Tag: industrialisation

South Africa's high water yield areas concentrate mostly along the Drakensberg as it moves south past the western border of Mozambique, through Kwazulu-Natal and thins out before it reaches the Eastern Cape. Then there is a smattering of additional areas along the mountains of the Western Cape. The rest has practically no such zones.

The Minister of Finance, Tito Mboweni, delivered his much anticipated Medium-term Budget Policy Statement (MTBPS) on Wednesday, 28 October 2020. Hard choices and reform implementation are key to achieving five-year stabilisation plan.

There is little doubt that there is now a mass understanding, or at the very least, mass awareness, of the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR). Paradoxically, that is thanks to the global COVID-19 pandemic. However, there are some serious 4IR policy considerations that do not seem to be getting the right levels of attention and focus on the African continent. 4IR has to be a matter of national agenda; national economic and political sovereignty & national security - necessitating commensurate prioritisation.

Over the last decades, we have seen more than three dozen new infectious diseases appear, some of which could kill millions of people with one or two unlucky gene mutations or one or two unfavourable environmental changes. The risks of pandemics only increase as the human population grows; therefore to direct our future we should examine our past.

The 4th Industrial Revolution (4IR) has become a buzz word in many forums discussing global economic trends. The revolution is presented as the next inevitable event that will sweep the entire world.