The Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR) is impacting on the industrialization options for Africa inter alia through three interrelated sets of technologies, namely automation, additive manufacturing and the Industrial Internet. In this paper I set out the case for why Africa should industrialize. I then explore the opportunities and threats the 4IR pose for Africa. Threats include job-losses and the re-shoring of manufacturing to advanced economies. Among the opportunities are products-as-services, the sharing (collaborative) economy, and digital services and digital exports. These are markets that are currently underdeveloped in Africa but have substantial potential given Africa's geography, demography and on-going urbanisation. In order for the continent to benefit from the 4IR more needs to be done to improve entrepreneurship and education. A number of policy recommendations for 4IRcompatible entrepreneurship and education policies are made.
We use cookies to provide you with an optimal website experience. This includes cookies that are necessary for the operation of the site as well as cookies that are only used for anonymous statistical purposes, for comfort settings or to display personalized content. You can decide for yourself which categories you want to allow. Please note that based on your settings, you may not be able to use all of the site's functions.
Cookie settings
These necessary cookies are required to activate the core functionality of the website. An opt-out from these technologies is not available.
In order to further improve our offer and our website, we collect anonymous data for statistics and analyses. With the help of these cookies we can, for example, determine the number of visitors and the effect of certain pages on our website and optimize our content.