Where 4th Industrial Revolution (4IR) is predicated mainly in Artificial Intelligence and where Artificial Intelligence is the technique of making machines intelligent, it has become ever more important to become owners and developers of technology, President Hage Geingob has said.
Speaking at the opening of the Namibia fourth industrial revolution conference, Geingob further stated that this because, the development of any technology embeds the norms, standards, values, stereotypes and cultural innuendos and idiosyncrasies of its developers.
“Thus when Namibians are not designing and creating their own digital technologies nor have the critical mass of specialists, it risks inadvertently adopting a different culture through the technologies that it consumes. The solution lies in us increasing our technological skills and national capacity to co-design and co-create contextually relevant technologies, across the various dimensions of our development including application to healthcare, energy, education, defence, agriculture, finance, trade and commerce, etc,” Geingob said.
He went on to say that although we may not yet be the owners and developers of the technologies at scale, we do own a very important aspect – the Data.
“The data is ours and Open Data has become a sought after Capital Resource with its own innate value. Unlocking Information Management Systems and Inter-Operability within the Public and Private Sectors will inform smart and intelligence driven development and governance. This is what we are striving towards, this is the direction in which we are heading,” Geingob said.