Today, this Summit is a gathering of visionaries and dreamers; people who have immersed themselves in the future and who understand the power of dreaming – and acting to turn those dreams into reality. As Mr Jack Ma told us “the opportunities that everyone cannot see are the real opportunities”.
This is a collective of actors in the public and private sectors, academia and civil society who understand the power of setting their sights on the furthest horizons and are able to rise above the challenge and clutter of the present to create a better future.
This is the spirit we need to harness in the coming decade in which we will be counting down our achievement of the South Africa imagined in our National Development Plan’s Vision 2030.
As government, working with all sectors of society, we have set ourselves the task to pioneer new technologies and take quantum leaps towards the economies of the future, and to drastically improve our production levels.
These quantum leaps can be made real through 4IR whose programmatic implementation is led by our Presidential Commission on the Fourth Industrial Revolution, whose Deputy Chairperson is Prof Tshilidzi Marwala, an internationally acclaimed researcher in the discipline of Artificial Intelligence.
The Commission consists of 30 members from all spheres of society to ensure that all sectors of society contribute to and benefit from this transformative shift in our development.
The Commission is expected to deliver a blueprint and plan to deal with the 4IR and determine areas of development in the short, medium and long-term.
This plan comes with the embedded ambition of positioning South Africa not just as an adopter but a leader of 4IR in the world.
This is doable indeed, considering that earlier this year our country was ranked by the Dell Digital Transformation Index to be among Top 10 countries leading the digital transformation change necessary to compete in the 21st century.
This encourages us to identify more strategic 4IR niches where we can leverage our potential and translate it into tangible economic dividends such as the much needed jobs.
The Commission will explore and advise on infrastructure and resources, research, technology and innovation, economic and social impact, human capital and future of work among others.
For the purpose of collective and inclusive engagement, the Commission will receive inputs from various stakeholders, and the 4IR working groups and platform across the country.
One such communication platform is 4IRSA and today’s Summit.
To ensure that we are able to make waves, government has committed itself to a skills revolution that will give us the human capital required in the digital economy.
As I undertook in SONA, we are introducing subjects such as coding and data analytics at primary school level to prepare our young people for the jobs of the future.
In 2018 Minister Ndabeni-Abrahams announced the “Building a Capable 4IR Army” capacity development programme to ensure that communities are equipped to take advantage of new digital technologies, unlock future jobs and drive competitiveness.
One million young people will be trained in data science and related skills by 2030.
