South Africa Ready to Make Best of New Industrial Revolution, Expert Says

© AFP 2023 / STEPHANE DE SAKUTINView of the city of Pretoria from the Union Buildings in South Africa
View of the city of Pretoria from the Union Buildings in South Africa - Sputnik International, 1920, 24.10.2022
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In an interview with Sputnik on the sidelines of the Valdai Discussion Club, Rasigan Maharajh - founding chief director of the Institute for Economic Research on Innovation - expressed his opinion on South Africa's industrial revolution, COVID-19 in the country and BRICS' potential for sharing knowledge and innovation.
Sputnik: We are now witnessing the Fourth Industrial Revolution, which is blurring the lines between the digital, physical and biological spheres. And it's a kind of follow up to the Third Industrial Revolution, which focused obviously on digitalization, among other things. How is the African continent and your country in particular adapting to this situation? How can they contribute to the process?

Rasigan Maharajh: We are experiencing a new industrial revolution and it's quite important to recognize it as such. This hierarchy, which sees revolutions following each other in a linear form, of course are not evenly distributed, and that's quite critical in understanding why Africa is in the situation it is presently in. In terms of Africa's own plans for the future, it is putting in place many initiatives not only to catch up on the technological front, but also invest in the human capabilities that allow people to expand it even further.

Sputnik: In many of your research papers you have focused on education in South Africa, on higher education in particular. How important is lifelong learning for the people of South Africa and are the educational facilities in other countries able to provide programs which would enable people to adapt to this new economy, which changes so quickly?

Rasigan Maharajh: Absolutely. This is a critical issue for all of us. And it's something for us to bear in mind as well. Knowledge accumulates and it accumulates across all peoples. So what we have is really a knowledge commons. And in terms of that common, South Africa has contributed to it and continues to draw benefits from it. But at the same time, it's important to recognize that there are threats to the openness by which knowledge is advanced. And the inclusions of the knowledge through intellectual property poses serious threats to all of us collectively. We've learned this specifically through the apartheid that we saw in the vaccine program. We were faced by zoonotic threat. A virus attacked our species. Yet we chose pieces of paper to determine whether companies were allowed to produce the necessary tools and equipment to fight COVID-19.

Sputnik: So did South Africa suffer from this?

Rasigan Maharajh: Absolutely. South Africa has one of the highest death rates from COVID-19 on the African continent. But we are not the largest country. And that shows also South Africa's integration in world systems but also subservience to these world trade prescriptions. South Africa has the capacity, has the capability and the competence to produce the vaccines for ourselves. Yet we spent many months in negotiations about whether we could access it from Russia, from China, and other countries such as India. So the world system also needs very serious rethinking.

Sputnik: Does BRICS have a lot of potential when it comes to sharing knowledge and innovations? We hear a lot about the blocs being an alternative to the present world order by offering alternatives to emerging nations. But is there such potential for Russia, India, Brazil, China, South Africa when it comes to science and innovation?

Rasigan Maharajh: Sure - there's a critical basis on which we can advance on what we've managed to pull together to date. But it really also forces us to answer our internal questions in the five countries themselves. If the science systems in our countries are capable of solving the developmental demands of our constituencies, we stand to contribute more as BRICS for BRICS, and BRICS can be an act in itself. Up to now, there's a level of question and we're looking forward to the elections in Brazil, etc, to change the situation such that it's again going to return to its progressive agenda.
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