On a cold and wet August morning, students from the University of Cape Town’s Graduate School of business arrive at the offices of one of the city’s most successful social media companies. The MBA candidates have gathered at the firm’s premises to gain insight into its remarkable success in developing innovative and effective social media services in South Africa and abroad.

The presentation of the company’s unusual approach to identifying, incubating and developing social media services takes place not in a plush boardroom in Cape Town’s central business district, or a cramped laboratory in one of the city’s outlying technology incubators. Instead, the students are hosted at a small office complex in Athlone on the Cape Flats. It is an environment better known for gang wars, drug dealing and violent service delivery protests than emerging technology.