The 4IR Strategy To Move Forward

SOUTH AFRICA HAS created the Presidential Commission on the Fourth Industrial Revolution. The President of South Africa, Cyril Ramaphosa, chairs this commission and I am the Deputy Chairman. The commission consists of 30 members.

- Tshilidzi Marwala

It is tasked with developing South Africa’s strategy around the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR).

Why this commission and why is the 4IR so important? To answer these questions, we ought to understand first what the 4IR is and what it entails.

As a point of departure, we ought to understand the first, second and third industrial revolutions. The British scientific revolution that gave us Isaac Newton’s laws of motion, gravitation and the study of heat, catalysed the first industrial revolution.

The first industrial revolution gave us coal-powered steam engines that drove trains and ushered the era of using machines to produce goods and services. The luddites, who were a group of activists hellbent on stopping the first industrial revolution, disappeared into the ash heap of history and the technological revolution marched on.

The scientific revolution that facilitated us to leverage magnetic and electrical forces called electromagnetism ushered the second industrial revolution. Electromagnetism gave us electricity and an electric motor, and these, in turn, spurred the development of the assembly line, which vastly improved production and introduced mass production in factories.