JOHANNESBURG — Entrepreneur Khaya 'Angel' Matchegue, who is the owner and founder of fashion and design company Lechero, has found a brilliant niche in designing school uniforms, work apparel and other clothing. She started the business with just an idea but is now building it out, employing others and buying assets to scale up. It's a truly inspirational story. - Gareth van Zyl

JOHANNESBURG — Everybody knows that the state of South Africa's education system is pretty appalling. But one programmed dubbed Partners for Possibility (PfP) wants to help ensure quality education for all school children in the country by the year 2025. PfP targets doing this by establishing co-learning partnerships between School Principals and Business Leaders. In turn, PfP aims to ensure that schools are placed at the centre of their communities. It's an interesting initiative. And in this interview, businesswoman Gillian Cox tells about a partnership she entered and the difference it made. - Gareth van Zyl

When Trump tweeted that he wanted to investigate land expropriation and "the large scale killing of farmers" in South Africa, he sent the rand into a tailspin. But the tweet says a lot more about the president than it does about EWC in South Africa. In this episode, Felicity Duncan and Alec Hogg discuss Trump's legal troubles and his attempt to divert attention from them with his incendiary tweet about South Africa. While the policy of EWC may be problematic, Trump's Twitter shot has more to do with his anxiety than any real concern with property rights. They also discuss Elon Musk's about-face on taking Tesla private and the many global successes of Boksburg boy Rowan Gormley.

JOHANNESBURG — Fine art auction house, Strauss & Co, is one of Johannesburg's cultural gems. Tucked away in an office in upmarket Houghton, I had the privilege to go and interview Wilhelm van Rensburg, who is a respected senior art specialist at Strauss & Co. The conversation in this podcast is a fascinating one as Strauss & Co has sold nine of the ten most expensive paintings ever auctioned in South Africa and holds numerous artists’ sale records. Founded by the likes of top South African corporate legends, Elisabeth Bradley and Dr Conrad Strauss, as well as art doyen Stephan Welz, Strauss & Co really are the experts when it comes to investing in art. And van Rensburg gives us some of his best tips when it comes to buying art in this podcast. On BizNews.com, I've also posted his recommended reading for any future prospective art investors. - Gareth van Zyl

JOHANNESBURG — This interview will pique the interest of many a parent. There's no denying that it's time to worry about where South Africa's education system, and particularly its universities, are headed in the next few years. With a sluggish economy and policies such as free tertiary education for poorer families, there's a real risk that the quality of education at the country's universities could erode. The alternative option is sending your children to a university in another country. The problem with this is that you'll need to have started saving like yesterday. And not just putting a small amount aside - you'll actually need to save at least R17 000 per month per child, increasing that amount by 10% annually, according to Charlene Prinsloo, a wealth manager at AlphaWealth. Take a listen to my interview with Charlene to find out more. - Gareth van Zyl

Earlier this year, private equity firm RMB Corvest ended a spectacularly successful (near 30% compound return), decade long partnership when Durbanite Kenton Fine's Servest was sold into a global competitor. The partnership began four years after Fine had taken his once JSE listed services private, and flourished through a succession of deals which put control of its South African operations into black hands and now through the sale of its UK-headquartered global business into multinational Atalian. This is the story of one of SA's most successful private equity investments told by Fine and RMB Corvest CEO Mike Donaldson (pictured).

JOHANNESBURG — Value investing is a refrain famously repeated by Warren Buffett. At its core, it simply involves buying securities that appear underpriced as per fundamental analysis. And in this interview, Allan Gray's chief investment officer, Andrew Lapping, explains how his firm has used value investing to identify Naspers, Glencore and Impala Platinum as hot stocks. Take a listen. - Gareth van Zyl

He's an unlikely hero is Shaun Abrahams, the now-disgraced former head of the National Prosecuting Authority. But Abrahams may inadvertently have done the country and the currency a world of good by getting sacked amidst the emerging markets currency crisis. The rand, which by all logic should have tanked in the wake of the ongoing Turkish lira crisis, held its ground to a remarkable degree last week. It's a head-scratcher, until you remember that Abrahams' head rolled last week, sparking hope that the country may get a better NPA boss who can start to clean things up around here. Alec Hogg and Felicity Duncan discuss events at the NPA and their impact on markets. They also take a look at the ongoing chaos at Tesla and the role of the board in allowing it to continue.

JOHANNESBURG — Inspired by birds of the order 'Passeriformes' (passerines), Matthew Whalley and his Johannesburg-based team have gone about developing innovative drone technology that can take off and land with the use of legs. Matthew's company, appropriately dubbed 'Passerine Aircraft Corporation' has even gone as far as attracting funding from Y Combinator, which is a well-known American seed accelerator. Whalley's company has big ambitions to roll out their drones across the African continent as the rush for this technology gathers pace. Take a listen to Matthew's story. - Gareth van Zyl

This special podcast is brought to you by RMB. In 2008 Vodacom SA attracted 85,000 new black shareholders in a public offer of shares via the widely publicised YeboYethu transaction. With 8,500 Vodacom staffers also opting into the scheme, this innovative, Black Economic Empowerment (BEE) transaction was one of the largest of its kind and, as it turns out, a hugely successful one for those who invested in it. They’ll be getting back, in cash, a multiple of the original capital that was put in, plus a significant stake that’s now being reinvested in YeboYethu 2. At almost R16.5bn this is the largest single, empowerment transaction in the ICT sector in SA to date. RMB Corporate Finance transactor, Kgolo Qwelane has been intimately involved in this year-long project that drew on experts in various departments at the bank.

JOHANNESBURG — If you ever need any motivation to get you across the line with your personal goals in life, I suggest you listen to my interview with former Cape Town-based David Perel. What's fascinating about Perel, who now lives in London, is that he had a passion for racing karts while growing up as a teenager in the Cape. He did incredibly well in racing but then ran out of money in his early twenties and couldn't continue. But that didn't put him off as he spent the next few years of his life, along with his brother Marc Perel, building a hugely successful premium Wordpress themes business dubbed 'Obox' - the business ultimately helped David raise the capital he needed to restart his racing career at age 29. Fast forward a few years later and David is travelling the world as a top GT race driver with Ferrari-linked teams, living out his dream. He's also won a string of major GT races. A pretty incredible story. - Gareth van Zyl 

The rand fell this week as South Africa got caught up in an emerging market sell-off driven by the collapse of the Turkish lira. It's a risk-off market, and currencies like the South African rand and Brazilian real have been caught in the gravity well. Even US equities have fallen as investors turn to the safety of US government debt. South Africa's status was hammered this week with a blistering New York Times article on David Mabuza and a harsh op-ed about expropriation in The Wall Street Journal. Does it all add up to a crisis for SA? And, in other news, what exactly is Elon Musk thinking these days and is his behaviour going to sink Tesla? Alec Hogg and Felicity Duncan have some answers.

JOHANNESBURG — It's not every day you get to listen to the legendary Jack Ma speak and especially to a South African audience. Worth over $42bn, Ma is one of China's richest people thanks to his stellar tech company Alibaba. Starting with humble beginnings back in 1999, today Alibaba is a retail and e-commerce giant whose market cap is around $542bn. It is also among the top 10 most valuable and biggest companies in the world. Ma is now very much in a giving back mode. And in this speech to an audience at an event held at Wits University, he launched the Jack Ma Foundation ‘Netpreneur’ Prize, a new programme created to support and fund African entrepreneurs who are working to address Africa’s most important challenges. The programme also targets furthering Africa's digital economy through local entrepreneurship. It's a must-listen speech for any entrepreneur. - Gareth van Zyl

JOHANNESBURG — Professor Sary Levy-Carciente had to travel a circuitous route from her home city Caracas, Venezuela to get to Johannesburg, South Africa this week. Because her country's national airline has so few direct routes these days, she had to first fly a series of connecting flights north to New York, and only then onto an SAA plane all the way back down to OR Tambo International. However, I'm glad she made the long journey to attend a Free Market Foundation (FMF) event on property rights in Rosebank this week as I've had the privilege of conducting one of her first-ever media interviews in English (she's done plenty in Spanish). A member of the Board of Directors of the National Academy of Economic Sciences in Venezuela and a Full Professor at the Central University of Venezuela (UCV), Levy-Carciente knows full-well the reasons for the economic damage done to her country. She's already made an impact in South Africa as an article she wrote on the stages of Venezuela's economic freefall went viral across various local media outlets in recent days. And in this incredible interview, she explains the day-to-day struggles of life in Venezuela. She also explains how populism, centralism, patronage and diminishing property rights have led her country down a very depressing and destructive path. However, she remains hopeful that her country and other countries can learn lessons from how not to do things in the 21st century. - Gareth van Zyl

JOHANNESBURG — If you're one of the unlucky few (like myself) who don't have a second passport in South Africa, you've probably found yourself banging your head against visa requirements when travelling to places such as Europe. Apart from the costs, the sheer time wasted in obtaining visas for a South African passport remains a painful and excruciating process. A key reason for why us Saffers need all these visas is because of corruption in Home Affairs as well as the generally shoddy security status of our passports. South African passport holders then probably won't find it unsurprising to hear that the Green Mamba has fallen 18 places since 2009 on the globally renowned Henley Passport Index to occupy position 50 in 2018. The Index notes that while the Green Mamba has gained access to new travel destinations since 2009, it's failed to keep pace with increasing its global access levels as quickly as other high-performing countries. It also doesn't have visa-free access to the biggest economies, including the likes of the EU, India and the US. In this interview, Amanda Smit, a Director at Henley & Partners South Africa, explains what the ranking means. - Gareth van Zyl

JOHANNESBURG — Futuregrowth Asset Management has made a substantial investment, through its Development Equity Fund, into a very interesting local technology company called 'Symion'. Symion is a commercial and industrial technology group that focuses on 'intelligent infrastructure' and bringing smart connectivity to physical systems. Some of the sectors that Symion plays in includes smart buildings and cities, industrial automation and robotics, intelligent manufacturing, renewable energy and electric vehicle infrastructure. In this interview, Futuregrowth Investment analyst, Amrish Narrandes, and the MD of Symion, Rick Basson, explain the investment deal. - Gareth van Zyl

JOHANNESBURG — Uruguayan-born Chartered Accountant, Monica Singer, is legendary in South Africa's financial space as her 18 years at Strate included the hugely innovative introduction of electronic settlement of securities in the country. She also helped Strate become known as one of the most progressive Central Securities Depositories (CSDs) in the world. She left Strate in October 2017 and relocated from Johannesburg to Cape Town. But shortly thereafter she joined ConsenSys, which is a world-renowned blockchain software technology company founded by Joseph Lubin, one of the co-founders of well-known cryptocurrency Ethereum. The decentralised nature of ConsenSys means that Singer continues to live and work in Cape Town while taking on many global and local tasks for the company. Interestingly, ConsenSys also helped the South African Reserve Bank (SARB) recently with a recent major ground-breaking interbank settlements pilot on the blockchain. It looks like disruption is well and truly part of Monica Singer's DNA. Take a listen to this fascinating interview with her on this and more. - Gareth van Zyl

JOHANNESBURG — Here's a very interesting interview with a very smart young South African guy who's still just in his twenties. Joshua Miltz, a computer programmer by training, is one of the co-founders of a South African FinTech business dubbed 'BitFund'. Now, BitFund describes itself as a single-entry point for investors to choose structured cryptocurrency investment portfolios. Currently, BitFund has three different types of portfolios that investors can choose from and they take a fee of 2.4% as well as a 1% exit fee. The minimum investment amount is R1 000 and with that, you get a spread of cryptocurrencies to invest in as well as the ability to track your investments, in Rand terms, on an online dashboard. BitFund, as Miltz explains, consists of three young cofounders all under-30 who span the financial and legal space, and they have some serious, experienced shareholders as well. It's a very interesting business to watch going forward, especially as they have plans to expand to Europe. Take a listen. - Gareth van Zyl

The African Continent possesses enormous mineral wealth but bringing this rich endowment to account can be a complex matter. For decades Johannesburg-based RMB had specialised in the region. It has now played a major role in supporting the development of Sentinel, a $2.1bn operation, which when completed in 2 years’ time, will be Africa’s biggest copper mine.

Mozambique's huge new export earner, the Moatize Coal Mine, reflects what's possible when private sector incentives and public sector support and banking facilitation comes together. A project that involves Brazilian mining group Vale, Japanese industrial giant Mitsui and SA banks led by RMB, the project includes a railway line of 912kms that will take the coal to a new port facility. RMB's Inal Henry shares the back story of a massive project whose capital value is close to Mozambique's annual GDP ($11bn in 2016).

Ever since Steve Jobs put his Apple Mac pirates into a separate part of the building, complete with a Jolly Roger and a different dress code, corporates have seen the value in hiving off their new product teams. In SA, the best example of this approach is life assurance group Sanlam, which has a policy of investing into innovative businesses, for example Brightrock and EasyEquities, and internally by hiving off it’s own disruptors, like IndieFin, which is the subject of this discussion. As you’ll hear, it’s a very different approach to the process of financial product development.

JOHANNESBURG — For years, Portugal's Golden Visa programme has become a strong plan B for many South Africans looking to hedge their bets against the uncertainty that exists in the country. There have been some recent changes to the programme that have actually improved the efficiencies of the Golden Visa Programme. In this interview, Sable International's Andrew Rissik runs through some of these key changes. - Gareth van Zyl

JOHANNESBURG — JSE-rival A2X has started to build some serious momentum after launching in October 2017. Last week, A2X announced that Growthpoint would launch a secondary listing on the exchange. This comes after Sanlam also launched a secondary listing on A2X in April this year, becoming the biggest listing on the exchange. To date, 10 companies have listed and by introducing much cheaper fees, it's started to have a major impact on end-investors. And A2X CEO Kevin Brady tells me in this interview that more listings are in the pipeline. In fact, the exchange has big ambitions to ultimatly make up 20% of total activity in the SA equities market over the next 3-5 years. - Gareth van Zyl

JOHANNESBURG — Last week, I attended the Amazon Web Services (AWS) Summit in Cape Town. It was the third event of its kind in the city and the attendance has surged from around 600 IT developers several years ago to over 2,000 last week. It's no surprise that demand for the event is on the rise, especially as Amazon's presence in Cape Town has quietly grown, apparently to several thousand staff. Of course, Amazon's growing South African base didn't come about by accident. It started with South African Chris Pinkham who set up an Amazon office in Cape Town in 2004. Pinkham, an internet pioneer in South Africa, was previously VP of Engineering at Amazon and a legendary player behind the company's foray and explosive rise in the cloud market. He would also go on to become VP of Engineering at Twitter for a brief period as well. At the AWS Summit then, I sat down with Geoff Brown, the Sub-Saharan Africa Regional Manager for Amazon Web Services, to chat about the company's presence and future plans in South Africa and the rest of the continent. - Gareth van Zyl

JOHANNESBURG — A recent R14.5m funding boost from the Agence Française de Développement (AFD) for Braamfontein's Tshimologong precinct is another feather in the cap for the digital innovation hub. The precinct - which is the brainchild of Professor Barry Dwolatsky, the director of Wits University’s JCSE (Johannesburg Centre of Software Engineering) - first opened its doors in 2016. And while it's owned by Wits University, it has an open approach that allows anybody to walk off the street, learn new digital skills and build technology solutions. It's the kind of initiative that we need more of in South Africa and in this interview, the precinct's CEO, Lesley Williams, tells me more about recent developments at the hub. - Gareth van Zyl