On a ridge that separates downtown Johannesburg from its posher northern suburbs is Braamfontein, an increasingly gentrified neighborhood that has been home to a university and a generation of big businesses for much of the city’s 130 history. At night, its bars and nightclubs have entertained Joburgers for decades.
But in recent decades, as businesses moved to the more fashionable Sandton–including the Johannesburg Stock Exchange and most of the major banks and financial institutions–Braamfontein saw its fortunes dwindle.
However over the last few years, a series of property developers – including Play Braamfontein and Southpoint – have bought old office buildings and converted them into student accommodation for the adjacent University of the Witwatersrand (Afrikaans for “white water area”) and workspaces. At the same time, the area has blossomed into a social destination with quirky clothes stores, coffee shops and restaurants and the vibrant weekend Neighbourgoods market.
Along with this cultural rejuvenation, Braamfontein is fast becoming a new digital hub for Johannesburg. While Cape Town’s Silicon Cape tends to garner more headlines for its startup community, Joburg has always been the epicenter of business in the country. Wits University, as it’s colloquially called, has reclaimed five unused buildings near its sprawling campus–including an old nightclub–and turned them into the Tshimologong Digital Innovation Precinct.
Tshimologong–which means “new beginnings” in seSotho–is the brainchild of Wits’ Professor Barry Dwolatzky, the director of the University’s Joburg Centre for Software Engineering (JCSE), which he has been running since 2005. (Source: forbes.com)
Category: News, Online Collectables