![]() We have produced 270 000 to 300 000 jobs on average over the past five years and we have about 700 000 new young people entering the job market a year The Centre for Economic Development and Transformation estimate that to absorb them into the economy will require a growth rate of around 10%. It does not, assess or explain the lack of digital readiness or deal with what actually needs to be done to realise these preconditions of the Fourth Industrial Revolution.įor a quick reality check, the average growth rate has hovered between 2 % and negative growth over the past two years and best long-term growth predictions under current policy conditions estimate 3.5%. The report observes however, that all we need to make this miracle happen, is get all the other conditions we have failed to get right in the last two decades– improved connectivity, effective regulation, functioning markets, optimised consumer welfare – and essential to ensuring digital inclusion, redress our poor education outcomes and develop an appropriate digital skills base for the new economy. It appears that it is uncritically received as the basis for national policy. There are no sources in the report, no references to methodology, no basic workings on how these figures were derived. The latest report for Government’s lead department on the 4IR, the Department of Telecommunications and Posts (Communications) by the large international consultancy that partners with WEF globally on the topic, claims that 4IR technologies across industries in South Africa can over the next decade amass five trillion Rands worth of social and economic value and create four million jobs, taking into account prospective job losses. ![]() With visions of global prosperity, packaged with futurist conviction and economic forecasts of exponential growth and job creation, they appear to provide a roadmap in an uncertain future. Organising around the elite annual gathering in Davos to build consensus between the private and public sector on the future of the world, the privately resourced policy blueprints on the 4thIR – replicated by the big international consultancies whether for Singapore, Rwanda or South Africa – fills a vacuum for many countries, such as South Africa, that have not publicly invested themselves in what they want the future to look like. The ahistorical and technologically deterministic appropriation of the term 4IR by probably the most powerful global epistemic community in history, the World Economic Forum, has been arguably one the most successful lobbying and policy influence instruments of global big capital ever. This might also assist with the deconstruction of the militaristic overtones that have been conjured up by country’s leadership on digital development, with reference to ‘commanders-in-chief’ of ‘digital armies’. ![]() ![]() Might it even course-correct this misguided policy trajectory? Even if not, doing so should at least break with the notion that it is in any way revolutionary or that the technologies are inherently transformative in a political sense. This will necessitate a shift from the sectoral silo in which digital policy has been traditionally been formulated to a national policy enabling the necessary integration required across the public sector and coordination between the public and private sector to meet the needs of a modern economy.įurther, some consideration of the origins of the concept of 4IR within the World Economic Forum may enable some introspection into how 4IR came to be the centrepiece of ANC digital policy. Since the uncritical adoption of 4IR by African National Congress (ANC) at its 54thNational Congress there has been no looking back for the country: it has become the mantra of every official event from the State of the Nation to the presidential inauguration, in the context of economic growth, job creation and the empowerment of women and youth.Īs the President explained in the first 2019 State of the Nation Address, the Commission would “serve as a national overarching advisory mechanism on digital transformation” that would “identify and recommend policies, strategies and plans that will position South Africa as a global competitive player within the digital revolution space”.Ĭertainly, with the fast changing, complex and adaptive communications systems that underpin an increasingly globalised economy a national digital policy is essential. There has been a disconcerting lack of critical engagement with the concept intellectually, politically and particularly from a policy perspective. ![]()
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