Harnessing S&T for Africa’s Development: the role of ICT Barry Dwolatzky Professor School of Electrical & Information Engineering, Wits University Director: Joburg Centre for Software Engineering

Primary wealth-creating assets  200 years ago: Land and Labour  Past 200 years: Capital and Energy  Present: Information and Knowledge  Recent technological developments have transformed wealth-creating work from physically-based to “knowledge-based”

Information and Communication Technology (ICT) in Africa  After years of being an information and communication technology laggard relative to other developing regions of the world, Africa has been pushed to the forefront in a new information revolution, thanks to mobile communications.  This period has also witnessed considerable mobility in the information and communication technology rankings of different African nations.  As an analytical framework, the “digital divide” does not accurately describe what is happening on the continent and may lead to policy choices that are harmful to Africa’s future. Tim Kelly Head: Strategy and Policy Unit, International Telecommunication Union (ITU), Geneva,

Challenges facing ICT in Africa  Indigenous versus imported technology – both hardware and software  Competing on a “flat world”  ICT Research Capacity – there are fewer ICT professors in Africa than in a medium-sized US university  Developing appropriate skills – multi-skilled experts

From Prof Marwala’s presentation  Areas Critical for Africa’s Development : ICT  Connectivity  We are already making great strides. New international links + mobile  Computing  Cloud Computing (with good connectivity) offers solution  Internet  Mobile Internet

From Prof Marwala’s presentation (continued)  Areas Critical for Africa’s Development : ICT  Broadband  Much still to be done  Digitization  ????  Computational/Artificial intelligence  Indigenous R&D needed  Outsourcing  Need to compete on reliability and quality  Call centres  Huge opportunity – but progress is being made

Another huge opportunity  “Smart Grid”  Traditional Power Grids designed to carry energy  Bring large amount of information onto the grid  Offers great prospects of using energy more efficiently  Can discover “African Solutions” to this global challenge