South Africa and the continent as a whole is lagging behind the rest of the world in terms of engineering and technology. Instead of innovating we just adapt and follow what others are doing.
As a continent, we have an opportunity to develop on the foundations of great technology and skip all the bad stuff such as internal combustion engine vehicles and coal power stations.
We can jump right into renewables like Solar which would work great in our sunny continent and be at the forefront of electric vehicles. But unfortunately, that’s not happening.
In South Africa, the number of learners studying math and science in Grade 12 keeps dropping each year. We have a low number of engineers and programmers and our start-up environment doesn’t reward innovation.
We need to start refocusing all our energy into building technology start-ups that can solve the problems that our country is facing.
Innovation needs to be encouraged and rewarded in order to propel it forward.
Good governance gives a country stability but a strong innovation & technology culture moves it forward.