OPINION | SA leaders must plan for Al integration to drive prosperity

If you asked someone about Chinese products in the early 2000s, you’d hear the word “knock-offs” from people from the West and “Fong Kong” from South Africans.

This meant they didn’t think much of them and believed they had been indoctrinated into thinking that they were cheap products that wouldn’t last for very long. That has since changed, which also changed the way the world engages with China.

China has given us cars that are increasing in popularity and leading to the struggles of car brands from Europe and North America. We have smartphone brands from there which have led to America creating laws that have banned their companies from collaborating with Chinese companies.

There are social media platforms from China. The Asian giant is big in the world of software and artificial intelligence (AI).

We can also think about the fast development that has happened in the United Arab Emirates. Often, people share their fantasies of Dubai as a location for work, to live or just to visit. The UAE discovered oil, but there are many African countries that discovered oil and yet experienced increased poverty for local populations.

What happened in the two examples given is leadership that cares about growth, tech development and the increased financial success of local populations.

The UAE imports the workforce, for example, because local industries look after local populations so they don’t really have to. You can also never get citizenship if you were never from there, and therefore can never have full benefits of the people of the land.

These are examples of tough decisions that are made by leaders who plan about where they’d like their countries and populations they lead to be in the future they would be designing. It isn’t a gamble as it probably is in our society. It is careful planning and design.

Sure, there are trade-offs. I wonder if those trade-offs are worse than the fact that millions of South Africans are unemployed, have no skills and live below the poverty line with no possibility of ever getting out of poverty.

We live in the world of AI and yet it doesn’t seem like it is even a conversation happening in the majority of our schools. These conversations should spark action in designing a country we would like to have in five to 10 years.

If we don’t realise that future economies require AI skills then we will be left behind. India grew itself by being the tech skills centre of the world about two decades ago. As a result of their focus on these tech skills, CEOs at Google, Microsoft, Adobe and other tech giants are from India.

Such conversations and action would then link what is taught in school to the needs of society and the needs of what’s designed for the future, which should lead to prosperity for future generations.

However, it can’t be a never-ending conversation. It also needs a population that gets indoctrinated into a massive work ethic from a young age so in future, we can be seen to be reaching good levels on economic growth.

Again, it isn’t a gamble. It is all by design and, therefore, our leaders must be able to design the kind of future that will benefit South Africans so we move away from the culture of izinkabi and other heinous crimes that sabotage us as a society.