Browsing by Subject "Fourth Industrial Revolution"

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    African creative futures: mainstreaming creativity in the South African skills ecosystem
    (2025) Arendse, Beth; Hall, Martin
    Creative future skills will be essential for Africa and South Africa, driving economic development, innovation capacity, and the ability to respond to the evolving socio political environments of the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR) era. This study explores opportunities for developing creativity and creative thinking, key future skills, within South Africa's current 4IR planning. Using an exploratory qualitative approach, the research examines how creativity is experienced and understood, alongside the social and cultural factors influencing creative thinking, through three distinct lenses: educators, skills ecosystem managers, and youth. The study aims to understand how creativity is experienced, taught, and implemented and its wider application within South Africa's skills ecosystem, in the context of ongoing 4IR planning. It investigates the current approaches to creative education in South Africa and identifies key social and cultural factors shared by South African educators, skills ecosystem managers and youth that can guide the implementation of creative education. Furthermore, it seeks to demonstrate potential reforms in creative education through an appropriate praxis model.
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    At the intersection of automation, unemployment and inequality in South Africa
    (2024) Farouk, Fazila; Sitas, Ari
    The emergence of the digital economy in the aftermath of the Global Financial Crisis and its intersection with the mainstream economy has led to significant labour market instability and social uncertainty. Heralding an ontological shift in the global economy, these changes coincided with the announcement of a Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR) by the World Economic Forum, which, despite being riddled with inconsistencies as a theory of change, was adopted by the South African government as a policy guide. This gave rise to a sociological debate amongst South African scholars that problematises the 4IR as a historical force, whilst raising concerns about its neoliberal ideology. Despite the vital epistemic contribution of this debate, to date, there has been no evidence-based study that analyses the digital economy in relation to South Africa's post-apartheid transformation. This is the knowledge gap that this thesis addresses, whilst posing the question: Will the 4IR, as a metaphor for the digital economy, make a difference to how post-apartheid South Africa responds to its crisis of social and economic inequality? This question prompted a multifaceted study of three sectors, which includes: 1) an ontological study of the tech start-up sector as the driver of digital innovations; 2) a study of automation and technological unemployment in the banking industry as the fastest digitalising sector in the economy; and 3) a study of the platform economy both as a new source of jobs and as the ex-post manifestation of the sharing economy within which post capitalist tendencies exist. This thesis is a study of technological and social change that draws on Marxist phenomenological and social constructivist theories to explore power and inequality in the digital economy. It applies mixed research methods and is initiated by a survey of 120 tech start-ups, which is an original contribution to the literature. This is augmented by 15 in-depth interviews across the three sectors. The significance of this study is that it moves the field forward by gathering empirical evidence to reveal the material expression of the 4IR in South Africa. The study finds that far from being a disruptive force that reduces inequality, the 4IR as a metaphor for the digital economy, instead extends historic injustices by inventing new technologies that amplify the destructive tradition of value extraction in the South African economy—thereby, preventing economic and social change for shared prosperity.
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    Open Access
    Fourth industrial banking: case studies into digitising banking models and the foreseeable effects in South Africa
    (2022) Masheleni, Celine Intombiyenhle; Benya, Asanda-Jonas
    This thesis is a critical, exploratory analysis of the impacts to the banking industry in South Africa, in light of the wave of technological change and emergence, termed in popular discourse as the Fourth Industrial Revolution or 4IR. The 4IR has been argued to offer the transformative potential to change and disrupt current societal organization and provide opportunities for developing countries such as South Africa to “leapfrog” into development. Many argue that as technology advances and progresses, it can be used to address socio-economic, developmental challenges and deliver services. In the banking sector, particularly in the context of developing countries, as large portions of the population remain excluded from formal financial services, digital banking methods premised on the technologies of the 4IR have emerged as potential “solutions”. What is often understated, however, that this study highlights, is that such technological advancements hold challenges. Moreover, as they are presented as solutions to the socioeconomic difficulties of developing countries, like financial exclusion, it is important that this is understood contextually, and critically and such challenges are presented. Through primarily qualitative case studies of two banks, Standard Bank and TymeBank, the study aimed to uncover the processes of digitisation occurring as well as the social processes that underlie them. Findings show that indeed, tangible examples of “4IR”/digitisation are identified at the two banks through technical application of emerging technologies, such as cloud computing and machine learning. However, more concerning are the social processes and strategic decisions that result in and out of their adoption. The 4IR in the context of this study appears to replicate ongoing social and economic inequalities, through inadequate digital infrastructures, and omni-present interests of neoliberalism presenting as digital capitalism. Additionally, carrying concern of adverse effects to the employment and labour landscape, the 4IR is deconstructed for its rhetorical meaning which contrasts with the reality. Hegemonic representations of a 4IR and its proposed ‘transformative benefits' do not correspond with actual phenomena and risk the neglecting of fundamental social challenges that are deepened by and new ones emerging out of digitisation.