Pieter Jacobs: HoD UJ Arts & Culture
“IN MANY WAYS, CREATIVE AND CULTURAL DIVERSITY POINTS TO KEY POTENTIAL APPROACHES FOR CREATIVE AND INNOVATIVE STRATEGIES TO REIMAGINING AND CREATING AN AFRICAN 4IR,” SAYS PIETER.
opportunity to grapple with the serious failings of
continent will require a particular approach that responds to the context and needs of Africans, including taking into account the continent’s history with colonial violence and extractivist capitalism. The approach will also need to define the new futures that Africa looks to create for itself out of the realities of this difficult history,” says Pieter. Meanwhile, investments and strategies for 4IR are being undertaken across the African continent. Governments – led by South Africa, the African Union and the AFDB – are all looking to understand the nature of 4IR for the continent and have come up with several lines of thought, including: • 4IR may bring about an
between 4IR and the creative sector and aims to identify areas of potential, gaps in the literature, and strategies for knowledge production on these issues. The report points out that while 4IR is still a developing field of understanding, the changes of 4IR present a window of opportunities for the African continent in that • They may allow the continent
leadership, economy and social infrastructure of the African continent. • African dynamism in 4IR may lie in centring the power of humanity within these massive
technological changes, an approach that emphasises a change in the underlying structures and knowledge systems of technology to
to leapfrog some of its development challenges.
ensure that the inequality and discrimination of the past are not replicated. • The role of intellectual property may become more prominent as the primary site of value in 4IR as relates to Africa’s innovation economy – Africa works with what it has to find new strategies to solve old
• They allow the reimagining of technology as a real viable solution that could mitigate challenges such as ease of doing business, infrastructure development, unemployment and poverty alleviation. “The specificities of industrialisation on the African
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