PURPOSE

The 4IRSA Partnership (derived from a “Partnership for the 4th Industrial Revolution in South Africa”) was set up as an alliance between the Department of Communications & Digital Technologies, Telkom SA SOC Ltd, and the Universities of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg and Fort Hare. Since its inception Deloitte South Africa, Vodacom and Huawei have become partners.

Its purpose is to stimulate and facilitate an inclusive national dialogue to shape a coherent national response to the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR) in South Africa. It aims to complement and support other national activities relating to the 4IR, most notably the Presidential Commission on the 4IR.

The 4IRSA Partnership recognises that there are several 4IR-related processes and dialogues underway in South Africa: in government, industry, academia and society at large.

However, these are, in the main, fragmented, eclectic and divergent. There is a high level of unawareness of each other between these processes. The 4IRSA Partnership aims to provide a platform for all these processes and stimulate shared conversations, so that they become mutually visible, thereby facilitating progressive coherence between them, which will help move from a silo approach towards to one that is complementarity.

The 4IRSA Partnership also recognises that many of the debates relating to the 4IR are insufficiently fact-based, and frequently anecdotal and emotional. Hence, underpinned by the participation of the universities and other research institutions, the initiative aspires to provide a foundation of research, a fact base rooted in the South African context, around which the complex discourses of a response to the 4IR can develop.

The 4IRSA Partnership also recognises that many of the debates relating to the 4IR are insufficiently fact-based, and frequently anecdotal and emotional. Hence, underpinned by the participation of the universities and other research institutions, the initiative aspires to provide a foundation of research, a fact-base, rooted in the South African context, around which the complex discourses of a response to the 4IR can develop.

The 4IRSA Partnership is committed to an inclusive process: the 4IR will impact every part of the economy and society, and hence all constituencies need to be part of the dialogue and of formulating South Africa’s response. Specifically, the 4IRSA Partnership seeks active participation from:

The 4IRSA Partnership believes the national response to 4IR in South Africa must be coherent, so that the manifold and diverse elements of that response, executed by diverse role-players, are mutually supportive, complementary and non-duplicative.

Without coherence, the response will be incomplete, and given the interconnectedness of impacts of the 4IR, it is unlikely to achieve positive sustainable outcomes. And finally, it needs to be a response, not merely a plan. The plan needs to be put into action, with progress and outcomes measured against the plan; the emphasis is on action, not just ideation.