Closing the Gap

Tshilidzi Marwala

Description

‘Closing the Gap is a must-read guide for leaders, citizens and children in Africa
– comprehensively taking readers through a succession of industrial
revolutions and into the age of the 4IR.’ – PRESIDENT KGALEMA MOTLANTHE

UPDATED EDITION

‘A holistic take on AI from an African perspective, Closing the Gap joins the dots on deploying AI efficiently into everyday business and life.’ – RENUKA METHIL, editor of Forbes Africa

‘This book simplifies complex concepts through relatable stories and awakens fellow Africans to the opportunities ushered in by the 4IR. Closing the Gapmust occupy our waking times.’ – MTETO NYATI, chief executive of Altron

Closing the Gap is an accessible overview of the fourth industrial revolution (4IR) and the impact it is set to have on various sectors in South Africa and Africa. It explores the previous industrial revolutions that have led up to this point and outlines what South Africa’s position has been through each one.

With a focus on artificial intelligence as a core concept in understanding the 4IR, this book uses familiar concepts to explain artificial intelligence, how it works and how it can be used in banking, mining, medicine and many other fields.

Written from an African perspective, Closing the Gap addresses the challenges and fears around the 4IR by pointing to the opportunities presented by new technologies and outlining some of the challenges and successes to date.

Sujets

• Information Technology
• Automobile Industry
• Computers
• Industries
• Informatique
• África
• 21st century
• Service innovation
• Automotive industry
• Disruptive technology
• International English
• Energy
• Economics
• Énergie
• Business
• Africa
• Industrie

Informations

• Publié par: Pan Macmillan South Africa
• Date de parution: 01 août 2022
• Nombre de lectures: 2
• EAN13: 9781770108141
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

‘ Closing the Gap is written in an accessible and non-technical style as well as living up to its Afrocentric approach to the subject matter through references to histories and case studies from across the African continent. In it, however, Professor Marwala manages to retain the level of detail necessary for nurturing a sufficiently deep understanding of this important subject matter.’
– DUDLEY MOLOI , Service Delivery Review

Closing the Gap
The Fourth Industrial Revolution in Africa
Tshilidzi Marwala
Updated and with a foreword by Adam Habib
MACMILLAN

First published in 2020
This edition published in 2022
by Pan Macmillan South Africa
Private Bag X19
Northlands Johannesburg
2116
www.panmacmillan.co.za
ISBN 978-1-77010-813-4
e-ISBN 978-1-77010-814-1
Text © 2020, 2022 Tshilidzi Marwala
Foreword © 2022 Adam Habib
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.
All necessary permissions for the reuse of copyright material have been sought, but in the case of any omission, people should contact the publisher so that this can be remedied in the event of a reprint.
Editing by Sean Fraser and Wesley Thompson
Proofreading by Sally Hines
Design and typesetting by Triple M Design
Cover design by publicide
Author photograph by Jan Potgieter


Contents
Foreword by Adam Habib
Introduction
1 Understanding the fourth industrial revolution
2 Automation
3 South Africa’s 4IR strategy
Part 1 Industry
4 Safety of structures
5 Aerospace
6 Mining
7 Electricity
Part 2 Data
8 Data privacy
9 Digital heritage
10 Cybersecurity
11 Social networks
12 5G technology
Part 3 Business
13 Economics
14 Banking
15 Taxation
16 Market efficiency
17 Trade
18 Leadership
Part 4 Society
19 Languages
20 Ethics
21 Democracy
22 Movies
23 Work
24 Rationality
25 Sports
26 Memory
Conclusion
Notes
Acknowledgements


Foreword
We live in a transform ative epoch in which our collective existence manifests at two levels: the digital and the physical. The digital is continuously expanding, extending ever deeper in our lives and transforming it in both positive and negative ways. It has a positive effect by opening up new opportunities for economic and social growth and by creating alternative possibilities for the resolution of historic challenges. But it has also had unintended negative effects, including, among others, enabling both the growth of inequality and the polarisation and fractiousness of our world.
This epochal transformation occurs in a historical moment when all our challenges – pandemics, climate change, inequality, social and political polarisation – are transnational in character. This means that they require global solutions, even if some of these may necessitate local adaptability, if they are to have meaningful positive effects. But global solutions necessitate a more cohesive human community, one capable of negotiating the trade-offs among different countries, stakeholders and interests. Without this, we will not be able to develop and implement global solutions for the transnational challenges, with catastrophic consequences for the human community.
All of this is to underscore the importance of the digital (or fourth industrial) revolution for human life as we know it. It is therefore imperative that we begin to urgently understand the comprehensive character of this technological revolution and its likely impact on all aspects of human economic, political and social life. Closing the Gap is one attempt to try to understand this. Unlike most other studies, its focus is unabashedly Africa, its context and its people. This is important given so many of the studies in this thematic area overwhelmingly speak to the contextual circumstances of North America and Western Europe.
Moreover, this study is led by South Africa’s foremost scholar on AI and the fourth industrial revolution, Tshilidzi Marwala. He is an engineer by training with substantive experience in the field of software engineering. Marwala has also been Vice-Chancellor of the University of Johannesburg for a number of years, which has forced him to confront and manage the many political and social dynamics of post-apartheid South Africa. He is therefore well positioned to speak to all of the dynamics of the fourth industrial revolution, from its engineering and technical elements to its social, political and policy dimensions.
The pages that follow detail the comprehensive character of the industrial and technological revolution that we are living through. They also demonstrate that Africa is only capable of overcoming its economic, political and social challenges and deficits by embracing the digital revolution, investing in it, and regulating it so that it can be oriented to having the societal benefits that would improve the lives of all of its citizenry. Failure to do this would merely enable the further entrenchment of global inequality and forever confine Africa to the margins of world development.
Adam Habib
April 2022


Introduction
In 2016, I delivered the 65th Bernard Price Memorial Lecture, and the topic I chose was ‘Fourth Industrial Revolution and Society’. The reason I chose this as the focus was that I was concerned about how Africa was falling behind as a result of the exponential growth in technology. I felt then, as I do now, that we cannot afford for this trend to persist.
When President Cyril Ramaphosa mentioned the fourth industrial revolution (4IR) in his State of the Nation Address (SONA) in 2019, many dismissed it as mere rhetoric – no more than padding for the New Dawn. Just a few years ago, the 4IR seemed little more than a few buzzwords strung together. But, as we have witnessed through the rapid changes in our society, it’s clear that the 4IR is no longer an abstract concept – it is, in fact, our lived reality. And although it still sounds somewhat fantastic – the confluence of the physical, digital and biological spheres through artificial intelligence (AI), automation, biotechnology, nanotechnology and communications technologies – the 4IR has already impacted the economy, citizens, society and the state. Technologies and processes are evolving at an exponential pace and are becoming increasingly inter-related. Substantial disruptions will affect all industries and entire systems of production, management and governance, and will undoubtedly transform all aspects of 21st-century life and society. Unlike the negative connotation of ‘disruption’ in the traditional sense, here it entails the innovations that make products and services more accessible and affordable for a larger population.
The 4IR, of course, succeeded other industrial revolutions; the first gave us steam engines, the second electricity and the mass production of goods, and the third digital technologies. With the 4IR, there has been a significant paradigm shift in every aspect of our lives – and this is just the beginning.
We often talk of the paradigm shift – an abstract concept that signifies a coming change. The orgins of this phrase can be traced back to Thomas Kuhn. The paradigm, a source the provides a puzzle that needs to be solved, leads to a crisis when the current systems cannot solve this anomaly. This crisis is followed by a scientific revolution if the existing paradigm is superseded by a rival. Kuhn asserted that science guided by one paradigm would be ‘incommensurable’ with science developed under a different paradigm.
Long has there been debate over whether we are on the cusp of the 4IR, in the midst of it or whether it is a farfetched futuristic concept only aligned to the content of science fiction novels from the 1980s. Theorists teased out their arguments – the injection of AI meant it was here, the lag in the previous three industrial revolutions made it doubtful or that the robots are going to take over in an Aldous Huxley-esque manner. Though I am being quite simplistic in dividing this argument into just three camps, it is a necessary precursor for what happened next. As an outbreak of a virus, though quite similar at the time to the SARS and MERS epidemics, began in corners of Asia, we had little idea that this would reverberate throughout the rest of the globe. This was, in a sense, the perfect storm that would soon transform the world. As we faced a dark context and a grim outlook, it was apparent that the 4IR had been hastened and would in fact define much of our context.
Africa is diverse. Yet, across the continent, we face the same challenges. Unemployment remains a scourge, economic growth remains lacklustre, and poverty seeps through every nation. This, however, need not be our reality. In September 2019, it emerged from the World Economic Forum (WEF) on Africa, held in Cape Town, that the 4IR has the potential to turbocharge socio-economic development across the continent. I would argue that to be skilled in areas such as AI, machine learning and blockchain – the technology used in digital currency – is key to tackling the issues of exclusion and social dispersion, while it is also crucial in fostering national unity. Of course, I would be remiss if I did not acknowledge that it also has the potential to exacerbate poverty and inequality. However, in heeding its call, we may also be able to subvert those issues. We canno