Ryan Fortune
Image: Supplied
Let’s not kid ourselves. While the rest of the world is building the future, South Africa is still stuck arguing about whether the internet is a basic human right or a luxury. AI? Robotics? Blockchain? We can't even get basic computer literacy into every classroom, let alone prep our kids for the Fourth Industrial Revolution. China is teaching AI to primary school children. Earlier this week, Donald Trump signed an executive order for the US Education Department to start doing the same. And what are we doing? Shuffling around outdated policies like pensioners playing bingo.
We’re in the middle of a global tech revolution, and South Africa is still trying to find the ON switch. Let’s talk about the public sector for a minute, supposedly the engine of development. You’d expect, at the very least, a baseline of digital competence. Instead, we’ve got officials who can barely send an email, let alone harness the power of AI to improve public services. Laptops are scarce, digital systems are a joke, and the fear of tech - yes, technophobia - is very much alive and well. It's like watching cavemen try to build a smart city. You can't make this up.
But it’s not just the tools. It’s the people. The skills. Or rather, the complete and utter lack of them. The vast majority of our graduates come out of university with a piece of paper and zero clue how to do the job they trained for. Practical experience? Nope. Digital fluency? Forget it. There’s a chasm between what the economy needs and what we’re producing. And somehow, we keep acting surprised every year when youth unemployment rises like clockwork.
Meanwhile, the private sector is light years ahead. Tech is flying off the shelves, AI is already replacing low-level tasks, and startups are using data to make decisions in real time. Our government? Probably still playing with fax machines and talking about “going paperless” like it’s 2004.
And here’s the kicker: according to a recent study, even when our public servants do know what 4IR is (because someone mentioned it at a conference), they have no idea what to do with it. Ask how AI could improve health services, or how big data could fight corruption, and you're met with a blank stare or some buzzword salad about “digitally transforming our service delivery models.” You know what that means? Nothing. It means they don’t know. They're winging it.
While the rest of the world is rapidly advancing, our Grade 4s are still unable to read for meaning. Forget AI, we’ve got an illiteracy crisis. How exactly do we expect to get a world-class tech workforce when our kids can’t even read the damn manual?
The truth is, this isn't just a tech problem. It's a commitment problem. A vision problem. A “we’ll fix it later” problem. We talk about training existing public servants, about reskilling and digital audits and strategic frameworks. And sure, those things are important. But when your basic education system is broken, all that upskilling nonsense is just putting lipstick on a pig. You can’t digitise dysfunction.
Let’s be honest: right now, South Africa is trying to build a digital future on the crumbling foundation of a failed education system, a digitally illiterate population, and a public service that still thinks Excel macros are advanced AI.
Until we start taking education seriously, investing in real infrastructure, and treating digital literacy like the oxygen it is, we’re going to keep falling further and further behind. AI isn’t going to wait for us to catch up. The question is: will we wake up before it’s too late?
Because right now? We're not preparing the majority of South Africans for the future. We're preparing them to be left behind.
Ryan Fortune is a writer, thinker and builder of AI-powered web applications. He can be contacted via his email: ryanfortunecomms@gmail.com