In product development, there is often a belief that new technologies, such as artificial intelligence, automation, or digital transformation, can change everything. However, experience in product design shows that technological failures rarely occur due to a lack of quality in the technology itself. More often, the problem lies in a misunderstanding of the people for whom the products are being created.
Companies spend significant amounts of money improving their digital solutions, but users continue to abandon applications halfway through, struggle with simple processes, or refuse to use them altogether. This indicates that products are often developed based on assumptions rather than considering the real needs of the target audience.
According to DataReportal estimates, at the beginning of 2025, over 50 million people in South Africa were using the internet, yet about 13.6 million remain offline. Furthermore, among connected users, there is no single customer profile. People's experiences are shaped by numerous factors: the type of device used, data costs, language preferences, payment behavior, and varying levels of digital confidence.
As noted, 'there is no average user from South Africa.' When companies build their solutions on guesswork instead of factual data, these guesses become obstacles. South Africa, in the author's view, presents the world with the challenge of designing for one of the most diverse groups of users globally.
Business too often speaks of the 'customer' as if everyone interacts with technology in the same way. In reality, one person might apply for a bank loan via a high-speed fiber optic connection, while another attempts to do the same using a budget smartphone and prepaid mobile data. Neither customer is wrong, and no one should have to exert more effort because the product was designed for someone else. These situations represent completely different experiences, yet they are often expected to follow an identical digital path.
Companies that recognize these differences tend to create products that people genuinely enjoy using. Those who do not often wonder why customers disappear mid-process, abandon purchases, or simply stop returning. The author argues that good design is not just about improving the product's appearance, but about helping a person complete a task without frustration, uncertainty, or unnecessary effort.
The financial implications of the right approach are substantial. A Forrester study showed that every dollar invested in user experience can yield a return of up to $100. Moreover, numerous international studies demonstrate that customers leave digital journeys if the registration process is convoluted, trust signals are weak, or the product does not fit their circumstances.
The author emphasizes that design becomes part of the business dialogue, not just a creative discipline. The people who shape the customer experience influence how organizations build trust, retain customers, and ultimately grow. It is important that the discussion goes beyond simply including women in the tech sector, extending to who defines the customer experience, shapes product strategy, and influences the decisions millions of people interact with daily.
Strong products often emerge from teams composed of people with diverse perspectives, experiences, and problem-solving methods. Experience has shown that the boundaries between roles such as information design, UX, service design, and product design are much less clear than they seem. The best solutions are rarely achieved by staying within a single discipline.
The designers having the greatest impact today are not necessarily those with the narrowest titles. They are people capable of linking customer research with business strategy, technology, and commercial thinking. In an era where AI simplifies access to technology, the deciding factor is not technical capability, but the ability to understand people, think strategically, and solve the right problems before creating solutions.
In conclusion, the companies that will thrive are not necessarily those with access to the latest tools. They are those who ask better questions, deeply understand their customers, and never forget the people for whom they are working.
The East African Community (EAC) has taken a significant step toward establishing a unified digital market. This initiative is designed to simplify the operations of technology companies and enterprises across the eight member states of the bloc.
The main objective of this initiative is to harmonize rules for digital trade, improve cross-border data exchange, and create a more integrated regional digital economy. Nevertheless, innovators note that additional work is required to resolve regulatory and infrastructural challenges.
According to Fors Prosperity, co-founder of ADB Technology, the growing digital economy of East Africa presents enormous prospects. The company, which develops artificial intelligence solutions for businesses and governments, operates in Tanzania, the United Arab Emirates, and the United Kingdom. He noted that when creating a unified East African digital market within a common framework, there should be no need to build server infrastructure in every country if you are a payment service provider in Tanzania wishing to enter the Kenyan market.
Prosperity also emphasized that despite ADB Technology's plans to expand into Kenya, differences in regulation and infrastructure gaps remain serious obstacles for companies seeking to scale across borders.
According to EAC statements, the recently approved regional norms will allow member states to securely exchange data across borders while ensuring personal information protection. The bloc considers this foundation another achievement on the path to a unified digital market, as it will facilitate businesses in providing digital services, receiving payments, and selling goods online under a more unified legal framework.
Entrepreneurs believe these reforms could open new opportunities for companies operating in the region. Economists, such as Elia Lushiku, argue that the necessary technologies to strengthen digital integration already exist. However, the main difficulty, in their view, lies in ensuring consistent implementation of agreed-upon reforms by governments across all eight partner countries.
Lushiku added that relinquishing some political power is usually not an easy decision, which explains the lengthy debates on the matter. The initiative builds upon previous regional efforts, including reducing mobile roaming charges between participating countries and adopting a regional e-commerce strategy in 2022. The eight EAC member states have a combined population of over 300 million people and an overall economy valued at more than $340 billion. The proposed rules regarding cross-border data flows and personal data protection will be presented to EAC governing bodies before they can be adopted by partner countries.
Users in South Africa may experience sudden loss of connection, for instance, late on a Tuesday evening, without the operator providing any notification regarding the cause or expected restoration time. After restarting equipment and checking the application, nothing changes. Contacting the call center only results in receiving a ticket number and a promise of a callback that never materializes. Two days later, the service is restored as quietly as it disappeared.
Although network failures are inevitable in a country with uneven power supply, the failure itself is not an indicator of the operator's quality. However, silence during such outages can become a decisive factor for the customer. The problem lies not in management ignoring the situation, but in the structural characteristics of the operators themselves, which impede timely communication.
The first deficiency relates to call centers. The industry has long sought to minimize costs associated with customer interaction by outsourcing this function. Outsourced centers are oriented towards contract metrics that encourage processing speed, contact cost, and call closure, rather than problem resolution. Consequently, the agent merely logs the failure, provides a number, and closes the ticket, creating the impression that the customer was processed rather than helped.
The second structural barrier is the organizational structure. Specialists who know about a tower malfunction and employees who interact with customers are in different departments, report to different managers, and use different systems. Network maintenance operations are evaluated based on uptime, whereas customer communications (under marketing or care) are assessed based on campaigns and sentiment. Failures occur at the intersection of these two spheres, and no one is responsible for informing customers about the breakdown and its expected resolution time.
The third factor is the technical infrastructure. Even operators striving to provide proactive updates often cannot do so because the fault detection systems were not initially integrated with customer communication systems. Fault management platforms notify technicians and track repairs, but they are not designed for mass messaging to all affected users. Integrating these systems competes for budget with projects that yield more obvious revenue. Thus, scalable communication during an outage is absent for most operators.
The combination of these factors transforms silence from a sign of negligence into a predictable consequence of the architecture: a call center built for cost savings, no owner for the customer problem, and no pathway from logging a failure to informing the user. This system reliably generates silence, regardless of management's sincere claims about customer care.
There is a way to test this hypothesis: if complaints accounted for network quality, the operator with the most negative network interaction would have the lowest measured network quality. However, the situation is the opposite. According to Opensignal's 2025 report on South Africa, based on billions of phone measurements, MTN won 11 out of 15 awards, including all overall experience awards. Rain received recognition only in the voice communication category. Ookla recorded MTN's median mobile download speed at 74.76 Mbps, the highest figure in the country, and Icasa registered national 4G population coverage at 99.5%. This indicates that the bottleneck is not the network itself, and MTN maintains leadership across various benchmarks.
However, when compared to customer perception, the picture changes drastically. The operational customer experience score from DataEQ is almost directly opposed to network quality ratings. Rain, which ranks last in network quality, shows the highest sentiment among operators—+16%. MTN, leading in the network, shows a score of -17%. The better-measured network lags behind the worst in how its customers feel. Cell C also has a positive score of +11%, and here the comparison is cleanest: Cell C does not own its own network but uses MTN and Vodacom networks, so its customers primarily use MTN towers.
When the same towers yield opposite results depending on the name on the bill, it means the measured metric does not reflect the towers themselves. This gap needs careful examination, as the two datasets measure different things. Benchmarks assess speed and coverage via devices, while DataEQ measures user feedback, which includes billing, pricing, fixed-line services, and repair difficulties.
Therefore, customer sentiment reflects not the network itself, but all the surrounding factors. The report indicates exactly which aspects are causing damage: network coverage is rated at -27%, which is poor but tolerable, while customer service is -85%, account administration is -80%, and the call center is the worst channel in the industry with a rating of -84%, with only 39% of urgent messages receiving any response.
The network is not the reason for decreased satisfaction; it is the service surrounding it. It should be noted that Cell C's score could have been inflated by a coverage campaign, which is narrative control, not service improvement. Rain demonstrates a clearer signal, as its rating is based on the ability of agents to resolve issues the same day. Customers value the entire network interaction experience: getting a response, being informed, and having the issue resolved.
Solving this problem turns out to be cheaper than it seems. If the system generates silence, the system itself must be changed, not just the messages: a single communication owner must be assigned during an outage with authority over all operations and service areas; the contact function metrics must be changed from focusing on throughput to focusing on resolution; and the failure systems must be integrated with customer systems so that status updates happen automatically, rather than requiring heroic effort. None of this requires new spectrum or a complete network overhaul. Communication during an outage must be viewed as an integral part of the product. Operators who continue to view this as a secondary issue do not lack goodwill; they lack ownership, incentive, and necessary connectivity.
Supply chains in South Africa are facing significant disruptions caused by geopolitical tensions and growing cyber threats. As costs rise and operational difficulties increase, businesses are forced to adapt strategically to secure their future.
Amid uncertainty, South African companies are grappling with a changing supply chain management landscape. According to the latest CIPS Pulse Survey for Q2 2026, while concerns about supply chain disruptions have slightly eased from record highs, risks associated with geopolitical instability remain substantial. Vigilance is crucial for organizations across South Africa.
The CIPS survey results indicate that procurement and supply chain professionals are experiencing an unprecedented level of anxiety. Despite a slight decrease in short-term disruption fears, long-term issues remain alarmingly high. This suggests that businesses are adapting to a 'new normal' characterized by constant global unpredictability, rather than a stable return to previous conditions.
South Africa's strong reliance on international supply chains creates a unique set of challenges. The region's heavy dependence on imported fuel, industrial equipment, chemicals, pharmaceuticals, and various manufacturing components underscores the critical need for uninterrupted logistical operations. Key sectors such as mining, agriculture, automotive, and retail rely on these global networks to maintain competitiveness.
The CIPS survey highlighted the conflict in the Middle East as the primary source of supply chain concern, confirmed by 75% of surveyed procurement specialists. Broader geopolitical tensions (67%) and the ongoing war in Ukraine (33%) exacerbate the situation. Despite geographical distance, these conflicts significantly impact South Africa by affecting freight routes, delivery costs, energy markets, and overall supplier availability.
Another emerging issue is the escalation of cyber risks. The survey showed that cyberattacks have surpassed logistics disruptions as one of the most pressing threats for procurement professionals. There is a growing realization that incidents affecting suppliers or critical infrastructure can quickly lead to operational failures, production stoppages, and delays in vital supplies.
For South African enterprises, the consequences are serious. The survey forecasts rising costs in several critical sectors, including shipping and logistics, oil and gas, mining, chemicals and pharmaceuticals, food and beverages, and sheet metal products. These increases could lead to higher transportation expenses, increased prices for imported goods, and higher food costs, potentially putting pressure on local economies.
To cope with these numerous challenges, companies are prioritizing resilience over mere cost-cutting. Key strategies for ensuring supply continuity include diversifying suppliers, extending supplier contracts, and maintaining buffer stocks. Paul Vos, Regional Managing Director of CIPS Southern Africa, warns that although some inflationary pressures have begun to ease, the operating environment for businesses remains unpredictable. He notes: 'Organizations can no longer assume that global supply chains will return to pre-crisis norms.'
Vos emphasizes the strategic advantage that resilience can offer businesses, asserting that it is vital to develop broader supplier networks and strengthen regional sources. Furthermore, improving supply chain transparency and enhancing the importance of procurement functions within organizations can lead to more robust operational structures.
Ben Farrell MBE, Global CEO of CIPS, comments that global trade is undergoing a fundamental transformation amid these challenges. He stated: 'The tectonic plates of world trade are shifting.' As regionalization gains momentum and globalization evolves, businesses that cultivate resilient regional partnerships will be best positioned to thrive.
Moreover, the survey indicates that one-third of organizations are already feeling the impact of recent changes in US tariff policy, and another 37% are closely monitoring developments, further demonstrating how uncertainty in trade policy complicates procurement strategies alongside geopolitical turmoil.
In light of these findings, Dr. John Glenn, Chief Economist at CIPS, cautions that despite a slight easing of sentiment, concerns regarding geopolitical shocks, cyber risks, and general uncertainty remain alarmingly high, exposing economies to potential operational disruptions.
