealthiest entrepreneurs stepped in to take control. Then came Covid-19. The business nearly hit the wall and shareholders demanded a successor of their choosing be trained. A frantic 217 pitches for fresh capital yielded no success. And then, at the eleventh hour, there was a reprieve as one investor and then another stepped up. Now, imagine launching in the Philippines, replicating and improving what works while designing an entirely new cloud-based banking stack with over 500 Vietnamese developers. Imagine assembling a team from Italy, the US, the UK, South Africa, Vietnam, the Philippines, Australia, India and Zimbabwe. Picture shaping a culture where failure is part of growth, and audacity is the norm, not the exception. Imagine becoming the global poster child for AI in banking and receiving an email in June 2025, informing you that your company is one of Time magazine’s Top 100 most influential companies in the world. This incredible story unfolds within the pages of It’s About Tyme. As Roger Grobler, a long-standing investor in Tyme puts it, ‘Courage and audacity are not just bold strategies – they’re the safest. Because playing it safe is, ironically, the riskiest thing you can do.’

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Selfies, Sexts, and Smartphones is the book every teenager (and their parents) should read.   At least, that was true seven years ago. The digital world moves at breakneck speed. Today’s teens have to navigate AI, deep fakes, misinformation, and so much more. Meanwhile, the law struggles to keep up, leaving plenty of hidden legal pitfalls. If fully developed adult brains struggle with it, what hope does a teenager’s freshly baked prefrontal cortex have?   Enter Rorke and Emma. Emma is a continental digital-law specialist, and Rorke, an elder Gen Z, has the lived experience teens can relate to. Together, they break down the digital world’s biggest challenges and help teens to exist consciously – and, hopefully, safely – online. This book covers every topic: new laws, cyberbullying, sexting, sextortion, addiction, online safety, deep fakes, mental health, privacy, reputation, misinformation, scams, AI, ChatGPT, plagiarism, and much more – all in a South African context. With real-life case studies from Emma’s work and unfortunate anecdotes from Rorke’s life in the digital trenches, we help today’s youth reap the benefits of the internet without ever needing to call the Digital Law Company.

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Through compelling stories of iconic African leaders like Nelson Mandela, Wangari Maathai, and contemporary changemakers, Thebe Ikalafeng presents his groundbreaking '7-Ps' system (People, Pause, Purpose, Proof, Presentation, Presence, and Protection) that helps readers align their professional success with their cultural identity. Rather than asking Africans to assimilate or hide their heritage, Rooted and Rising boldly declares that authentic African identity is not just an asset—it's a competitive advantage. This is essential reading for anyone seeking to build a meaningful legacy while staying true to their roots in an increasingly connected but often homogenised world. The book serves as both cultural reclamation and career strategy, providing readers with a revolutionary framework for building authentic personal brands that honour ancestral wisdom while competing on the global stage.

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Look around you – is anything real or normal anymore? News, images and videos created by AI are everywhere. The world we live in is changing daily, and it’s no exaggeration to say that everything you thought you knew is undergoing apocalyptic levels of change. Our new normal includes AI CEOs, AI partners, AI versions of our dead relatives to keep us company, and customers deploying their own adversarial agent ‘armies’ to hostile-negotiate on their behalf. Meanwhile, the expensive skills you have accumulated, the jobs you’ve fought for, the relationships you’ve invested in, the organisations you’ve worked for and the economies we depend on for survival are shrinking even as our choices expand. Discernment and understanding of context are now critical to your survival. So, let’s stare the future down and, instead of fearing AI, become solutionists. In order to survive in this hyper-competitive, globalised and automated world, where the strongest and smartest winners are set to take all, we need to change our mindsets and our skill sets to become fit for the ‘post-AI, apocalyptic’ world that is here to stay. This means embracing progress and turning AI and technology into an asset with which we can co-exist, while continuing to create new possibilities far into the future. This book is a call to action to live on the flipside of fear.

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