Training Students for the Fourth Industrial Revolution

At the beginning of the last decade, the CMU, identifying the changes taking place in the global workforce, specifically in relation to the fourth industrial revolution, took a new approach to education and training.

This trajectory signalled a major milestone in the university’s history and heralded the inclusion of artificial intelligence as a key component of one of our undergraduate programmes as well as the establishment of a Centre for Digital Innovation and Advanced Manufacturing, CDIAM, focussing on areas such as additive manufacturing, predictive analysis, simulation and testing, augmented reality, virtual reality, among others.

A pioneer of these new technologies at the CMU is CDIAM Executive Director Mrs. Erica Simmons, who points out that the world is “already 10 years into the 4th Industrial Revolution, a revolution marked by the symbol of skills disruption, wherein 35 percent of skills have become obsolete.

As a developing country, disruption is good for us, we want to be a part of it as there are opportunities for us as a country,” she states.

A general hallmark of Industry 4.0 is the integration of artificial intelligence, robotics, 3D printing, generic engineering, and other technologies.

So, with the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development estimating that over the next 10 – 20 years, “14 percent of jobs are at high risk of being fully automated, while another 32 percent at risk of significant change”, the CMU is doing much to prepare its students, so they can dive into a workplace being transformed by technologies such as automation, robotics, and big data.