"The Ikamva Institute and Digital Opportunity" by Yunus Carrim, Minister of Communications at the launch of the Ikamva National E-Skills Institute, Durban University of Technology, eThekwini
Programme Director,
Minister in The Presidency, Mr Trevor Manuel,
Deputy Ministers of Communications and Public Service, Ms Stella Ndabeni-Abrahams and Ms Ayanda Dlodlo,
MEC for Education in KZN, Ms Peggy Nkonyeni,
Mayor of Ethekwini Municipality, Mr James Nxumalo,
Chairperson of the PCC, Mr Eric Kholwane,
Chairperson of the Ikamva National e-Skills Institute, Ms Molatelo Maloka,
Members of Parliament,
Vice-Chancellor of the DUT and Chair of Higher Education SA, Prof Ahmed Bawa,
Distinguished guests,
Ladies and gentlemen.
Let me, in the first instance, thank you for coming to the launch of the Ikamva Institute, and immediately say we would like you to play the full role you and your institution can, to significantly advance e-skills and e-literacy in our country and make the iKamva Institute truly effective.
As I’m in an academic environment, I can’t help drawing attention to the death last week of renowned cultural theorist and black British intellectual, Stuart Hall. His work inspired many, many of us committed to national liberation, anti-racism, anti-sexism and other progressive causes. Among Hall’s key concerns was the relationship between race, class, power and politics in society. We pay tribute to him and acknowledge his considerable contribution.
Information and Communication Technology (ICT), as most of us know, is crucial to economic growth, development and job-creation. We need to become, as the New Growth Path and National Development Plan urge, a far more effective knowledge economy and information society.
Just last month, Minister Manuel and I were part of the South African delegation at the World Economic Forum. The theme was “Re-making the Modern World: Effects on Business, Politics and Society”. A major aspect of this was on how and how quickly ICT is fundamentally transforming societies, not just economies.
We just can’t afford to be left so behind. ICT has huge, huge potential to reduce the gaps between the poor and the rich. But, if not effectively drawn on, it also has just as much potential to increase the divides between the haves and the have-nots, the connected and the unconnected. That we certainly, certainly cannot afford! So it’s up to us here and elsewhere. We need to move – and move fast!
Part of this motion is to give full life to the Ikamva Institute! And to do everything we can to deepen and advance e-skills in our society. We need too far more effectively address our e-readiness and tackle our e-skills deficit. We need to make our people more e-astute across socio-economic, age, gender or literacy backgrounds.
Today, we formally launch the Ikamva National e-Skills Institute as a new State Owned Company to more effectively harness the range of capacities across government, business, education, civil society and global development partners. We might, as we move forward, want to consider some form of representation of these stakeholders on the Board of Ikamva to ensure more effective coordination.
Crucially, the launch of the Ikamva Institute gives expression to “South Africa (SA) Connect”, our Broadband policy and strategy, which was approved by Cabinet in December last year.
There is increasing evidence to support claims that increases in broadband penetration correlate with economic growth and development – that broadband has the potential to create new jobs, broaden educational opportunities, enhanced public service delivery and rural development.
In response to such evidence and to evolving global trends and in order to meet the diverse needs of the people of our country, the Government has developed SA Connect. It takes an integrated and cross-cutting - but perhaps more importantly - citizen-centric approach.
Interestingly, the UN Human Rights Council decided that access to the internet is a basic human right, and the UN Broadband Commission is seeking to include broadband as a basic human need in the Millenium Development Goals to be adopted in 2015.
SA Connect is based on a four-pronged strategy: digital readiness, digital development, digital future and digital opportunity. It is in the context of this last prong of the strategy, digital opportunity, that the ikamva Institute needs to be significantly located. So my brief input today is titled “The Ikamva Institute and Digital Opportunity”.
The high levels of inequality in the country mean that citizens are unable currently to exercise these rights equally and to use the potential of the Internet to meet their needs and improve their wellbeing. Without a critical mass of e-producers, e-workers, e-consumers, e-civil servants and indeed e-citizens, South Africa would be unable to optimise the benefits of broadband connectivity for economic growth and development.
The four pronged strategy adopted in the national broadband policy goes beyond previous conceptions of broadband as simply an infrastructure and access challenge to address this problem.
Rather it understands broadband as an ecosystem of networks, services, applications, content and, most importantly, users - all as interdependent and connected and as functional as the health of the ecosystem permits. Such an approach is essential to understanding the increasing complexity and dynamism of the fast growing ICT sector and its centrality to other sectors in the economy.
For this reason the broadband policy focuses not only on the critical supply-side aspects of provisioning, but importantly, the demand-side. As access to communication comes to mean far more than a voice service on telephone, but rather a full range of ways of communicating, more cheaply, more effectively, of coordinating your personal life, finding information and better managing your business, of banking, creating knowledge, and innovating, the importance of the country having the individual and collective skills base to realise these possibilities becomes critical to our success.
So the national broadband strategy identifies the necessary points of policy intervention – a critical one being skills development - to leverage the linkages in the ICT ecosystem in order to create a more equitable information society and knowledge economy.
SA Connect seeks to mobilise the capabilities, resources and energies of the public and private sectors and civil society, in order to connect South Africans to each other as well as South Africa to the continent and the world.
We need supply-side skills to meet the diverse needs of the producers of the different broadband elements – engineers, economists, accountants, technicians, content producers, software and applications developers - so that the economic and innovative potential of broadband can be exploited.
The high-level skills required by the sector, and the user skills necessary for social and economic inclusion will be targeted in schools, universities and community access centres.
Realising these digital opportunities requires that demand is stimulated and use and uptake increased through the promotion of local and relevant content and applications. We need to ensure that multiple development and incentive programmes in these areas form part of the broadband and funding plan.
These programmes should seek to include a local content and applications development fund and dedicated ICT entrepreneurship and Research and development (R&D) funds, which need to be accompanied by associated skills development programmes.
Specifically, there needs to be incentives for and localisation of local content and applications development and an alignment of broadband initiatives with other government department programmes in R&D, innovation and entrepreneurialism.
This is necessary both for the revitalisation of the economy and also for enhancing citizenship and democracy in the digital age, and creating opportunities for participation and inclusion. So the launch of the Ikamva Institute today is crucial. And your role in contributing to its succes even more so!
In parallel with the other three pillars of the strategy, a multifaceted series of interventions will stimulate demand through the e-readiness programmes in schools and clinics, formal skills development in curricula and general awareness and e-literacy campaigns.
The high-level skills required by the sector, and the user skills necessary for social and economic inclusion will be targeted in schools, universities and community access centres to secure and create work. There will be an alignment of broadband initiatives with other government department programmes in Research and Development (R&D), innovation and entrepreneurialism.
Realising these digital opportunities requires demand be stimulated and use and uptake be increased through the promotion of local and relevant content and applications. Multiple development and incentive programmes in all these areas will form a key part of the broadband implementation and funding plan; these programmes will include a local content and applications development fund and dedicated ICT entrepreneurship and R&D funds. Specifically, there will be incentives for and localisation of local content and applications development.
This is necessary both for the revitalisation of the economy and also for enhancing citizenship and democracy in the digital age, and creating opportunities for participation and consultation. Standards for open data will be set to create new norms around public information that make it widely available and technically accessible.
These will not only enable the use and re-use of public information for public purposes but also stimulate the development of applications and content for private and commercial purposes that can enhance the flow of information and add value to public information.
In addressing these matters we have seen a number of government departments which recognise the importance of developing capacity for the information age, develop programmes around a broad e-skills agenda in order to advance their own mandates.
Whilst this is understandable, we need to ensure that there is alignment across and within key government departments including the Department of Science and Technology, the Department of Public Service and Administration, the Department of Rural Affairs amongst others. I am very pleased that the heads of these aligned departments understand this matter and have expressed a keenness to collaborate with the Institute in this very important work.
Our recently released Green Paper on ICT Policy sets about creating an environment for the optimal development of this sector for the betterment of our society and economy. The deadline for comments has been extended until 24th of March and I urge you to participate in this process.
