South Africa's Fourth Industrial Revolution

 South Africa's Fourth Industrial Revolution  (4IR) is a national policy spearheaded by President Cyril Ramaphosa. The policy seeks to leverage machine learning, artificial intelligence, and big data to create new industries. The policy gathers tech startups, academia, cybersecurity specialists, researchers, social scientists, trade unionists, and others to revolutionise SA's economy by 2030.

The SA economy is based on primary industries like mining, and it has been experiencing anaemic growth and high unemployment. President Ramaphosa's plan is to bypass secondary and tertiary (manufacturing and services) industries and participate in the new frontier of the fourth industrial revolution. The targeted outcomes are;

    1. To revolutionise established social, corporate and government structures using new technology. For example          automated factories and smart cities.

    2. To become a leader in 4IR innovations, the industry is relatively new and SA wants to be an early entrant.

    3. To become the premier source of labour for the 4IR, and attract foreign direct investment. 

A Human Sciences Research Council (HSRC) survey found that six out of 10 SA employees are worried that automation will threaten their job security. The same survey also found that 57% of respondents are doubtful that the government has effective strategies to stem the perceived job losses.

Notably, a McKinsey paper, The future of work in South Africa: Digitisation, productivity, and job creation, showed that South Africans would lose jobs to automation but that there will also be jobs requiring new skills due to technology. It estimates that South Africa could have a net gain of 1.3 million new jobs by 2030.

The paper also showed that accelerated adoption of technology by South Africa's industry by 2030 could result in;

    • Mining increased its margins by 15 percent.

    • Retail increasing margins by two percentage points.

    • Banking, reducing its cost-to-income ratios by ten percentage points.

Another research study called “Fourth Industrial Revolution in South Africa 2019: Enterprise uptake and expectations for emerging technologies,” found that

    • 13% of corporate South Africa was using AI. Of the remaining participants, 21% plan to adopt it in the next           12 to 24 months. A significant obstacle to AI adoption is the cost of skills for implementing AI. Of those not           using it, 43% cited cost as the key reason.

    • Robotic process automation saw a surge as in 2018 only 6% of South African enterprises were using robotics        in 2019 the figure stood at 37%. The highest RPA adoption was seen in legal services at 67%. On the other          hand, the next most active sector in robotics was mining, focused on hardware automation of both dangerous        and routine processes, like drilling and sorting.

    • Virtual and augmented reality is used by a little more than a third of enterprises, but intended usage among         the rest falls to below 10%. 

    • Blockchain was used by fewer than 10% of respondents.

    • 92% of enterprises have adopted IoT. This is largely a factor of the ubiquity of vehicle tracking and fleet                 management technology, which began as telematics, and has evolved into a sub-category of IoT.

There is agreement in private and public sectors that pursuit of the 4IR is a smart, strategic move for South Africa. What will determine its success will be political commitment, private investment, academic support and civic engagement. 

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