Something to show {{ FIRSTNAME }}? Crowds of enthusiasts were a little let down at Iran’s biggest tech event of the year, when the remarkably advanced new humanoid robots on display turned out to be just human actors in robot suits. 🤭

In This Open Letter

Also: 63.5% of SA experiences food insecurity, yet our small farmers outnumber commercial operations 60 to 1. Their goods are just not reaching formal markets. Discover what’s really going on with small-scale farmers in South Africa.

And you can now learn how SA businesses ensure success by first finding your product’s core value action.

South Africa overexports and underoptimises local food, causing a weird supply vacuum – but this co-founder couple has a plan to unlock a R24bn opportunity…

SA’s food setup’s a little weird: We produce R488bn’s worth of food per year, but export 50% of it (especially high-value fruit and veg like citrus, grapes, wine, apples) to chase higher prices overseas and then import R130bn’s rice, wheat, palm oil, cheaper vegetables and poultry to serve our R543bn food & beverage sector.

The result? 20% of our own people don’t have enough to eat every month. It’s not that we have a food production problem; our distribution is just a bit whack.

Where’s it falling apart? Founder Shadrack Kubyane will tell you. Growing up on a farm, he saw firsthand how small-scale farmers are locked out of the country’s big markets: Retailers buy all the food from only commercial producers with expensive GlobalGAP certification, take it to a central hub and redistribute it back to rural areas, effectively just chasing up prices with logistics.

“I once met a caterer who drove 400km from Venda to Joburg to buy cheaper vegetables, only to learn the vegetables came from a Venda farm, 3km from her house,” he says… wild.

An even bigger problem

SA has 35k commercial farms, but about 2–3 million small-scale farmers. Yet retailers only buy commercial because small farmers are more dispersed (75% of all agricultural produce in SA is moved by road), with inconsistent yields in smaller volumes, and they don't have the data on what consumers want.

But here’s the thing: If SA could just activate 10% of those 2 million small farmers (200k) to each just produce a meagre R10’000 of surplus per month, we’d instantly inject R24bn’s food into the local economy.

So, how do we get them locked in?

The local startup bridging the gap

eFama is an AgriTech marketplace that connects vetted farmers directly to vetted buyers, developed by husband and wife co-founders, Shadrack and Pretty Kubyane.

Farmers register through the app, undergo full verification and farm inspection, then list their produce. And eFama uses third-party logistics to move produce from the farm gate to the buyer with fewer steps.

The platform already has 6’000 buyers and a waiting list of 5’000 farmers. Farmers are paid within seven days, and one farmer grew 300% in six months and doubled their staff.

With rising transport pressure and fragmented distribution, platforms that shorten the distance between farmer and buyer are becoming essential for income stability and food security.

We’re watching this space…Have your say…

Let’s cut the marketing fluff: data doesn’t just become “valuable” when you build AI models. Sometimes the real value lies in what’s already sitting in your systems, just waiting.

Every company says they want to be “data-driven”, but few realise they’re sitting on a goldmine of untapped information.

When you catalogue your data properly, you start seeing patterns: unused customer data, duplicated records, siloed systems, mismatched identifiers… and right next to that, you start seeing opportunities: combine this with that, package this for that use-case, open a new revenue line. 

We’ve seen companies find business models they didn’t even know existed just by doing the discovery work. So yes, cataloguing is admin, but it’s also an advantage. 

Data discovery is literally unlocking the margin that you didn’t think you had. 

If you want to make the most of your data, start by looking deeply. Because you’ll find something you weren’t expecting.

🎟️ JSE Official. Cell C Holdings Limited (CCD) has officially been listed on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE). The telco’s listing closed at R26.50 a share, giving it a ~ R9-billion valuation. Nice.

💰 Banking On It. Lesaka Technologies’ merger with Zero Research, Bank Zero’s parent company, has been unconditionally approved by SA’s Competition Tribunal for a combination of newly issued shares and up to R91 million in cash. Lekker one Lesaka.

🛒 Another One. Hot on the heels of last weekend’s first SA store launch at the Clearwater Mall, Roodepoort, Walmart is wasting no time and will open up its 2nd store today at Fourways Mall. Just in time for some Black Friday deals.

👀 Putting the Open in OpenAI. Mixpanel, one of OpenAI’s data analytics providers, experienced a breach on 9 November, with some user profile information associated with their API product “may have been included in the data exported from Mixpanel”. Oh, oh…

✅ The Stack. Founders need reliable tools, so our Founder’s Stack gives you your own CFO with Finvoke, WhatsApp marketing with 2'000% ROI powered by Chat Inc, and more.

Yesterday, we showed you how Vault22’s using AI and spend data to scale financial advice in Africa, asking about the real blocker to getting financial advice in SA. Most can’t see what value advisors deliver…

🟨🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 🧱 Minimum investment barriers lock out most people (15%)

🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 💸 Advisers charging fees without clear value (35%)

🟨🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 🧠 Financial jargon that makes everything intimidating (13%)

🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 😵‍💫 Too many options to choose from (10%)

🟨🟨🟨🟨⬜️⬜️ 🧭 Not knowing where to start with investing at all (27%)

Your 2 cents…

Most likely, David. In fact, that’s exactly why our friends at Doshguide built a flat-fee advice platform (’cos not taking your gains is the only way to bring trust). 🤝

He he, right on, Herman. 😉

🍊 Full Stack Developer @ Sun World International

🪙 Full Stack Developer, React/Python @ Adsum

📑 Development Team Lead @ Lucro

🧑‍⚖️ Senior Angular Developer @ LexisNexis Shared Services

📊 Full-Stack Engineer @ Cogitait

🤖 Software Engineer @ OctoAI

Commodity miners (PGM, Gold) rallied hard as US rate cut bets lifted precious metal prices, while Mondi and BAT were supported by corporate actions.

MONDI: +6.96%
IMPALA PLATINUM: +6.22%
VALTERRA PLATINUM: +5.75%
GOLD FIELDS: +5.27%
BRITISH AMERICAN TOBACCO: +5.11%

Data from Investing.com (captured 27 Nov 2025, 1-Week performance)

Global prices rose sharply on expectations of a December US Fed rate cut, lifting the Rand price.

+1.11% (R 70’650.02 → R 71’433.50)

Data from Investing.com (Fri 21 Nov 2025 → Thu 27 Nov 2025)

Rebounding sharply from lows, Bitcoin climbed on renewed appetite for risk and rate cut expectations.

+6.26% (R 1’479’677 → R 1’572’354)

Data from Investing.com (Fri 21 Nov 2025 → Thu 27 Nov 2025)

Outperforming Bitcoin, Ethereum strongly rebounded on market risk appetite.

+8.32% (R 48’075.2 → R 52’074.8)

Data from Investing.com (Fri 21 Nov 2025 → Thu 27 Nov 2025)

💡 Tool to Try: SpatialRead will explain complex research papers to you simply.

🚀 That’s Interesting: After 48+ years in space, Voyager 1 still hasn’t travelled one light-day (it’ll hit that milestone only in 2026). At that speed, it’d take Voyager 74’000 years to reach the nearest next star system to ours (Alpha Centauri).

🥊 Next Level: Watch 15-year-old Mike Tyson win Olympic gold with an 8-second knockout.

📝 Hack: When giving instructions, explain the “why” behind tasks for better understanding.

🤗 Wow Site: Tough day? A visit to TheNicestPlace is what you need.

Vote in the poll, leave a quick comment, or hit reply — we read every single one.