Beyond photo ops — what SA needs from Ramaphosa’s Silicon Valley trip

Tjo! Being unable to reach a gathering on the technological future because the present has broken down is absurd! I am tickled! As I write, I am still in Washington, unable to travel to California to moderate an event during President Cyril Ramaphosa’s Silicon Valley visit

When I began this piece on Friday, America’s aviation system was descending into chaos and the explanation doing the rounds was an “AI glitch”. By Saturday, FAA Administrator Bryan Bedford said there was no evidence of anything AI-related. The problem, American officials explained, lay in the telecommunications network: during work to replace old copper lines with fibre, a router had flooded other routers with connection attempts.

I have no bloody clue what a distressed router says to another router, but I understand the consequences well enough. I am still grounded and there is no indication of when I might get to fly. The irony of a country selling the world its technological future yet unable to get its air traffic in order! 

Meanwhile, the transatlantic choreography offers its own entertainment. I spent days on the phone asking if Ramaphosa’s adventure was REALLY happening. I had reason to be sceptical. This week, the State Department announced its huge delegation to the Africa Tech Festival in Cape Town, accompanied by tech bosses and innovators. Watching these interests cross the Atlantic in opposite directions, I wonder why bringing them together on South African soil was not the centrepiece of a presidential engagement, followed by a more targeted American visit. It’s strange but here we are!

There may be a persuasive answer though. Stanford’s laboratories and the headquarters of technology companies offer access that a conference cannot replicate. But a president accompanied by eight ministers and an extensive delegation, on what the Presidency describes as a learning visit, owes the public a clear explanation of what requires their collective presence and what South Africa expects to gain from it. 

We remain excluded from the US-hosted G20 leaders’ summit, even as our business leaders participate in the B20 in Washington and pursue commercial relationships. 

So I understand the desire to find reassurance in the President’s presence in the US. After months of hostility and misrepresentation, photographs of a South African delegation being received by influential Americans may feel like a welcome correction. But this should not lower our expectations of what we should achieve there. We should guard against becoming so invested in proving that South Africa is not isolated that we neglect to ask whether the terms of engagement serve South Africans.

America’s companies, universities, investors and state governments have interests that overlap with those of the federal administration without always coinciding. A serious foreign policy must be able to work within those differences. Commercial engagement can be worthwhile even while political relations remain hostile, provided we enter it with a clear understanding of our own interests and sufficient confidence to negotiate for them. American investment is pursued primarily for American reasons; we should be neither offended nor disarmed by that reality.

Our place in the AI economy

The question running through this visit is what place South Africa intends to occupy in the emerging AI economy. We could become a substantial customer of technologies developed elsewhere, paying for essential services in currencies we do not control. We could supply land, electricity and water for infrastructure whose most valuable intellectual property and recurring income remain abroad. We could also negotiate arrangements that expand domestic research and help South African enterprises develop technology of their own. 

The Presidency has recognised digital sovereignty and policy autonomy as priorities. I want to know how those commitments will shape the agreements that follow. A data centre does not become an instrument of South African sovereignty simply because its address is South African. Questions on ownership, access to computing capacity and the laws governing a provider are important. We must also be vigilant about the costs of moving public data and applications elsewhere. And what about the ability to keep essential services running if a commercial dispute or geopolitical confrontation interrupts access?

For a country with our inequalities, sovereignty must also mean something to people who will never enter those boardrooms. Will a university be able to afford the computing resources its researchers need? Can a local business grow beyond the introductory cloud credits that first made a service attractive? Will systems understand our languages and circumstances, and will a person wrongly denied a grant by an automated decision have a meaningful way to challenge it? Our capacity to protect people from the misuse of technology belongs in this conversation alongside our desire to attract it.

San José offers a useful lesson. Mayor Matt Mahan, who has actively courted data centres, is now proposing a pause on approvals until new development standards and community benefit requirements are in place. Residents are concerned about the demands these facilities place on electricity and water, and about projects securing approval before safeguards take effect. Even in the heart of Silicon Valley, enthusiasm for investment is being tested against the obligations of local government to the people who live there.

South Africa should pay close attention to these tensions. We know the costs of unreliable electricity and failing water infrastructure, and how readily the consequences are transferred to households with little capacity to absorb them. There is no reason to assume that developments facing American resistance are being exported to us, but we should certainly ask why conditions deemed necessary to protect American residents would be considered unreasonable for South Africans.

The same seriousness should inform how we communicate this visit. Too often, our delegations travel abroad only to conduct a conversation principally with South Africans, Meanwhile, the work of engaging foreign financial editors, technology correspondents, researchers and policy institutions receives less attention. A country confronting persistent misrepresentation needs to make its argument where that misrepresentation circulates, with officials prepared to answer difficult questions as well as deliver reassuring messages. I really have not understood why South African officials – government and business – travel all the way to the US, only to speak to the SABC. They could have done that at home. Commercial diplomacy requires a broader and more sophisticated narrative strategy.

Our own media, in turn, should resist allowing the spectacle of presidential access to determine the terms of coverage. We need to know what commitments are made, what they will cost and who will be responsible for delivering them. When the delegation returns, Parliament and the public should be able to follow the journey from an announcement to an agreement and, eventually, to a demonstrable benefit. 

We should want this visit to succeed, and care enough about its success to scrutinise it. I still hope to get to California, although America’s routers appear to have acquired an unexpected interest in my diary. DM