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The Cape IT Initiative (CITI) is a non-profit organisation established in 1998 to develop and support the information and communications technology (ICT) cluster in the Western Cape.

Herewith  a quick update (as at 12 August 2010) highlighting some of our recent activity:

New CITi Board members

The CITi Board Election process ended on 30 June 2010. Three new Board Members have been elected, namely Mustapha Baboo (Maxxor), Russell Dreisenstock (MIH/Naspers), Joy-Marie Lawrence (Business Connexion). They replace Mothusi Lukhele (Business Connexion) and Dave Gale (ViaData). Andrea Bohmert (HP Ventures), Dr Raven Naidoo (Future Perfect t/a Radian) and Greg Reis (BSG Africa) remain as the other three industry representatives on CITi’s Board.  There have also been changes to the non-elected members of CITi’s Board. Prof Willem Visser, head of Computer Science at the University of Stellenbosch replaces Prof Antony Staak as the CHEC representative and Nezaam Joseph replaces Jo-Ann Johnston as the PGWC representative. Wesley Diphoko (BITF representative), Joshin Raghubar (Bandwidth Barn representative), Kwanda Modise (City of Cape Town, alternate Faith Kolala) and Gail Smith (PGWC alternate to Nezaam Joseph) remain as representatives of their organisations. Read the press announcement. 

Presentation of findings of team investigating how to attract software centres to Cape Town

As part of our initiative to put Cape Town on the map as an innovative software development hub, CITi has been involved in pitches for both a Google incubator and an InfoDev incubator. We have also, further to the discussion at the Round Table project held as part of ICSE 2010, been working with an Executive MBA Leadership team from the University of Georgetown in Washington DC, who were briefed to investigate the potential opportunities to attract multi-national software development or software research centres to Cape Town. The team presented their findings on Friday 6 August. The key next step is to put together a “pitch book” for Cape IT and further CITi’s work in collecting Cape IT success stories as part of our IT Heroes & Pioneers and Cape Software Showcase projects. The Round Table report and the Georgetown presentation is available to paid up CITi members only, on request ( This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it ).

New project to investigate feasibility of PSP/TSP for the Western Cape

On 4 June 2010, as part of our drive to find ways to “prove” the quality of Cape software development, CITi, in association with the JCSE and CITi stakeholders, initiated a project to investigate the feasibility of Personal Software Process (PSP) and Team Software Process (TSP). This project is now led by a PSP/TSP Steering Committee, chaired by Mark Acton of Mobinomics, which meets at the Bandwidth Barn on the last Friday of every month from 10h00 – 12h00 (all welcome.) Presentations and minutes of the meetings can be found here.

Other projects

Find out more about our other projects – IT Heroes & Pioneers, the Cape Software Showcase, CITi Cafe Conversations and the Cape Software Engineering Colloquium project 

CITi membership

We hope that reading this will inspire you to become a CITi member and support our work. The Cape IT Initiative (CITi) launched a new membership programme in March and would like to invite you/your organisation to become a CITi member. (Membership fees are low: R 240 pa for an individual or company employing less than 9 people; R 1 000 pa for up to 50 staff and R 2 000 pa if more than 50 staff.) Applications can now be done online:

Individual Member
Organization as a Member

You can follow CITI's Executive Director, Jenny McKinnell, on Twitter