On Tuesday, I passed Finetown and wondered whether the young people of this whirring informal settlement in the south of Johannesburg will ever have access to high-speed internet.
I stopped my car and alighted to view the place like a hypercritical foreign tourist. There were shacks of different sizes lining pathways that were barely wide enough to drive through. Children were playing in the dusty patches between the houses.
The surroundings suggested there was little hope for a decent life for youngsters living here.
However, given my background — I was born in the Alexandra of Mpumalanga, Bethal — I still held up hope the youngsters could somehow escape their dire circumstances.
I remembered the Japanese proverb: “The most beautiful flowers grow from the rankest dirt.”
I tried to strike up a conversation with a youngster who said his name was Nkululeko* (loosely translated as Freedom).
“You and others don’t care about us except to come here and exploit our beautiful ghetto. You don’t think we belong to the mainstream world, and you are wrong,” Nkululeko said nonchalantly.
“It is for all of us, and we are just neglected by all and sundry at this point.”
Nkululeko could have been speaking for any of the millions of disillusioned youths residing in informal settlements.
Embarrassed, I jumped into my car and drove off feeling somewhat inadequate.
I could not help thinking that a speedy way of including marginalised youngsters like Nkululeko in SA’s development was the fourth industrial revolution (4IR).
4IR represents a fundamental change in how we live, work and relate to one another.
The World Economic Forum (WEF) says 4IR is a new chapter in human development, enabled by extraordinary technological advances commensurate with those of the first, second and third industrial revolutions.
WEF explains that 4IR is about more than just technology-driven change.
It is an opportunity to help everyone, including leaders, policymakers and people from all income groups and nations, to harness converging technologies to create an inclusive, human-centred future.
“The real opportunity is to look beyond technology and find ways to give the greatest number of people the ability to positively impact their families, organisations and communities,” says WEF.
The more I thought about it, the more I convinced myself that 4IR could somehow fast-track development and improve the lives of people living in places like Finetown.
Nkuleleko’s declaration that “no-one cares about us” kept ringing in my head. The only solution I could think of was 4IR.
What prevents 4IR from taking off in informal settlements?
The state-owned Universal Service and Access Agency of SA (Usaasa) was established through the Electronic Communications Act No 36 of 2005, to ensure that: “Every man, woman and child, whether living in the remote areas of the Kalahari or in urban areas of Gauteng, can be able to connect, speak, explore and study using Information and Communication Technologies.”
However, the Usaasa and ministry of communications & digital technologies appear disinterested in ensuring informal settlements have access to high-speed internet.
Usaasa has never spoken publicly about connectivity in informal settlements. The less said about this moribund body the better.
The communications ministry also continues to make unfulfilled promises about universal connectivity.
To make matters worse, the country’s communications watchdog, the Independent Communications Authority of SA (Icasa), hasn’t developed regulations to ensure that informal settlements are covered by high-speed internet.
The continued inaction excludes informal settlements from the benefits of the new era of human history powered by 4IR.
This inaction inadvertently perpetuates the unequal distribution of economic levers crafted under an immoral and cruel apartheid system.
However, Wits University might provide much-needed hope for young ones in Finetown and other informal settlements.
The university is leading efforts to develop low-cost, long-range, free-space optics connecting informal settlement communities to high-speed internet.
Possibilities include a beaming light from a fibre-connected suburban home to a 3D-printed wireless communication system to a school in an informal settlement across the road, providing pupils with instant high-speed, reliable internet access.
A two-year project is under way to demonstrate the use of wireless optical technologies to provide flexible and rapidly deployable communications infrastructure that researchers say will be a “fibre before the fibre” solution for communities.
The “fibre before the fibre project” is a collaboration between Wits University and the Universities of Glasgow and Aston in the UK.
Let’s hope this project enables Finetown and other informal settlements to join the race to be part of the 4IR world.
*Not his real name
• Lourie is a former correspondent for Thomson Reuters, Business Report, Fin24 and Finweek magazine. He is also the founder and editor of techfinancials.co.za.
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