Industry needs to move from quantum awareness to action
- Ñî¹óåú´«Ã½ University
SA Quti aims empower industry to bring their quantum future forward to maximise its opportunities.
South Africa’s quantum technology leaders called on business to stop treating quantum as a distant science project and start testing where it could solve real problems in local industries.
The Ñî¹óåú´«Ã½-based South African Quantum Technology Initiative, or SA QuTI, hosted an industry cocktail event, “Start Your Quantum Future Today”, at the Ñî¹óåú´«Ã½ Anglo American Digital Dome. The event brought together business leaders, academics, innovators and researchers, and was framed around “turning quantum potential into practical collaboration”.
The evening was a meet-and-greet between industry and the SA QuTI team, including quantum experts such as Professor Andrew Forbes, the SA QuTI director, and Dr Isaac Nape. The programme included talks by Forbes, SA QuTI project manager Jodie Robbertse, Accenture managing director Satish Nrusimhadevara and Boston Consulting Group project leader Dr Andreas Svela.
Opening the event, Ñî¹óåú´«Ã½ Commercial Enterprise research business development manager Andrea Flusk said the aim was not to turn business leaders into quantum experts, but to start a conversation.
“Tonight is not about becoming quantum experts yourselves,” Flusk said. “Rather, it is about starting a conversation.” She said industry brought domain expertise, while SA QuTI brought quantum expertise.
Forbes said SA QuTI had spent its first phase raising awareness about quantum, explaining both the opportunities and the risks. The next phase, he said, was about helping industry take practical steps.
“What we want to do is empower you to move forward, not into the far future, but to bring that future to today and get active immediately,” Forbes said. He said SA QuTI wanted to “walk hand in hand” with companies.
Robbertse said SA QuTI was a national initiative funded by the Department of Science, Technology and Innovation and aimed at building a quantum ecosystem in South Africa. She said the initiative worked across research, skills development, technology demonstrators and industry engagement.
SA QuTI was not aiming to build a quantum computer, but to develop quantum software for real-world applications, with a focus on South African needs.
“There are lots of threats that quantum can pose, but there are also lots of opportunities that it can give us,” Robbertse said.
SA QuTI offered companies three ways to get involved: a R250,000, 12-month quantum computing internship programme, postgraduate sponsorships of R150,000 for an MSc student and R180,000 for a PhD student, and a one-week quantum readiness course at about R17,000 per person.
Nrusimhadevara said one of the biggest barriers to new technology was not the technology itself, but whether organisations could adopt it.
“If your technology is not able to solve those daily requirements of either society or an organisation, it doesn’t move beyond pilots and prototypes,” he said.
Svela said quantum computing was becoming a serious business issue, with possible uses in drug discovery, logistics, financial services, artificial intelligence and cybersecurity. He said many business problems had a “maze-like quality”, where companies needed to test many possible routes.