Our Deputy President did not know what the Fourth Industrial Revolution was when we asked him about it ast year. But
it remains on everybody's lips. The President last week addressed a high- level conference on the subject, and numerous task teams, conferences and workshops have taken place. Knowing our esteemed President, we might expect another few summit and another talk shop fairly soon.
For the sake of the Vice President, let's say that the First Industrial Revolution was based on steam, the second on mechanisation, and the third on information technology. So what is the fourth? Basically it entails the penetration of very advanced technology and IT into spheres of life never before imagined, from the body to the home, to work and cultural and social life.
Anything from robots to nanomaterials and genetic manipulation may be included, and a vast change in the structure of economies worldwide is well under way whether we like it or not. This is not going to be easy to deal with given the state of our economy. We already have sky-high unemployment, not sci-fi. But it has been estimated by the World Economic Forum that up to 40% of white and blue-collar jobs in South Africa are vulnerable to extinction as this revolution proceeds.
A range of previously inconceivable, mainly very highly skilled, jobs will emerge. A recent Russian survey of such new jobs includes nanomaterials designers, environmental counsellors, neural interface designers and genetic consultants. Many new jobs will be creative rather than mechanical. The progression of this change is unavoidable. You can't decide to engage or not engage in it.
Just as the Information Technology, IT, revolution brought computers and phones into our society, so will these changes bring other new things. Your best bet is to try to stay ahead of it, and engage it on your terms. Only one department in government actually knows and understands something of that, this Department of Science and Technology. Overseeing the country's highest levels of Science and innovation done in universities, the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research, CSIR, and else where, this department is by comparison and in comparative terms a well-run gem.
It provides funding for universities and others to work in a substantial number of the fields of the future, including large data analysis, robotics, nanotechnology, new materials, advanced radio astronomy, climate science, etc. We have many top researchers, some world-class, who do this work. It does not fund genetic research or microbiology or any others of the most advanced medical and
biological sciences as this is done through the Medical Research Council.
But it is the mainstay of South Africa's modest efforts to develop and sustain its own science base. In other words, to decolonise us from scientific control by ourselves. But the both thing we have heard is not enough, this is one of the most neglected department in government. A paltry budget of R8 bn annually for research and development covering the whole country barely equals the cost of just one of our top universities.
This budget has been shrinking in real terms, every year for the past several years. In an era of very widespread populism, research is treated as a luxury rather than a necessity, and is even resented by some as a waste of money. The National Research Foundation, NRF, and the CSIR each of which funds and stimulates research of the highest order for the entire country, each survive on a basic parliamentary grant of roughly R1 billion per annum. This is pitiful.
Their base shrank by 4 percent in real terms this year. Their dependence on private funding reduces their ability to pursue the frontiers of knowledge. Top researchers now get less funding than
they did five years ago, and the amounts dedicated to advanced areas of work are often paltry, in the millions rather than the billions. Research entities are demoralised and new young researchers come forward in depressingly small numbers, rather than large numbers.
Infrastructure in many areas remains dated. The department has valiantly sought to keep the national research effort going under difficult circumstances. However, they are now saying that fundamentals might have to be cut as the budget as shrunk below a sustainable level. The Department of Science and Technology is merging with the massive behemoth which is Higher Education and Training.
The Higher Education has more than ten times the budget of Science and Technology over R100 bn. Unlike Science and Technology, it has little or no expertise or funding related to future concerns. It is overwhelmingly concerned with the travails of student funding and has little time or perrhaps of inclination to go further. It cannot yet provide most of the skills needed for the future in areas that I have already described.
So the question arises: How will the more forward-looking Department of Science and Technology be treated in a merger with the stagnant
and bureaucratically overloaded Department of Higher Education and Training. This will be a litmus test of the seriousness with which the government really takes their commitment to the future, whether we call it the Fourth Industrial Revolution or not. If it is it just a fad, a buzzword there to distract us from the terrible state of our economy and society, then Science and Technology will remain a small and struggling blip on the screen.
The ineffective and floundering bureaucracy which is Higher Education will prevail and Science will suffer. If there is a serious commitment on the matter, then the budget for advanced science will rapidly escalate, and double perhaps as the ANC has said in the last 10 years should be, in keeping with the need for us to stay on top of, rather than succumb to, future trends.
As it stands, the phrase Fourth Industrial Revolution seems more like a buzzword giving rise to lots of conferences, workshops and committees that the government is failing to put funding forward to back its rhetoric. Our money should be used to build on what we already have rather that ill- informed green and fantancies. Thank you.