TCS+ | AfriGIS’s Helen Hulett on how tech can help resolve South Africa’s water crisis

Loading player...
Many municipalities in South Africa are struggling to maintain a reliable supply of clean water to households and industries. Thankfully, technology is here to help.
In this episode of TechCentral’s TCS+, Helen Hulett, newly appointed chief sustainability officer at geospatial information science specialist AfriGIS, tells Duncan McLeod about the Resolve Water project that she leads and how she and her team are working with businesses and municipalities to try to address a problem that has reached crisis levels in some parts of the country.
AfriGIS’s technology is able to have a real-world impact on this crisis, according to Hulett, who specialises in industrial water risk, water-related governance and social issues, and sustainability.
Hulett, who has consulted with leading companies on the topic – they include the likes of Coca-Cola, Illovo Sugar Africa, Sappi, Aspen Pharmacare and Sasol – said AfriGIS offers advanced mapping and data analytics tools to address water scarcity, improve resource management and support businesses in need.
In this episode of TCS+, Hulett also unpacks:
• Her background and why she took the role of chief sustainability officer at AfriGIS;
• What the field of geospatial information science involves and why it makes sense to apply it to this crisis;
• AfriGIS’s involvement in the Resolve Water project;
• How serious the water crisis really is in South Africa and what it will take to address it;
• The impact of the Resolve Water project so far, and how it’s using GIS technology to achieve its goals – including mapping, real-time data analytics and collaborative partnerships; and
• The role of artificial intelligence.
The interview with Hulett, who is passionate about the topic of water security in South Africa, is not to be missed.
18 Jun 2025 English South Africa Technology · Business

Other recent episodes

TCS | Frogfoot sees bigger fibre deals coming

Frogfoot plans to keep buying smaller fibre network operators in South Africa’s suburbs as the market consolidates, but CEO Shane Chorley stopped short of ruling out a sale of the business. “I’d be ignorant to say that we would ignore any offer,” Chorley said on the latest episode of the…
8 Oct 40 min

Meet the CIO | Vodacom’s Mohamed Sami on the agentic future

Mohamed Sami, group chief information officer at Vodacom, says autonomous AI agents that resolve customer problems without handing them to a human are the next big shift in customer experience – and that it is closer than many think. Speaking on TechCentral’s Meet the CIO podcast series, brought to you…
5 Oct 44 min

TCS | Norrsken22’s Lexi Novitske on how China is winning African tech

Chinese companies have built their position in African technology one layer at a time – first phones and telecoms equipment, then fintech and now the AI models that local start-ups build on. American private capital, meanwhile, is pulling back. Lexi Novitske, general partner at Norrsken22, thinks US investors will regret…
1 Oct 28 min

TCS | Dominic White and Adam Ely on AI agents going rogue

AI agents are no longer a thought experiment for security teams. They are breaking out of test environments, hacking real companies and, according to one of our guests, already going rogue inside large businesses. In this episode of the TechCentral Show, TechCentral deputy editor Fanie van Rooyen talks to Dominic…
29 Sep 1 hr 26 min

TCS | Octotel’s Trevor van Zyl on the fibre merger question

Octotel CEO Trevor van Zyl joins the TechCentral Show to talk about where South Africa’s fibre market goes next – including a potential merger with MetroFibre Networx. Van Zyl told TechCentral that Octotel and MetroFibre Networx are assessing a combination that would create the country’s third-largest fibre network operator, with…
16 Sep 25 min