Daan Toerien is a semi-retired, ex-CSIR, research associate of the Centre for Environmental Management of the University of the Free State. He is passionate about Karoo landscapes and is fascinated by the enterprise dynamics of Karoo towns. He developed unique methods to determine enterprise profiles and for more than a decade has been studying the quantitative enterprise (business) dynamics of towns, also those in the Karoo. He has focused on issues such as regularities in their enterprise evolution, the enduring nature of their enterprise richness, the potential impacts of scale gas exploitation, the occurrence of the Small-Town Paradox, the orderliness in the demographic distributions of Central Karoo towns, and the influence of poverty on the enterprise dynamics of towns. His quantitative research links strongly with the city research of the Santa Fe Institute in the United States, which has developed new systemic insights about the functioning of human settlements. These have important implications for the issues discussed at this conference.

Khalil Mullagie is the Provincial Executive Officer for SALGA in the Western Cape. Small Town Regeneration is one of the flagship programmes of SALGA and Khalil is the Champion for the Karoo Small Town Regeneration initiative which include all the Municipalities in the Karoo region covering the Eastern Cape, Free State, Northern Cape and Western Cape. Khalil has been involved in the local government sector for more than 30 years. He has been with SALGA for fourteen years responsible for the various programmes in the Western Cape. Previously he was with the National Business Initiative (NBI) for seven years and the City of Cape Town in various departments. In the NBI Khalil managed programmes on Private Public Partnerships. Financial Management, Local Economic Development and Organization Development.

Crispin Sonn is a Director and shareholder of Gamiro Holdings and CEO of Gamiro ISI (Insights: Solutions: Implementation). Until July 2014, Crispin was the Managing Director of the Retail Mass Cluster of businesses at Old Mutual. Prior to this he occupied the role of Director of Marketing, Corporate Affairs, and Communications for Old Mutual Emerging Markets, and prior to that he was the executive General Manager for Personal Financial Advice and Private wealth. Crispin was at Old Mutual for 11 years and prior to that he was CEO and founder of a range of entrepreneurial ventures in IT and Financial services. He graduated with BA in Social Science and Humanities from UCT in 1990, completed an Honours degree in Business and Administration at Stellenbosch Business School in 1992 and completed the Advanced Management Program (AMP) at Harvard Business School in 2013. He is chairperson of Foodbank South Africa, an organisation which feeds 119 000 South Africans nationally and on a daily basis. He is the non-executive Chairman of the Old Mutual Foundation which makes disbursements of R80 million a year to projects in Education, Enterprise Development, Skills Development and Staff Volunteerism initiatives. He serves as a non-executive director on the boards of Frontier Rare Earths in Luxembourg, he is the chairman of Inclusivity Solutions, which is part of the Reinsurance Group of America (RGA) and he is a member of the Board of Advisors at the Graduate School of business at the University of Cape Town. He was the recipient of the Christo Wiese Medal for Enterprise from Die Suid Afrikaanse Akademie vir Wetenskap en Kuns in 2000. He was the recipient of the Jaycee Awards for Outstanding young South Africans in the Western Cape in 2001.

Ponthso Maruping heads commercialisation at SARAO where she is responsible for commercialising technologies developed for the MeerKAT project. She is also responsible for local economic development in the Karoo. Her educational qualifications include a Masters in Business Administration, Masters in Space Systems Engineering, Bachelor of Science (Hons.) in Management of Technology and Bachelor of Science (Eng.) in Mineral Processing. She is passionate about leveraging technology to impact development and dreams of building a spaceport for SpaceX’s BFR rocket in South Africa

Johan van Zyl has obtained his B.Com. Marketing (cum laude 1980), B.Com. Marketing Honours (1981), M.Com (1984) and D.Com (1988) degrees at the University of the Free State. The topic of his doctoral thesis was: “The role of marketing productivity and the effect of it on manufacturing firms in South Africa”. He specialises in Marketing and Entrepreneurship, primarily on post-graduate and MBA level. His areas of expertise is the drawing up of business plans, marketing plans, strategic environmental plans, tourism sector plans, service delivery plans and turn-around strategy plans. He also focuses on entrepreneurial development and community service. He is involved in running entrepreneurial mentorship programs in underprivileged areas, entrepreneurial training with current and new entrepreneurs in the Unit for Entrepreneurship and is busy developing a Social Return on Investment model using the Entrepreneurial development programmes at the Unit for Entrepreneurship.

Nadine Smith-Clarke is the Head of Wesgro’s Export Advancement Programme and has a wealth of knowledge in her role supporting entrepreneurs to develop their skills towards becoming successful exporters. Nadine has a broad knowledge of training and development, as well as trading in international markets. She has more than 10 years of experience working with a vast range of businesses and has a thorough understanding of business development. Her focus is on the development of both new and experienced exporters, depending on individual company needs. Since Nadine joined Wesgro she has since facilitated international trade development for numerous companies. She has successfully led a number of Western Cape companies on outward selling missions, as well as facilitated in-market seminar programmes for exporters to various markets across the globe. Nadine holds a BCom Hons in Management from the University of the Western Cape ( UWC)

Rorisang Tabane is the Technology and Manufacturing Portfolio Manager at Wesgro and a level 1 Chartered Financial Analyst candidate. Her role at Wesgro spans into formulating, executing and managing a strategy to attract increased levels of Technology focused Foreign and Domestic Direct Investment into the Western Cape. During her tenure at Wesgro, she has effectively and actively interacted with industry role players in the technology ecosystem such as Silicon Cape and Cape Innovation Technology including National and Provincial Government as well as successfully developed a marketing proposition niche for investing in the Western Cape with the aid of Social Media. By profession, Rorisang is an Auditor, having worked at PriceWaterhouse Coppers (PwC) as a Tax Manager prior to joining Wesgro. 

Johann Kirsten is Professor and Director of the Bureau for Economic Research (BER) at the University of Stellenbosch. Before taking up this position he was Professor in Agricultural Economics and head of the Department of Agricultural Economics, Extension and Rural Development at the University of Pretoria. – A position he occupied for 20 years until his resignation on 31 July 2016. He was born in Cape Town and matriculated from the Hoërskool Jan van Riebeeck in Cape Town in 1979. Subsequently he enrolled for undergraduate studies at the University of Stellenbosch and completed the BSc Agric degree and a BSc Agric (Hons) degree in Agricultural Economics. He started his career as an agricultural economist in the Department of Agriculture in Pretoria and also enrolled for postgraduate studies at the University of Pretoria. He obtained a Master’s degree and PhD degree in Agricultural Economics at the University of Pretoria and joined the University of Pretoria as lecturer in 1992. He served as a council member of the National Agricultural Marketing Council in South Africa from 2001 to 2011 and was also appointed by the Minister of Agriculture as Chair of the Food Price Committee during 2003/4. He also served as the Vice-President of the International Association of Agricultural Economists for the period 2006 – 2009. His main research interests are agricultural policy, land reform and the economics of origin-based foods. In this respect, he was the mastermind behind the legislative process to get legal protection for Karoo Lamb and also to establish a certification mark for this well-known iconic South African food.

Jakkie Cilliers was, until December 2015, the Executive Director of the Institute for Security Studies (ISS). He now serves as Chairperson of the Board of Trustees and head of African Futures & Innovation at the ISS. He has a B. Mil (B.A.) from the University of Stellenbosch and a Hons. B.A., M.A. (cum laude) and DLitt et Phil from the University of South Africa (UNISA). Awards include the Bronze Medal from the South African Society for the Advancement of Science and the H Bradlow Research Bursary. He was born in Stellenbosch, South Africa on 16th April 1956. Dr Cilliers co-founded the Institute for Defence Policy in 1990 and played an important role in the transformation of the South African armed forces and the institution of civilian control over the military in the period 1990 to 1996. The IDP changed its name to the Institute for Security Studies (ISS) in 1996. At present most of Dr Cilliers` interests relate to issues around African futures. Dr Cilliers has presented numerous papers at conferences and seminars and published a number of books on various matters relating to peace and security in Africa and serves on the editorial boards of the African Security Review and the South African Journal of International Affairs. He is a regular commentator on local and international radio and television and has attended a large number of international conferences. He is an Extraordinary Professor in the Centre of Human Rights and the Department of Political Sciences, Faculty Humanities at the University of Pretoria.