Africa, Innovation, and the Fourth Industrial Revolution
The Punch
The Third Industrial Revolution (3IR) provided perhaps the most significant insights into Africa’s potential to fast-track its march to sustainable development. As with industrial revolutions, the 3IR has further tinkered with international division of labour. Gradually, Africa and indeed economies hitherto considered as periphery – so-called because they were traditional sources of raw materials – are now actors in knowledge-driven competition, which is the hallmark of the 3IR. With the invention of computer technology, the entrenchment of digitisation, most importantly the Internet and the entire ICT architecture, Africa is a demonstrable source of intellectual power in the digital sphere. As the world’s youngest continent, Africa’s youthful population are mostly ‘born digital’. The continent is home to vast technology hubs and start-ups driven by its youths now set to disrupt the old order and invert the narrative of African innovation.
Presently, the world is transitioning fully into the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR). Analysts characterise the 4IR as the melding of technologies with faint demarcations across physical, digital and biological boundaries. Its hallmarks include exponential applications of digital technology with unappalled migration across all industrial domains and geography and the resulting disruptions in systems of production, consumption, marketing, management, entrepreneurship, governance, and in social and firm cultures. Some have framed these features into such phenomena as digitally enhanced network effects, the Internet of Things, etc. At the core of the 4IR is valourisation of data, increasing dynamics of its usage, ongoing contestation over its accessibility and status as both proprietary assets and as global public goods.
In terms of impact, the 4IR is now associated with diverse phenomena, including Artificial Intelligence, robotics, 3D design and printing, big data, virtual currency, block chain technology.
In the 4IR, Africa’s major challenge is to leverage and optimise the significant gains it has made during the 3IR. According to the World Economic Forum, Africa’s future is more effectively located in 4IR-style innovation, rather than old-style industrialisation. The Forum is optimistic that with impressive record at 13% above global average of early stage in entrepreneurial activity, “Africa has definitely grasped the promise of the 4IR.” It notes that, “More than 400 tech hubs have sprung up across the continent, with Lagos, Nairobi, Cape Town emerging as internationally recognised technology centres. These cities now host thousands of start-ups, along with the incubators, accelerators, innovation hubs, maker spaces, technology parks and co-working spaces that support them.” To build on this trend, two factors are critical. The first is the continent’s ability to engage in strategic partnership for innovation and sustainable development. This can be advanced pursuant to Goal 17 of the SDGs and Agenda 2030 of the United Nations. The second is through coordinated continental commitment to flexible approach to intellectual property protection and open innovation culture.
Goal 17 of the SDGs focuses on strengthening the means of implementation and revitalisation of the global partnership for sustainable development. Strategic and coordinated partnerships at the regional, sub-regional and global levels that focus on how best to coordinate Africa’s strides in innovation are urgently needed. The 2018 World Economic Forum’s Readiness for Future Production Report finds that despite the prevalence of tech platforms and innovation capacity or potentials, other factors such as institutional structures, appropriate skills, competitive trade and investment incentives, sustainable demand or market, etc. are critical. Notwithstanding Africa impressive credential in technology start-ups, continental efforts remain fragmented and uncoordinated. Consequently, African technology start-ups experience higher than average mortality rate. In addition to the African Union’s championing of the African Continental Free Trade Agreement in 2018, other strides such as the Africa50 Infrastructure Fund, the African Growth Platform present tactical catalysts to rally private and public partnerships to enhance coordinated and organic approach to continent-wide innovation ecosystem that could leverage transformative opportunities of the 4IR.
Goal 17 is, arguably, the least discussed of the SDGs. Yet, it is the glue that holds all the other SDGs together. It is at the core of their individual and collective implementation. Its target on technology is to, “Enhance North-South, South-South and triangular regional and international cooperation on and access to science, technology and innovation and enhance knowledge sharing … through improved coordination among existing mechanisms … and through a global technology facilitation mechanism.”
As a priority, Africa needs to liaise with multi-stakeholder partners pursuant to Goal 17 to create partnerships that could enhance the continent’s ability to optimise its strengths and potential in the 4IR in a coordinated manner.
The second critical factor to Africa’s strategic positioning in the 4IR relates to intellectual property and alternative knowledge governance. Africa remains under pressure to commit to stronger intellectual property protection amidst increasing relevance of open and collaborative models of innovation. Never before has a flexible approach to intellectual property been a compelling policy choice for Africa. Data is the raw material that fuels the 4IR. Data analytics is a key driver of AI, machine learning and Internet of things. These depend on big data in order to identify and deploy patterns and their algorithmic and functional transformations. Copyright flexibility is necessary “to develop innovative techniques of data analysis without holdup from copyright holders.” However, transnational copyright holders, including book publishers and movie industries and other content intermediaries pose significant opposition to the flexibility required in intellectual property laws and the copyright system which fledgling African innovators need to access and malleably deploy data in the 4IR. According to Andrew Rens, innovative data localization techniques will feed off local AI in Africa and advance Africa’s stake in the 4IR.
But at the international and national levels, Africa’s interest in flexible exceptions and limitations to copyright faces stiff resistance from developed countries. This is the case at the World Intellectual Property Oragisation’s Standing Committee on Copyright and Related Rights. At the national level, South Africa – perhaps the only African country with dedicated policy on the 4IR –made copyright reform a plank of that policy. However, there is stiff resistance to the new copyright bill from legacy industries and content intermediaries to the flexibilities designed to position African innovation for the 4IR. As it is true of South Africa so it is of the entire continent, without such flexibilities Africa “will become a source of raw data, processed in countries perspicacious enough to deploy copyright flexibilities.”
In order to effectively propel the progress Africa has made on innovation since the 3IR onto the 4IR, it important for the continent to tap on the promise of the SDG 17 to court regional, sub-regional and global partnerships with a view to ensure effective coordination of the Africa’s burgeoning innovation. As complement, the continent’s interest in a flexible and pragmatic approach to intellectual property, especially copyright flexibilities, need to be executed again in a coordinated manner as a crucial regional priority. These two matters are critical aspects of the partnership imperative for African innovation in the 4IR.
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