It is the evening of Stellenbosch Business School’s Academic Opening on 9 February 2026, and the audience is highly engaged in the proceedings. Senior Director of the Business School, Prof Chris van der Hoven, closes his address to all dignitaries and guests in attendance with a message of optimism, positivity and bravery. He hands over once more to MC, Prof Armand Bam, Head of Social Impact at the Business School.
The introduction is brief, yet poignant, as Prof Bam welcomes the keynote speaker to the stage. Phuti Mahanyele-Dabengwa, CEO of Naspers South Africa, swiftly takes her position behind the lectern to deliver a keynote address that will resonate within the institution long after the Academic Opening concludes. The overarching theme for the auspicious occasion is "Building Africa’s Digital Ecosystems: Partnerships Between Business, Academia, and Policy."
Addressing “Distinguished faculty, industry partners, and the alumni joining us; and most importantly, the students of the Class of 2026,” Mahanyele-Dabengwa immediately frames the evening as both a celebration and a charge. As a member of the Stellenbosch Business School Advisory Board, she speaks as someone with “a deep, personal vested interest in the success of this institution.”
She reminds the audience that Stellenbosch Business School “does not just teach business; it shapes the conscience of business,” producing leaders for Africa and for the world. Yet, the heart of her message lies beyond institutional pride. It lies in the future of a continent.
“We are living through a period of extraordinary disruption,” she says, describing a world in which old powers retreat into protectionism, new ones rise, and technologies rewrite the rules of competition. Africa, once dismissed, now stands at a crossroads. The next decade, she argues, will determine “whether Africa becomes shaper of the global digital economy or merely a market for products built elsewhere.”
The decisions ahead will not be abstract. “They will be made by people. By leaders. By you.”
To illustrate the weight of that responsibility, Mahanyele-Dabengwa goes back to May 2000, when The Economist ran its infamous cover declaring “Africa: The Hopeless Continent.” The article, she recalls, portrayed Africa as ‘beyond reform and beyond rescue’. “They were wrong, spectacularly wrong,” she states firmly.
Today, Africa tells a different story. In the first half of 2025 alone, African startups raised $1.42 billion, reflecting 78% year-on-year growth. The continent now has four times more mobile money accounts than any other region. Homegrown fintech giants such as Flutterwave, Interswitch, Opay and TymeBank have achieved unicorn status, while millions of young developers build platforms used across the globe.
She points to Naspers itself as a case study in continental ambition. Founded in 1915, as a newspaper company in Cape Town, the Naspers and Prosus Group today serves more than two billion customers globally and defines “what an AI-first future looks like for the world.” That evolution, she argues, is “a testament to what becomes possible when Africans refuse to think small.”
Innovation in Africa, she emphasises, has not been about imitation but adaptation. “We didn’t just adopt technology, we adapted to it.” She cites Safaricom’s development of M-Pesa in Kenya, which is a system built from observing how Kenyans actually moved money, that is now processing over 61 million transactions daily across seven countries. “We didn’t import innovation, we generated it.”
Eleven years after its damning headline, The Economist returned with a new cover: “Africa Rising.” Yet Mahanyele-Dabengwa resists complacency. “We are not a continent that has risen. We are a continent that is rising: still climbing and still building.”
Her address then sharpens toward the defining issue of the age: artificial intelligence. Naming the rise of agentic AI systems capable of reasoning and executing multi-step tasks, she frames the stakes starkly. Citing projections that two-thirds of jobs may be transformed within a decade, she challenges the Class of 2026: “Whether you will be the one directing that transformation, or the one being transformed.”
Technical fluency, she implies, is no longer enough. Ethical judgment, governance, and courage will distinguish true leaders. Africa “cannot afford to be a consumer in this new order” it must help set standards and shape digital sovereignty.
Everywhere she travels, she notes, the same urgent questions dominate global forums: “Who will lead the next era of technology? Who will set the standards? Who will control the data?” Her conclusion is unequivocal: “The next chapter of global technology will not be written without Africa.”
As the evening draws to a close, the message lingers powerfully in the auditorium. The 2026 Academic Opening stands out as ceremonial start to an academic year, as well as a call to build the future from the centre.
For the Class of 2026, the challenge is unmistakable: they enter lecture halls, stepping into a decade that will test their courage, judgment and imagination.
In Mahanyele-Dabengwa’s words, the question is no longer whether Africa will participate, but whether it will create the future in which the rest of the world will participate. The leaders who walk out of Stellenbosch Business School’s doors in the years ahead will certainly help determine the answer.
The applause rises. She steps down gracefully from the stage. And as the evening's programme continues, her inspiration echoes in the following addresses. There is no doubt that all in attendance will leave with the motivation to create value for a better world, and a better future.