Alan Knott-Craig is a successful entrepreneur, author, and founder of Fibertime.com, a company that works to bridge the digital divide in Africa by bringing prepaid fiber internet to townships.

Originally from Pretoria, he studied at Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University (formerly UPE) and qualified as a Chartered Accountant with Deloitte in 2002.

In 2003 he founded Cellfind, one of South Africa’s first mobile location-based service providers and served as CEO until 2005. In 2006 he was appointed as CEO of iBurst and built one of South African’s largest wireless broadband networks. In 2010, he founded and became CEO of World of Avatar, an investment house for apps for Africa and was later also CEO of Mxit after acquiring the company in 2011. At the time, Mxit was Africa’s biggest social network.

In 2013 he founded Project Isizwe, a non-profit organisation that brings free WiFi to rural communities. In 2014 he founded HeroTel, which became the largest rural broadband operator in South Africa.

After exiting HeroTel in 2022, he founded Isizwe.com to bring pay-as-you-go fiber internet to townships.

Between 2003 and 2017 he has co-founded and/or funded over 20 companies in the Technology, Media and Telecommunications sector in Africa, including Cellfind, iFind34600, Toodu, The Daily Maverick, Pondering Panda, Inqaku and Namola.

He has published ten books since 2008, including a national bestseller, Don’t Panic, and a global history of telecommunications, and a memoir called Life Lessons: How to Fail and Win.

He was named as a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum in 2009. He was also included in “100 Choiseul Africa”, a list of top 100 young African business leaders in 2014, 2015 and 2016, and nominated as the 2015 ICT Personality of the Year by ITWeb.

He has been nominated by Entrepreneur Magazine as one of the top eleven entrepreneurs changing the African landscape.

He is also the author of several viral articles, including Don’t Panic (2008), Reasons for Optimism (2019), arguing that the future of South Africa is bright, and Entrepreneurs will save the World.