Date: 07/11/2010
Source: The African National Congress
Title: ANC: Phosa: Address by the ANC national treasurer, at the Saphila 2010 conference, Sun City

Honoured guests, ladies and gentlemen, colleagues from EOH
I am pleased to be here today, to share with you some specific thoughts on
"Thought Leadership".
CONTINENT OF OPPORTUNITY
· Africa is an emerging market with great potential.
· Africa boasts an abundance of riches, such as:
o 10 % of the world's reserves of oil;
o 40 percent of its gold; and
o 80 to 90 percent of the chromium and platinum metal groups.
o The above are just the known reserves; no doubt more lies underneath
our rich soil, yet to be discovered.
· Real GDP rose by 4.9 percent a year from 2000 through 2008; more than
twice the growth in the 1980s and 1990s.
· Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) increased from $9 billion in 2000 to
$62 billion in 2008.
· Telecommunications, banking, retailing and construction are
flourishing.
· Africa's collective GDP, at $1.6 trillion in 2008, is now roughly equal
to that of Brazil's or Russia's.
· The continent is among the world's most rapidly growing economic
regions.
· This acceleration is a sign of hard-earned progress and promise.
AS YOU KNOW EVERY OPPORTUNITY COMES WITH CHALLENGES
· Lack of infrastructure, especially in rural areas.
· Inefficient and unreliable communication systems.
· Low levels of education.
· Scarcity of skilled labour.
· High cost of doing business
· Africa's challenge is to seize Foreign Direct Investment (FDI)
opportunities. FDI should be used to create as many horizontal and vertical
linkages as possible with the domestic economy, by encouraging
infrastructure development and skills transfer and by facilitating domestic
employment and enterprise generation, in addition to earning export
revenues.

CHALLENGES CALL FOR INOVATION
• It is a new generation out there and technology has provided the
platform for innovation to flourish.
• The pace of change is increasing at a dizzying speed
• When one looks at the adoption of technology over the years the rate
of adoption has increased exponentially, that is:
• For radio to get up to 50 million users took 38 years.
• For the same amount of users to adopt television took 13 years.
• One of the most pervasive inventions in the last decades has been the
internet and that took a mere 4 years to get up to 50 million users.
• The iPod which is widely used, especially by the youth, took 3 years to
get to the same amount of users.
• Today social networks such as Facebook has completely changed the
adoption rate of technology and innovation, in only two years Facebook users
grew to 50 million.

ICT INNOVATION IS PRESENT TODAY IN AFRICA
Africa can only stay competitive through innovation:
· Information Technology (IT) will act as a main driver for innovation,
and is therefore key to future growth and employment in Africa:
Competitiveness and employment will continue to transfer us into a service
oriented society.
· There is huge potential for innovative services
· Information about demographic change and health will assist in
enabling innovative workplaces and addressing the needs of all the
inhabitants of the continent in a more comprehensive way.
In addition there is a role for IT in the optimization of energy and
sustainability as the security and growth of energy supplies is high on the
agenda of Governments everywhere.
Energy efficiency can also be increased through IT (e-Energy).
Information Technology (IT) can enable better crime and terror prevention
as well as disaster management and therefore increase public security.
Software is key to drive innovation in these areas because:
o There is a need for quicker access to information because there is so
much information (information is doubling every 18 months).
o We need analytical tools to look at structured information to make
better decisions and sense of the world.
o Companies and Governments need to act faster to assist the
consumer/citizen and other demands in a rapidly changing world such as
globalization, new laws and financial crises.
o Companies and Governments will need the agility to stay relevant and
better address the needs of their voters and consumers.
The innovative use of IT can be a major enabler in this environment.

OTHER ICT TRENDS THAT ARE CHANGING OUR REALITY
· In general we are referring to issues such as:
o The convergence of IT and communication through mobile infotainment
and cell phone services via GPS.
o Virtualization through no fixed allocation between applications and IT
resources.
o Consolidation of the industry driven by the complexity of products.
o Improving return on investment.
· Business Software
o Similar to electricity coming from the socket. Cloud-Computing will
prevail once issues such as security of supply and privacy have been
successfully addressed.

ITC ENABLING GROWTH IN AFRICA
ICT serves as an enabler for example in:
· Science:
o In Predictability through weather forecasts, and climate models.
o In Virtual Worlds: Simulations are replacing scientific experiments.
For example in car design, and the design of new pharmaceutical drugs.
o In New sciences such as Mechatronics.
· Public Sector benefits from improved service delivery, for example:
o Case Management,
o Social Relief Distress,
o Disaster Management, and
o Improving Governance.
· In today's fast changing world with increased availability of
information, prefabricated reports and queries are not sufficient anymore.
o There is a need for Explorative search. Only by navigating through
information, the analyst recognizes trends and contexts (because there is so
much data, analyzing for example 1 billion pieces of data, can only be done
through technological innovation).
· End- user Impact on our daily life.
o The Impact of technology on social behavior is massive and substantial
through social platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Linkedn and Myspace. It
has totally changed the way that we interact with friends and business
associates.
o There is a New generation of "digital natives" or "onliners" using
internet and smart-phones.
o Personal information on the web used by Human Resource departments for
recruiting!
· In the broader economy
Corporations and Government benefit as IT is not only everywhere, but has
now a strategic role to play by:
o Driving efficiency, innovation, and growth in all sectors.
o Good business software is mission-critical in this regard.
· If you look at countries such as India, they invested a lot in
education, IT, and ICT and have begun to reap the benefits of those
investments. That's what Africa needs to do as well to enable:
o Growth and upliftment,
o Service delivery and business growth,
o Transparency and Accountability,
o Agility,
o Sustainability, and
o Quick and easy access to information.
· IT is promoting the transition from an industrialized society to a
knowledge based society which is impacted by:
o The size of market and number of employees worldwide.
o Cross-sectional technology such as IT and Medicine, IT and
administration, IT and mechanical engineering, etc.
o We all know that software plays a decisive role in multiplying
knowledge.

WHAT WOULD I DO WITH THIS OPPORTUNITY?
· Identify Innovative Solutions: embrace Africa´s individuality and
leverage off opportunities such as the high mobile penetration, strong need
for improved service delivery, health and education, disaster management,
etc. Africa can only stay competitive through innovation.
· Use change as a competitive advantage: using software as a Service for
key functionalities, to allow you to realise quick time to value and
therefore more agility in certain cases.
· Africa must invest further in IT!
· ‘Future Internet' including Internet of Things and Internet of
Services.

o With Internet of Things we refer to the integration of objects into the
web.
o With internet of Services we refer to automatic selection, combination
and usage of services (through semantic technologies).

§ An example Examp would be e-Energy, which is a combination of smart
meter data and weather forecasts to evaluate energy demand and power
generation (wind power), controls the allocation of energy through energy
grids.

· Government should be the pioneer of this development as the Public
Sector creates a large percentage of Africa's Gross Domestic Product (GDP).
· E-Government creates better services for the citizens, increased
innovation and more efficiency in budget spending.
· Government should also be the role model on how to deal with
technology in general and especially IT.
· ICT is an Enabler, so companies and governments should leverage off
it.
· Adopt IT to improve:
o The collection of information
o Manage disbursement.
o Transparency, governance and tracking of results.
· Identify Innovative Solutions.
· Use change as a competitive advantage.
I thank you.