Well, that didn’t take long… Remember that super-agile robo doggie we showed you last week? Domino’s is already branding and deploying a bunch of them to bring you pizza on the beach. Now that’s a good boy. 🍕

In Today’s Open Letter

South Africa is paying millions per year in salaries to non-existent government employees, and this startup’s going to put a stop to it …

In Mpumalanga, at least R6.4 million was paid to people who no longer worked there, with the province’s education department still paying salaries to deceased or terminated staff. And it’s not some random, isolated incident. Parliament recently froze pay for 230 unverifiable staff in Gauteng Health. 

Ghost workers appear on spreadsheets across national and provincial departments, with it often taking three insiders to collude with one another to create just one ghost.

But identifying fraud is only half the job. The real opportunity is preventing it. Not to mention the follow-through in prosecuting those found to be corrupt is a mere drop in the ocean tbh.

And the bigger the departments, the easier it is for ghost employees to slip through the cracks.

How does this happen?

Well, government departments working at the breakneck speed of bureaucracy often build in silos. Policies vary by province. And most global ERP systems (think Oracle, SAP) require governments to adapt to the software, not the other way around. 

And it’s this mismatch that makes those large implementations stall or fail. Not to mention the astronomical bill.

But what if there was a system built from scratch for the South African government, by someone who actually worked in it as a contractor?

The local ERP built in SA for SA

GovERP is a modular ERP system designed specifically for the South African government. It currently runs across education and health departments (which are typically bigger gov departments) and spans more than 240 modules, including payroll, leave, supply chain, performance management and asset tracking.

What makes it effective is its AI layer. Instead of hardcoding business rules (which vary from department to department, and province to province, GovERP ingests full departmental policy documents and applies those rules dynamically (we’re talking hundreds of pages at a time). 

This allows for faster deployment, fewer errors and policy-level compliance from day one.

Already live in Gauteng, Free State, the Western, Eastern and Northern Cape, GovERP has already helped the education department identify and remove ghost employees, resulting in cost savings.

We caught up with Ashley Skippers, founder and CEO of HashData, the folks building GovERP, and, unlike most founders who would avoid government like load shedding, he’s on a mission to help fix SA for future generations, one ERP module at a time. 

That kind of grit is hard to copy-paste. And so is the code. We’re watching this space.

Buried in Excel? Julius AI connects to your data sources and lets you ask plain-English questions (“show me churn trends”) to get instant charts and insights for smart decisions — no coding needed. Try it here.

Consistent AI characters? Ideogram’s new Character model turns a single reference photo into infinite, on-brand images (no video just yet). Perfect for marketing, gaming or creative projects. Give it a spin here.

Smart LinkedIn growth? LiGo learns from your profile and then 1) writes posts for you, 2) drops authentic comments via a Chrome extension and 3) uses AI analytics to help you monetise your audience. See what it’s about.

🚀 African BioTech Boost. Altera Biosciences just landed a R29 million investment into their universal donor cell platform that could rewrite the rules for organ transplants, diabetes, and cancer care. Whoa.

😮 Naughty Words Shift. YouTube will now let creators monetise videos with a bit of naughty talk, even if it’s in the first seven seconds — a far cry from their strict old “no-swear” days. Taking back the digital swear jar...

🔄 Reset to Glory. The JSE is plotting a comeback with 24/7 trading and slashing red tape to reclaim its glory after seeing hundreds of companies delisting over the last 30 years. Nice one.

📱Airport Mode. Airports Company SA might be entering the telecoms arena by launching an eSim-based MVNO for international travellers. Mega smart play — hopefully the skelms don't catch on…

✅ The Stack. Founders need reliable tools and suppliers. Check out our Founder’s Stack with your own CFO for a fraction of the cost with OCFO, WhatsApp marketing with 2'000% ROI powered by Chat Inc, and loads more vital startup tools & services.

Yesterday, we showed how Koola’s unlocking township business capital, asking how you think a kazi entrepreneur operates. And most expect they’ll focus on flipping stock, fast…

🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 💼 Buy stock and flip it fast (58%)

⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 🔧 Fix or replace essential tools (3%)

🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 💸 Pay off debt to unlock cash flow (10%)

⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 🚀 Start something completely new (0)

🟨🟨🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️ 📈 Invest in growing what’s already working (32%)

Your 2 cents…

And, from what we’ve heard, the economies scale well — they have daily foot traffic, CT. 💰

We can totally believe you, Isaac! The informal sector is where a lot of SA’s real heroes hustle. 🦸🏾‍♂️

Fantastic CM! The more we dig, the more we find South Africans doing really amazing things. Every. Day. 💚

Value-added services (VAS) are product offerings typically offered by retail, banks or mobile network operators that are non-core to their primary services.

VAS in the payment space is now worth nearly R500 billion a year:

💡 Domestic money transfers account for R163 billion — a third of total spend.

💡 Bill payments, prepaid airtime and electricity follow closely as everyday essentials.

💡 Even betting vouchers take up a hefty R49 billion slice of the market.

VASs are fast becoming core to South Africa’s payment ecosystem.

🛠️ Tool to Try: Notion AI will instantly summarise notes, brainstorm ideas and generate content inside your Notion workspace.

🤔 That’s Interesting: Sharks are older than some stars: They've existed for roughly 450 million years, significantly older than the star Polaris, which formed only about 70 million years ago.

🔥 Next Level: This guy flew his drone into a volcano to get the ultimate shot. Talk about next‑level dedication.

🍔 Hack: Want to support a friend’s business but don’t need their product? Buy it and gift it to someone who’ll love it — a win-win for everyone.

🌐 Wow Site: Rogue Scroll – a real‑time, terminal‑style news dashboard you can scroll endlessly with no login required. Minimalist, elegant and oddly addictive.

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