Information management solutions pioneer OpenText has completed its OpenText Summit Africa 2023 as the company and its partners all gathered in Bryanston, Gauteng recently to engage, communicate and network about the future of content in the country, on the continent and around the world.
Information is at a crossroads due to the rising advancement of AI and the rising danger of climate change, and these were both key issues leading into the theme of OpenText Summit Africa 2023: Business 2030. OpenText and its guest speakers all looked to the future during the day of keynotes and workshops to see what these challenges and opportunities have in store for all of us.
Hypertext was boots on the ground at the event and we were part of the opening ceremony started by Harald Adams, Vice President, Emerging Markets at OpenText. Adams told the crowd that, in all the years of travelling the world, he still looks forward to coming to South Africa and that he would pick it over anywhere else for a holiday.
This isn’t just because of the natural beauty of South Africa and Africa as a whole but because, when looking at Business 2030, we are more important than we may think.
“Unfortunately, in 2023, everyone is suffering. Economic downturn is happening everywhere but we know that the inflation rate is coming down, the interest rates are at their peak, the Euro is recovering slower than the US Dollar but, funny enough, Africa is outperforming the rest of the world. Let me make a very bold statement from my personal view: the whole world is heavily dependent on Africa. You can not buy, for example, a single solar panel without Africa. You can not drive any electric car without Africa. The whole world, especially now with the ongoing crisis in the Ukraine, the whole world is dependent on Africa and I am pretty sure that will not change over the next decade,” Adams stated.
Africa as a source of vital resources has always been the case, but in modern times other countries have looked here for pioneering work in certain spaces, such as the ongoing struggle against loadshedding here in South Africa and the necessary improvements that have been asked from solar and battery technology to compensate.
Through this struggle comes ample opportunities for individuals and businesses to strive, to create solutions and to perfect them with OpenText’s new content management systems that are bolstered by AI.
Adams even compares the advent of the current batch of AI models to the enormous shift in digitisation that happened when the first iPhone hit the market. OpenText has seen this happening both today and into 2030, which is why it has created opentext.ai and the Aviator series of solutions to bring this advanced content management to all.
All of this opportunity, especially around AI, needs to be balanced against just causes. Suren Naidoo, Vice President, International Presales at OpenText was the next speaker in the opening ceremony. Naidoo discussed “data for good”, such as when OpenText systems were helped with refugee migrations allowing them to more easily enter countries. The eradication of poverty, the further move online for education and, of course, tackling climate change, can all be facilitated through AI.
This is just the first in a series of articles covering the OpenText Summit Africa 2023. Check back for more articles from Hypertext at OpenText soon.
