Good listening {{ FIRSTNAME | there }}? These guys let AI run actual radio stations, and Claude went on strike, Grok went UFO theorist and Gemini became a corporate lackey. 🤖

Send this to a friend you’d interview on AI radio. 🎙️

In This Open Letter:

Taxpayers send around R650 billion to SA municipalities every year, yet they lose half their water (R14.89 billion’s worth in 2024), 77% of infrastructure projects have serious issues, service delivery protests have nearly doubled in the last two decades and then they ignore you if you try and report an issue – this SA founder’s built a system that’s already turning it around…

SA citizens are diligent about reporting broken traffic lights, burst water pipes, potholes, etc., but municipalities aren’t very good at responding to them. 

The average municipal response time in SA is anywhere between 2 and 48 hours. Some repairs can take up to 7 days or not at all, leaving many to question whether their reports are being handled at all.

The local startup keeping munis accountable

CityMenderSA is an infrastructure tracking platform that lets residents log service delivery issues and display them on a public map. No login or account required.

Every report auto-escalates to the correct ward and municipality via a network of 500+ verified contacts, with the platform already auto-detecting and operating across all 200 municipalities and 4’200 wards nationwide.

The issue sits live on the platform with photos, updates, and every municipal response (or non-response) visible to everyone.

There's a serious tech layer building underneath

It’s the brainchild of Keyuren Maharaj. Totally fed up with his local municipality, eThekwini (Durban)’s response rate, he taught himself to code to build the first iteration, going live in July 2025.

The city first flatly ignored every alert the platform sent through, but Keyuren kept at it, and today Durban responds to roughly 90% of issues.

Over the last 8 months, CityMenderSA has gathered more than 15 million data points. And the obvs next move is for the system to start predicting outages.

Amazing that it’s bootstrapped, investor-free and already has 11’000 users (with a Namibian launch just weeks away).

We’re watching this space…

We’ve shown you why Paystack is Africa's biggest payments partner. Now, here are the benefits: As a South African business, it takes under 15 minutes from sign-up to your first live transaction. There's no integration fee, no maintenance fee — Paystack only charges a small fee per successful transaction, so it only makes money when you do.

You get a hosted checkout that keeps customers on your own page, automatic error resolution if a transaction fails, PCI-DSS-certified fraud protection, and a real dashboard for reconciliation, chargeback alerts and customer insights. Settlements land in your bank account before 10 am the next morning. And you get 24/7 customer support.

If you're a founder still postponing your Delaware paperwork, a finance lead trying to simplify a tangle of payment providers, or a developer who just wants clean APIs that work — this is the easiest decision on your roadmap this quarter.

Who still thinks quality tutoring is only for families who can afford it?

SA EdTech startup Buddy Learning has built BuddyAI, a multilingual AI tutor that lives on WhatsApp, aligned to the SA curriculum and available in all 11 official languages. Students ask questions, get explanations and practise through quizzes, all in their home language.

But here's what's really clever:

✅ 245'000+ questions answered with 90% user retention
✅ 90% of learners showing measurable academic improvement
✅ Backed by a marketplace of 70+ vetted tutors across SA and Botswana

Recently selected for the Injini Mastercard Foundation EdTech Fellowship with R1.2m in equity-free funding.

What would you build on WhatsApp today?

🧠 AI Experts on Tap. One of SA's most successful founders built SuperDojo, AI versions of global experts you can employ for any job. The bigger flex? We got them to our next Cape Town event to show what they're really building with AI. Get your ticket.

📞 Free Calls, Big Move. Capitec Connect just rolled out free Capitec-to-Capitec calls. A bold play in the MVNO space, but a logical one — when your bank already owns the customer relationship, giving them free calls is just lock-in with benefits.

⚡ Woolies Goes Electric. Woolworths has rolled out 100% electric coffee vans by SA-made EV manufacturer Mellowvans. This is the kind of local-supports-local energy we live for. Love it.

💰 Lock In or Get Left Behind. Visual Capitalist mapped the world's youngest billionaires; most inherited wealth, but the self-made ones? Almost all AI and tech founders. Mostly European, too. If the internet is right, now's the time to really lock in.

☁️ 5 Minutes to Partner. If you're an ISV, MSP or reseller and the past few weeks have been speaking your language, Cloud on Demand is a 5-minute form away. Get a named account manager, ISO 27001-certified platform, Microsoft and AWS practices, local support. Start your application.*

* From our partners. Find all the best service providers for your business in our Founder Stack.

Many SA operators spend polite weeks or months checking in with prospects who were never going to buy. So we brought in an SA sales veteran who’s built partner networks that close deals across 24 African countries, to show us how to sell better.

And it turns out there are 3 specific steps you can take to properly qualify sales leads before investing time in them.

Send this to a friend who needs to get paid.

Yesterday, we showed you Fashion Labs’ production platform, asking what you think of using AI models for fashion. For most, it’s a hard pass…

🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 🙅 Nope. I want to see real people — 28%

🟨🟨🟨🟨⬜️⬜️ 🤷 Don't care if the clothes look real — 20%

🟨🟨🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️ 🏷️ Only if it's disclosed — 18%

🟨🟨🟨🟨⬜️⬜️ 🧠 I already can't tell the difference — 20%

🟨🟨🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️ 🛍️ Cheaper clothes > philosophical concerns — 15%

Your 2 cents…

Exactly, Lilli! Did you check out Fashion Labs’ Malva (it does this)? 👗

Got a big idea and a bold pitch? The Pitch by Deel is hunting for the world's next breakout startup — with a $1 million investment prize on the line. Apply from SA.

Building something early-stage? The Founder Collab gives SA tech founders R40k+ in tools, strategy sessions, cloud support, legal vetting and a high-trust community to build with. Join now.

African startup or MSME with a working MVP? GEC+Africa 2026 selects 10 finalists to pitch live in Cape Town in front of investors and ecosystem enablers. Register now.

Female founder building across Africa? The 2026 KPMG Female Founders in Africa Competition backs women-led ventures with resources, networks and mentorship. Apply now.

Agri startup in an African Union member state? The GoGettaz Agripreneur Prize is offering up to $50k for young agribusiness founders — live pitching in Rwanda at the Africa Food Systems Forum in September. Closes 28 June. Apply now.

🧩 Tool to Try: Color Season AI gives you a personalised palette and styling tips.

🐱 That's Interesting: Browser, a cat, was adopted by a Texas library in 2010. A local councillor tried to get him chucked out, but the public rose up. Eventually, Browser outlived the councillor who tried to evict him.

🎵 Next Level: Watch this impromptu street-side jazz rap battle unfold.

📅 Wow Site: The Year in Songs tracks songs that mention specific dates. Check what today sounds like.