Government identified the software development sector as one of ten potential high-growth sectors under an older dti scheme that aimed to identify and assist potential high-growth industries. Government also has a stated policy of using open source software wherever possible, something that met with fierce resistance from closed source vendors, and a policy that many in the industry, seeing their lunch walking out the door, continue to attempt to undermine.

“Government,” says IndigoCube MD Ziaan Hattingh, “is one of the biggest spenders in IT and a large portion of that spend is on software development. If you were going to grow or develop or strengthen a local industry, it would make sense to use that spend to develop the industry. Sita, for example, is spending a lot on its own software development.”