HERMANUS, Western Cape – In a transformative keynote that challenged the very definition of digital progress, Gugu Mthembu, Chief Marketing Officer of Telkom, presented a compelling vision for a technology ecosystem built not for specs, but for the human spirit of Africa.
Delivering a speech titled “Humanising technology beyond connectivity” at SATNAC 2025, Mthembu issued a clarion call to move beyond infrastructure metrics and place human dignity, opportunity, and agency at the core of every innovation.
Mthembu began by acknowledging the rapid growth in African connectivity, where the number of connected individuals has more than doubled to over 400 million in just six years.
Yet, she quickly pivoted to the deeper challenge.
“But before we can unlock progress, I think it’s important that we understand the realities that we are dealing with,” she stated.
“Our lived experience may differ in major cities… there’s still a big gap in terms of rural versus urban connectivity. It’s quite important that we know that there’s still work to be done.”
This foundational understanding of Africa’s complex reality – where economic disparity meets unparalleled linguistic and cultural richness – formed the basis of her argument.
Mthembu asserted that the sector must flip its script entirely.
“We therefore need to flip the script in terms of how we address these issues. We need to ensure that the narrative on connectivity is not just a utility that delivers megabits and minutes. When well orchestrated, it embodies principles of human-centered design,” Mthembu explained.
This means focusing relentlessly on affordability for indigent communities, unlocking digital literacy for the youth, and ensuring solutions are fiercely relevant to societal issues.
She then articulated Telkom’s evolving mission and the core thesis of her address: “Humanising technology beyond connectivity. We mean shifting our ambition from simply getting Africans online to using technology to expand human dignity, opportunity, and agency.”
To illustrate this shift, she posed profound, human-centric questions to the audience of technologists, policymakers and young innovators:
“It’s not just about megabits per second. It’s about can a woman in a rural village learn and heal and be heard because of this infrastructure? Does our cloud, does our AI, does our fibre ultimately make a human life on this continent safer, live a fairer life, and a more dignified life?”
For Mthembu, answering ‘yes’ requires designing for the granular truths of the continent. “Humanising technology means designing to live the reality, which is affordability, thinking about the over 2,000 languages and dialects that we have in Africa for our people that still use low-spec devices and for the very unreliable power grids that we find in most African countries,” she stated, providing a definitive blueprint for context-driven innovation.
This humanised approach, she argued, extends to building for trust – ensuring data protection and creating AI that is fair and explainable within an African context. It also demands a new scorecard for success.
“We are moving from counting SIM connections and sites to tracking livelihoods that are empowered by what we do here. The jobs that are created, the learning hours that are enabled, health outcomes, and progress saved.”
Mthembu positioned connectivity not as an end goal, but as a vital conduit.
“Connectivity is not just the end state. Connectivity is the on-ramp that leads to humanised technology because humanised technology is the very destination that we aim for, where every additional capacity that we create on the network translates into more meaning, more meaning in terms of dignity, more income for those that are excluded from the economy, and more voices, African voices being heard and driving the change that we seek.”
She highlighted practical anchors for this vision, including hyper-personalisation that respects socioeconomic context and language, and responsible AI design grounded in ethical governance, privacy, and transparency.
“For us, when tech becomes personal, it becomes more powerful.”
Achieving this, she stressed, is impossible in isolation.
“Collaboration is Telkom’s innovation model. We co-create solutions that humanise technology to accelerate Africa’s digital future,” Mthembu said, emphasisng partnerships with academia and government.
In her closing argument, Mthembu elevated the discourse, defined infrastructure in deeply human terms. “From fibre to mobile broadband, cloud to data centres, these should not be viewed as just mere tech infrastructure. They are human infrastructure. Every tower, every submarine cable, every cloud node is a job, a learner, a clinic, and a business enabled.”
Her final argument was a reminder of the stakes and the opportunity:
“The next horizon is agency, giving Africans the ability to access information. Not only to access information, but to participate meaningfully in economic and civic life. Beyond connectivity means designing tech ecosystems that safeguard humanity’s future, not just serve today’s needs. Ladies and gentlemen, let us stop aiming too low.”
