BRICS and Africa’s Part in the Fourth Industrial Revolution
is Africa ready to participate in and take advantage of the Fourth Industrial Revolution? July 27 marked the conclusion of the 10th annual BRICS Summit in Johannesburg. The summit declaration outlined as the group’s new key initiative to tackle challenges and maximize benefits brought by developments in technologies such as artificial intelligence and automation. The new industrial revolution was a key point of discussion during the BRICS Summit. The BRICS “PARTNIR,” which stands for Partnership in the New Industrial Revolution, is expected to create and guide policymaking with regards to harnessing new changes in technology, dubbed the Fourth Industrial Revolution.
The BRICS members have formulated a specific plan to optimize coming changes in automation, digitalization and artificial intelligence, which have also been advanced in other developed economies such as the United States, France and Japan, all of whom have now come out with their own nationwide programs intended to address the Fourth Industrial Revolution. Within the PARTNIR framework, BRICS aims to develop a coherent and synergetic set of policies concerning education, skills development, employment and investment for the new technologies.
The motivation to create a strategy related to the Fourth Industrial Revolution among BRICS countries is timely, especially for major manufacturing exporters such as China. The strategies enable firms to become more flexible in meeting changing customer demands for high-value added products. A high level of experimentation and efficient production processes, also facilitates new innovation, by allowing faster creation of new prototypes and bringing them to the market. Furthermore, greater use of innovative strategies can dramatically increase labor productivity. These new innovative strategies will also maximize benefits and facilitate technological growth in Africa, and play a vital role in the industrial sector throughout the continent.
If successful, the Fourth Industrial Revolution’s skill upgrading, educational expansion and technological upgrades could be seen across the bloc, affecting a considerable portion of the world’s labor force and having a profound impact on BRICS productivity, and in turn the current balance of economic power. The drive among BRICS countries to champion cooperation among developing countries acts as an important forerunner for African countries to craft strategies to capitalize on the Fourth Industrial Revolution.