Why I'll Never Leave Etwatwa to Build the Next Big SA Tech Company.
Entrepreneurship · Community · By Bryan Botilheiro
I've heard it more times than I can count.
"You need to move to Joburg." "The market won't understand your product if you're building from the township." "You can't scale from there." "Serious investors don't come to Etwatwa." "If you want to be taken seriously, you have to be where the money is."
It's always said with good intentions. Sometimes by people who genuinely care about my success. And for a long time, I sat with that advice — turned it over, wondered if they were right, wondered if staying was holding me back.
I'm not wondering anymore. I'm staying. And I want to tell you exactly why.
The advice assumes the wrong things
When someone tells you there's no growth in the township, they're revealing something about how they see the township — not how it actually is. They see it as a place to escape from, not a place to build in. They see it as a market that doesn't understand sophisticated products, not as a community with real, urgent, unsolved problems.
That framing is wrong. And building from that framing produces the wrong companies.
The township isn't a limitation. It's a market. One of the most underserved, underinvested, and misunderstood markets in South Africa. The problems here are real. The people here are real. The need for solutions — in transport, digital access, employment, financial services, education — is enormous.
If I leave Etwatwa to go build where "the market understands the product," I'm not levelling up. I'm abandoning the people for whom the product actually matters most.
The problems worth solving are here
Every single venture I've built has come from something I observed or experienced in Etwatwa. NETCAFE Tech came from watching young people in my community locked out of the digital economy because they had no access to devices or connectivity. JobLaunchSA came from watching talented people struggle to navigate a job market that wasn't designed for them. SafeRide came from a real safety problem that affects real people in this community every day.
I didn't need to go to Sandton to find those problems. I couldn't have found them there. They don't exist there — not in the same way, not with the same urgency, not with the same stakes.
The best companies are built by people who deeply understand the problem they're solving. And the person who most deeply understands the problems of Etwatwa is someone who lives in Etwatwa. That's not a disadvantage. That's the sharpest possible competitive edge.
"Where the market understands the product" is a trap
Here's what that advice really means: go build for people who already have money, already have access, already have options. Because those are the people the traditional startup ecosystem is comfortable serving.
But what about everyone else?
There are millions of South Africans in townships who are underserved by almost every industry — banking, healthcare, transport, tech, retail. The companies that figure out how to serve those people well, at the right price, with products built for their actual lives — those companies will be enormous. Not despite building in the township. Because of it.
The next big South African tech company might not come from a Sandton co-working space. It might come from Etwatwa. From Soweto. From Khayelitsha. From a founder who refused to leave and built something that actually fits the market they know best.
Staying is a strategic decision, not a sentimental one
I want to be clear about something: I'm not staying in Etwatwa out of pure loyalty or nostalgia. I'm staying because I think it's the right business decision.
The township market is largely untapped. The problems are acute and well-defined. The founder-market fit — me building for people whose lives I actually understand — is as strong as it gets. And as digital infrastructure improves, the friction of building from here decreases every year.
At the same time, yes, I carry a responsibility to this community. If I leave and take whatever skills, networks and resources I've built with me — what does that leave behind? The township doesn't need more people extracting value from it and moving on. It needs people who are committed to building within it, and staying to see it grow.
Those two things — strategic logic and community commitment — point in exactly the same direction. Stay. Build here. Solve problems that matter to people who need them solved.
A different definition of success
The people who tell me to leave have a particular definition of success in mind. An office in Rosebank. Investors with overseas portfolios. A product that gets written up in tech media. A LinkedIn profile that signals you've arrived.
That's one version of success. It's not mine.
My version looks like this: a township where young people have real pathways into the digital economy. Ventures that solve genuine problems for real people in my community. A proof of concept — visible, undeniable — that you can build something significant without leaving where you come from.
If the next big SA tech company comes from Etwatwa, that changes the story for every young founder in every township who's been told they have to leave to matter. That's worth more to me than any Sandton address.
So no. I'm not leaving.
Bryan Botilheiro is the founder of NETCAFE Tech, Astute Tech Foundation, JobLaunchSA, and SafeRide — all built in Etwatwa, Daveyton. He writes about entrepreneurship, digital access, and what it really takes to build in South Africa's townships.
Comments
Post a Comment