Why are we not producing solutions locally anymore?
During strategy meetings at JCSE and saArchitect it was confirmed again and again that South-Africa has top IT people that need to stand second to noone.
Why is it then, that the industry and even large IT vendors take opportunities to the overseas IT market first, usually ending up spending huge budgets on international solutions. This outflow of funds is not only hurting the local economy, stalling the IT growth, but is probably a major factor for the brain drain we are battling with in South-Africa.
As a community (saArchitect and saDeveloper) I believe that we need to give this problem some serious thought and ensure that we can demonstrate what we know that IT South-Africa is capable of delivering with the support of industry. We should be exporting our solutions, not our “brains on a stick”.