“When the president put together a Presidential 4IR Commission, the issue of demographics was raised,” says Poppy Tshabalala, Vodacom Business’ Managing Executive: Public Enterprise. “This means that you first have to look at where the municipality is based before you can discuss anything in terms of their digital transformation.

“With any conversation around digitisation, everything revolves around the more advanced metros, often overlooking the rural areas that have hiccups, depending on where they are and their status in terms of funds, financial management and electricity supply, for example. You cannot compare green apples with red apples. Measurement has to be based on demographics.”