South Africa Cannot Afford To Miss the Quantum Internet Wave
South Africa has missed big technology waves before.
That is the warning underneath Prof. Andrew Forbes’ conversation with Nkepile Mabuse on CheckPoint: The Podcast. On the surface, this is an episode about quantum communication, patterns of light, faster internet and future encryption. But underneath the science sits a bigger national question: will South Africa help build the next digital economy, or arrive late again?
Forbes begins by taking the internet back to basics. In the past, communication moved through copper wires using electricity. Today, the internet runs largely on light. Fibre optics use light. Wi-Fi is part of light-based communication. Satellite systems also depend on light-based transmission.
The next step is not simply to send light faster. It is to use light more intelligently.
Forbes explains it through a simple image. Old communication can be understood like Morse code: light is switched on and off, and that on-off signal carries meaning. Modern internet systems are far more advanced, but they still rely on controlling properties of light to carry information.
His work asks a more powerful question: what does the light look like?
If scientists can send different patterns of light, each pattern can carry information. Instead of one stream, there can be many. Forbes describes each pattern as another “tube” of information. If 100 patterns work, the system can carry far more information than before.
That is where the “fastest internet” idea begins to make sense.
But the episode is not only about speed. It is also about security.
Forbes explains that today’s encryption depends on hard mathematical problems. These problems take so long to solve that ordinary online banking remains safe during the time a user is transacting. But quantum computers could change that. If a working quantum computer can solve those problems in real time, the encryption systems used today may no longer be enough.
That turns quantum into both threat and solution.
The threat is that today’s digital security could be broken. The solution is that quantum communication can make interference visible. If someone tries to intercept the communication, the system changes. The eavesdropper can be detected. Security is no longer based only on a difficult mathematical puzzle. It is based on the known laws of physics.
That is a major shift.
Nkepile pushes the issue into policy territory when she asks whether this is disruptive technology. Forbes says it is highly disruptive, and that governments cannot simply wait to see whether professors or the private sector choose to act. He says South Africa needs to be ready for a future where legislation may eventually say certain communication systems can no longer be called secure.
That is the kind of line that should make banks, telecoms companies, regulators and government departments pay attention.
The episode also deals with the Elon Musk question. Nkepile asks whether Forbes’ work is a threat to Starlink. Forbes does not frame it as a replacement. He says Starlink works well as deployed technology, but that even Elon Musk will have to think about a quantum layer as the next generation of communication. The likely future is not one system destroying another. It is existing systems being enhanced.
That matters because South Africa does not need to own every part of the global technology stack to matter in the next wave. Forbes argues that the country has talent and leadership in the science of structured light, and that South Africa can play a role in photonics, quantum software, communication security and future networks.
This is where the conversation becomes deeply South African.
Forbes says South Africa does not have a Silicon Valley. The country missed the microelectronics revolution of the 1980s. But a new wave is coming, built around photonics, light and quantum. His ambition is to see the equivalent of Silicon Valley in the quantum realm here in South Africa.
That is not a small dream.
It also cannot stay in the lab.
Nkepile asks the question ordinary South Africans will care about most: how will this affect the pocket? Data remains expensive. Internet access remains unequal. Forbes answers bluntly, saying that as a private individual he believes South African data is ridiculously expensive, especially when compared with what people experience overseas.
In principle, more bandwidth should make things cheaper. But Forbes also makes the key point: whether it does depends on what companies do with the technology.
That is the public-interest heart of the episode.
Innovation alone does not guarantee access. Faster systems do not automatically mean cheaper data. A breakthrough can connect the unconnected, or it can become another premium product controlled by the same old market power.
That is why Forbes’ work on the digital divide matters. He explains that being unconnected affects jobs, education, health knowledge and almost every part of life.
In South Africa, an informal settlement can sit within sight of a well-connected community. The divide is not theoretical. It is visible.
This is where the science becomes social infrastructure.
The future of internet access is not only about speed tests and clever laboratories. It is about who gets connected, who gets left behind, who owns the networks, who benefits from the bandwidth, and whether South Africa can turn scientific excellence into everyday public value.
The strongest idea in this episode is not that light can carry more information.
It is that South Africa still has a chance to enter a global technology wave early.
That will require more than brilliant scientists. It will require leadership, coordination, private-sector uptake, government readiness, quantum literacy and a serious plan to train a quantum workforce.
South Africa cannot afford to treat the future as something that happens somewhere else first.
This time, the light is already here.
The question is whether the country will follow it.
Catch up on all CheckPoint Podcast episodes here: https://www.enca.com/checkpoint-podcast-0
(00:00) – The Fastest Internet in the World?
(00:20) – How Today’s Internet Uses Light
(01:31) – Patterns of Light and 100 Times Bandwidth
(02:36) – Quantum Security and Strange Communication
(04:13) – Why Today’s Encryption Could Fail
(06:03) – Disruptive Technology and Future Law
(07:10) – Threat, Opportunity and the Quantum Economy
(08:43) – Is This a Threat to Elon Musk and Starlink?
(09:41) – South Africa, China and a 13,000km Quantum Experiment
(10:55) – A Quantum Network in South Africa
(11:22) – Can South Africa Build a Quantum Silicon Valley?
(13:15) – Who Must Lead the Quantum Future?
(14:26) – Training a Quantum Workforce
(15:25) – The Technical Hurdle: Distorted Light Patterns
(16:57) – Where South Africa Stands in the Global Race
(17:20) – Why Is Data So Expensive?
(18:03) – Bridging the Digital Divide
(20:03) – Science, Investment and Connected Communities
(21:28) – How Young People Can Enter Quantum
(23:02) – From Technical School to Physics
(24:13) – Why Technical Skills Matter