Innovate or perish: AfriCANs and AfriCANTs beyond the Fourth Industrial Revolution

Abstract

Cartographies of industrial revolutions, from steam engines to robotics, can arguably impute that Africa has been in deep shadow, engaged with its own dis/location in the narrative of advancements into the digital era. How then do we speak of Africa in the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR)? Is there a space or niche for the continent in the Big Data race? Is Africa producing content, or does it have capacity for the technological tools of the 4IR? What are the in/tangible impediments to Africa's identity, and why are they so evident in the 4IR? How can Africa's “position” be revised, and branded, into the present tense of the 4IR? How can further radical engagements in the digital space activate the humanizing spirit of the African agon in the 5IR? These questions serve the purpose of highlighting the categories of those who believe and those who doubt—AfriCANs and AfriCANTs—in the contexts of e-literacy and illiteracy of the digital space. the problems of weak infrastructure and other impediments and anxieties that make the presentness of the fourth realm of the industrial revolution impassable in Africa should be of crucial concern to technocrats and bureaucrats alike. Africa's cultural intelligentsia must challenge itself into quickening the pace of the continent into its digital futures of many possibilities, contending with both creative and disruptive technologies. For Africa and its humongous resources, an analog present cannot instruct a digital future, and the future must be activated in the present.