Stalking Minister Schreiber at the e-Governance Conference in Estonia

Sometimes the best stories happen in the margins. While Home Affairs Minister Leon Schreiber was behind closed doors at the e-Governance Conference in Tallinn, Estonia, with Estonian President Alar Karis, I found myself in conversations that revealed as much about South Africa’s digital transformation challenge as any high-level diplomatic exchange could.

At least that’s what I told myself after being blocked from following the delegates into the meeting room.

The Ukraine Defence Tech stand is right next to the entrance hall for those meeting rooms, so I head over to chat to Anastasiia Kapranova, the Ukraine Ministry of Defence lead for international engagement on defence digitalisation, about the lessons the war-torn nation may have for developing digital economies.

Downside? I need to lead with an apology for South Africa’s neutrality, which is born out of our allegiance with Russia.

War is a great digital accelerator 

To her credit (or maybe it was my charm), she doesn’t flinch when I say the quiet diplomacy part out loud. She’s focused on something else entirely: how a crisis becomes a catalyst.

“The full-scale war showed us that we have to completely shift the focus and move from the peacetime solution to the wartime solutions,” she tells me, standing next to displays of Ukraine’s Delta combat system and Army Plus Reserve Plus platforms.

What strikes me isn’t just the sophistication of the technology, but the philosophy behind it. Ukraine has been “sharing the knowledge that we gained … um … at very high cost at the cost of our people’s lives” to help allies “increase their resilience through the digitalisation”.

It’s digitisation born from necessity, stripped of bureaucratic niceties and focused purely on what works.

The lesson for South Africa isn’t about war — it’s about urgency.

While we debate timelines and processes, Ukraine rebuilt its entire digital infrastructure under fire.

“A lot of, especially, technological development in Ukraine is done bottom up,” explains Kapranova. “It is important to listen, to hear and to empower those who have knowledge and skills.”

WhatsApp, Mr Minister? 

That bottom-up philosophy feels particularly relevant when I go over my notes from an earlier conversation with fellow South African Mitchell Ron Black — Schreiber was at an offsite lunch.

Black is a South African entrepreneur (with links to Rise Mzansi) whose company, Wakamoso Africa, is tackling what he calls the “invisible data problem” — the fact that “the type of granular data to build financial profiles on South Africans of colour doesn’t exist in the systems”, making them “appear as less bankable by default”.

The solution is elegantly simple: a WhatsApp-first platform that turns CVs into “micro income-generating assets”, paying users in airtime when their skills match job searches. It’s the kind of grassroots innovation that should excite government officials committed to digital transformation.

Except it doesn’t, apparently. Black recounts his interaction with Schreiber: “As soon as he heard that we were working on WhatsApp, the reaction was, ‘Oh, we should probably start looking at that’.”

Black says he has been “tossed from pillar to post” trying to engage with the government and mobilise funding outside of a limited pilot project in Uitsig (the Cape Town one), despite having a ready-to-scale solution. “There’s no clear focus on innovation.”

The yawning gap between ambition and implementation 

When I do finally get my interview with Schreiber after his presidential meeting, his enthusiasm is infectious. The conference had brought “even greater clarity” to South Africa’s digital transformation goals.

He spoke passionately about Estonia as a benchmark, and he has five key commitments: eVisas, smart IDs, the electronic travel authorisation (ETA) system, expanded bank branch integration and courier delivery options.

His November deadline for the ETA ahead of the G20 summit shows accountability. “We’re absolutely on track,” he insists.

But there’s a disconnect between the high-level vision and the reality facing South African innovators like Black, who, despite being “owed a couple million rand in government funding that just never appeared”, continues bootstrapping solutions while waiting for the state to catch up.

Estonia’s patient capital model 

This gap became clearer in conversations about Estonia’s approach to African partnerships. The European Union’s Global Gateway strategy, promising to “invest €150-billion [about R3-trillion] in Africa by 2027”, represents significant resources. But accessing these requires navigating complex procurement processes and finding the right partnerships — something that seems particularly challenging for South African startups caught between government indifference and funding gaps.

For African entrepreneurs, Estonia’s e-residency programme offers an intriguing workaround. Incorporating in Estonia can “derisk the project” for European investors and open up grant possibilities, particularly for seed-stage startups. It’s a pragmatic solution to funding challenges, though one that exports local talent and IP.

Perhaps the most telling observation came from Dr Armid Azadeh, founder of the medtech solutions company OnCall, representing Namibian perspectives on digital transformation.

While acknowledging Estonia’s offerings, he noted, “We ourselves feel we’re a Namibian company and that is our brand — proudly Namibian.” For countries with stable systems, the benefits of offshoring incorporation are less compelling.

This touches on something deeper: the question of digital sovereignty versus digital pragmatism. South Africa wants to be digitally transformed, but on whose terms? Using whose platforms? With whose data?

Black’s vision extends beyond individual solutions to “creating digital twins of these communities” that provide “microeconomic granular data to start better trending” for government planning. It’s the kind of locally rooted, socially conscious innovation that could transform lives.

But it requires what he calls “patient partners over time” — something in short supply in both government and local investment circles.

Beyond the taglines 

Watching Schreiber network with Estonian officials while Ukrainian innovators showcase crisis-forged solutions and South African entrepreneurs struggle for recognition, the challenge becomes clear.

South Africa’s digital transformation won’t be solved by adopting Estonia’s model wholesale, or by securing EU funding, or even by delivering the ETA system on time.

It requires bridging the gap between ministerial ambition and grassroots innovation, between international benchmarking and local implementation.

The tools exist. The talent exists. Even the political will, in its way, exists. What’s missing is the connective tissue — the systems and relationships that turn individual innovations into societal transformation.

Ukraine learned this lesson the hard way, with Kapranova explaining how putting “people who we serve in the government at the core of our digital products” builds trust and preserves identity. Estonia learned it through decades of patient institution-building. DM