Engineering News reports that telecoms company Telkom and the universities of the Witwatersrand (Wits), Johannesburg (UJ) and Fort Hare on Wednesday launched SA4IR, a national response to the Fourth Industrial Revolution.  

The partnership seeks to build an inclusive developmental future for South Africans by stimulating a national dialogue and developing a national agenda in response to the impact of the Fourth Industrial Revolution on the country.  The Fourth Industrial Revolution is set to dramatically change how humans interact with technology, and how humans express themselves, communicate and engage.  SA4IR will explore the impact of the Fourth Industrial Revolution on the economy and the new digital economy, higher education and the future of work, inequality and society and the State.  “We need to train scholars to deal with the challenges of the twenty-first century, some which we may not yet have encountered,” said Wits vice-chancellor Professor Adam Habib.  He added that the biggest challenge with introducing technologies in SA was insufficient skill sets at schooling level, technical level and postgraduate level.  In the next six months, as a starting point, SA4IR will host a summit to bring together stakeholders, determine challenges and then start developing a comprehensive strategy for the mining, healthcare, manufacturing and services sectors alike to respond to the revolution.

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