Over 40,000 people are employed in Cape Town's tech industry, a new report found.

The report also found that 3% of companies founded in Cape Town the past decade reached 100 employees or more, compared to 1% in Lagos, and less than 1% in Johannesburg and Nairobi.



Cape Town is Africa’s biggest tech hub, employing over 40,000 people, according to a new report released by the Cape Innovation and Technology Initiative (CiTi), Wesgro and the Allan Gray Orbis Foundation on Tuesday.



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The report found that the city employed twice as many people in the tech industry as Johannesburg (20,000). Other hubs in Africa such as Lagos and Nairobi employ 9,000 and 7,000 people respectively.

The researchers interviewed 150 technology entrepreneurs in the Cape Town metropolitan area between 2017 and 2018, and found that many respondents found that the lifestyle in Cape Town was less corporate.

“[A] founder reported that ‘no one goes to the office on the same day and instead we all work a lot from coffee shops along the coast," the report reads.

“The lifestyle of Cape Town promotes creativity, innovation, and inspiration because of the mountains, ocean and nature."

“People are coming here to be creative and innovative. They’re drawn to it. There’s a tech culture that has boomed here with technically innovative products.”

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The report also found that 3% of companies founded in Cape Town the past decade reached 100 employees or more, compared to 1% in Lagos, and less than 1% in Johannesburg and Nairobi.

More than two-thirds of tech entrepreneurs interviewed for this study indicated that access to talent was a serious or very serious challenge, while only 20% cited access to consumers as a serious or very serious challenge.



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