Maloisane Lebogang Perseverance: We Want to Find the Best IT Partners in Russia

Moscow is welcoming participants in the Second Global Digital Forum, which is set to take place at the Mechta complex from October 8 to 10. Ahead of the official opening, visitors to the Russian capital toured the Skolkovo Innovation Center, where they shared their impressions and expectations with a reporter from the IT Russia media platform. Dr. Maloisane Lebogang Perseverance, IT director at South African company Softmeet, hopes to build mutually beneficial partnerships with Russian counterparts:

– Our company gives people in different African countries reliable, affordable internet access. We do this through contracts with various telecom providers. This allows people to communicate with friends, access government services on their mobile phones and much more. In that sense, we operate as a kind of platform, because internet access in South Africa is generally very difficult and expensive.

This is my first time in Russia, so I'm not yet very familiar with Russian companies or the country's IT industry. It's also my first time at this forum. But the main purpose of our trip to Russia is to find the best partners among companies working in IT. We know that South Africa and Russia have a strong partnership and that our countries have friendly relations. So we would like to find partners, particularly in technology and security, that we can work with going forward. Yesterday, I saw just how substantial Russia's IT infrastructure is, and I was surprised by how advanced it is. We would like to actively develop similar technologies in South Africa.

The forum's organizers have emphasized from the outset that the event is intended not only as a venue for exchanging ideas but also as a place where companies from around the world can strike mutually beneficial deals.