The 2026 IT Indaba has filled the Sandton Convention Centre with the buzz and unmistakable energy of 2,400+ tech professionals, all coming together to connect, compare roadmaps and talk about all things technology.
With the expo floor at full capacity, we plugged into the overflowing exhibition floor at the 2026 IT Indaba, asking attendees what brought them here, what they hope to learn and which ideas they’ll be shipping back to their teams.
Ebrahim Rahman, head of IT at Betfred South Africa, attended with his team members.
“I am very excited and looking forward to learning from the community. I am eager to hear all of the insightful discussions planned on the programme. There are quite a lot of exciting and relevant topics. I am particularly interested in the ROI-related topics – understanding how to extract value out of AI, translate that into real business deliverables, and add tangible value to the business,” he said.
Gareth Forbes, CIO at Tourvest Retail and Catering echoed Ebrahim’s sentiments. “I am super excited, especially around the AI component and the workshop. I am looking forward to looking at practical examples of how to take it from ideation to completion, looking at how you calculate the ROI, what is actually measurable, and how we can sell this to the board.”
Asked which session he was looking forward to the most, Gareth responded, “The iOCO Technology Group session from CTO Denzil Govender. I am looking forward to seeing how they take their SDLCs with AI. I am also looking at AI data governance and the return on investment – like the session on Copilot versus whether you are actually building agents correctly. It is really around the marketing that I am interested in, how we sell it to our committees, and how we are actually investing in it.”
Building on those floor insights, Patson Naidoo, business relationship manager at Blu Label Telecoms offers his perspective on what makes this gathering a vital pitstop for IT leaders.
“I was invited here by one of our partners. Heading up third-party risk management and vendor management, there are a lot of insightful takeaways to be gathered from the various forums. I am especially interested in the AI side – how we can adopt and implement AI to make life easier for the end user and apply those learnings within our corporation.”
It was also Capitec group CIO Andrew Baker’s first time at the Indaba. Andrew, who is notoriously shy, says he was extremely nervous about attending, but hopes that his session can offer value to attendees.
“I like doing blogs, I dump all my thoughts on Andrew.Baker.Ninja. The two most important things we do is teach and learn. You can’t be a gym instructor if you are not fit. You can’t be a technology leader unless you really understand technology.I put a lot of effort into understanding things that I teach and because I teach, I know,” he said.
