Fourth Industrial Revolution: SA’s digital skills ‘inadequate’

South Africa has been struggling to enter the Fourth Industrial Revolution space and match its counterparts, as its innovation performance falls behind other middle-income countries, with education systems and skills training not adapting fast enough.

Minister of Higher Education, Science and Innovation Blade Nzimande said the Covid epidemic had a catastrophic effect on public health systems and economic development around the world, endangering the progress made in achieving the sustainable development goals.

ALSO READ: Science and innovation vital for economic recovery in SA – Ramaphosa

This year, President Cyril Ramaphosa said science and innovation were vital for the country’s economic recovery; creating employment opportunities and promoting a level of entrepreneurship that reduces poverty.

However, Nzimande said SA’s digital competitiveness ranked 51st in 2016 and 44th in 2019, before falling to 60th in 2020.

“SA experiences challenges in creating markets of tomorrow, owing not only to weaknesses in its research and technological systems, but also weak public-private partnerships,” he said.

“SA performs better in innovation inputs than innovation outputs. Considering its level of innovation investment, it has few innovation outputs.”

He also said the country’s total entrepreneurship activity rose from 7% in 2014 to 11% in 2017, and then declined to 10.8% in 2019 and had the lowest technology readiness index of the Brics nations, Brazil, Russia, India, China and SA.

READ MORE: Concerns over gender disparity in science, tech, engineering & maths

“About 71% of firms in manufacturing and services use e-mail for business and only 36% have websites. Inadequate digital skills are one cause,” he added.

“This decline is an indication the motivation for entrepreneurs to start new businesses is low.”

Economist Dr Azar Jammine said SA was not improving the “very weak educational outcomes” so it failed to exploit opportunities.

He said government departments were not speaking to one another to address issues in the report, while the private sector was also not using the information at their disposal.

Chair of the National Advisory Council on Innovation Dr Shadrack Moephuli said SA had to accelerate access to the internet in schools as the SA Science, Technology and Innovation Indicators Report revealed the proportion of Grade 12 pupils who passed maths and physics with 80% and above was very low.

“The manufacturing sector shows no tendency towards higher technology intensity. In 2020, SA’s high technology manufacturing exports as a percentage of total exports was 5.6%. This is very low.”

NOW READ: Poor maths, science performance hampers innovation, impacts economy