TCS Legends | South African internet pioneer Mike Lawrie

TechCentral is thrilled to bring you an interview with Mike Lawrie, a pioneering figure at Rhodes University who helped bring inter-university e-mail and later the internet to South Africa.

In this episode of TCS Legends – the podcast series that features interviews with (and about) some of the leading figures who helped shape South Africa’s technology sector into what it is today – TechCentral editor Duncan McLeod sat down with Lawrie to chat about the ground-breaking work that happened at Rhodes University in the early days of the internet.

In this episode, Lawrie shares wonderful anecdotes about that time at Rhodes, and why the Eastern Cape university was able to achieve things its bigger rivals in the cities couldn’t – or wouldn’t – during the height of apartheid.

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Lawrie remembers many of his colleagues at Rhodes at the time, and the role they played in connecting South African universities to e-mail, and later to the internet.

Episodes 1 and 2 of TCS Legends featured well-known investor and businessman Duarte da Silva, who reminisced about some of the business leaders that helped build South Africa’s tech industry. Episode 3, featuring Hein Engelbrecht and Carlos Vizcarra, turned the focus to the late Mustek founder David Kan. Catch them all here.

TCS Legends is a by-invitation-only, editorially driven tech show that builds on TechCentral’s credible, market-leading podcast productions.

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