Facebookknowledge based economy

It has become the norm that a speech by a member of the executive ( the president and his ministers) is incomplete without mention of a “knowledge- based economy.” Indeed with diamonds about to be mined out, it makes perfect sense to rely on human capital to drive the economy. However, something doesn’t make sense: the idea of knowledge- based economy goes back to the administration of President Festus Mogae when there wasn’t a single fly- by- night tertiary education institution ( EI), no social media, all TEIs had libraries and lecturers with advanced degrees from credible universities and most importantly, when students demonstrated a desire to fill their heads with useful knowledge.

Believe it or not but there was a period of time when 99 percent of TEI students knew the names of all cabinet ministers and not just because such knowledge was oddly required at some job interviews. Today, one can obtain two masters degrees when s/ he has never read a single book from start to finish and considers a 400- word newspaper article “too long - a book.”

The idea of diversifying to a knowledge- based economy was conceived at a time when people acquired knowledge that an economy could be fuelled with. That is no longer the case because social- media knowledge is about all the knowledge there is in public life. Try building an economy on the basis of slander, innuendo, rumour, pornography, racism, tribalism, sexism and all the other harmful – isms and see how that turns out.

President Mokgweetsi Masisi and finance minister Peggy Serame probably don’t realise but each time they get on their soapbox about creating a knowledge- based economy, they are actually saying that they want the drivel on Facebook to be commodified in such manner that it can replace diamond- mining as an engine of economic growth.