IBM SA and Wits’ Tshimologong Precinct launch six week acceleration bootcamp for startups.
IBM South Africa and the Wits Tshimologong Digital Innovation Precinct have announced the launch of the Startup Accelerator, a programme designed to enable the development of Growth Stage Tech and Digital Startups through using a bootcamp format that will run over six weeks.
The bootcamp – taking place from 8 October 2018 to 16 November 2018 - will focus on enablement and development through a series of short, intensive and rigorous modules. Each module is specifically selected to address skills, resources, infrastructure and technology growth within the startup. The bootcamp culminates in an investment proposal and pitch whereby the winning participants stand in line to win up to R500k in required products and services.
“Growing technology startups has long been a focus of the Precinct and we are pleased to partner with IBM SA to further develop this vital segment of the market. This bootcamp is centred on investment, one of the critical elements of any growing business. We look forward to working with the teams to make a bottom-line investment in tomorrow’s future technology leaders,” says Shaun Randles, Enterprise Development Manager, Wits Tshimologong Precinct.
The Startup Accelerator is an initiative of the Enterprise Development Programme (EDP), one of 3 streams of the IBM SA Equity Equivalence Investment Programme (EEIP). The EDP is focused on the enablement of entrepreneurs and businesses with a highly specialised ICT focus in globally relevant areas of technology such as Big Data Analytics, Cloud Computing, Internet of Things and Cybersecurity, amongst other things.
To win the investment, the tech startups need to demonstrate how the investment will be used to accelerate the business. The growth trajectory the investment will yield must be based on tangible outcomes simulating financials and thus demonstrating an increase in revenue or job creation. The investment must include their technology requirements for both internal operations and product scaling.
The startup will pitch its reasons why IBM should invest in the development of the business at an awards evening at Wits Tshimologong Precinct taking place during Global Entrepreneurship Week 2018. The evening will be attended by a panel of industry thought leaders and influencers.
Interested participants need to ensure the business has a minimum of one-year trading as a CIPC registered business. The Growth Stage Tech Startup should be Black South African owned and managed. Turnover needs to be between R120k to R50 million per annum and the owner must be actively involved in the business. See the full list of eligibility criteria as well as other pertinent information by visiting www.tshimologong.joburg/programs/ibm-bootcamp/.
Wits Team eFundanathi and eZone in Learning Idols
- Wits University
A lecturer in the Wits School of Therapeutic Sciences was in the top three vying in Learning Idols at the Learning Innovation Africa Conference 2018.
The Learning Idols at #LIA2018 displays technological innovation in teaching and learning.
Dr. Paula Barnard-Ashton, manager of eFundanathi [learn with us] and the eZone at Wits, vied for Learning Idol against Lebogang Lekoma from Sea Monster and Ricky Hinde from Cell C. Barnard-Ashton ultimately placed second after Lekoma.
“The eZone has been transforming the way lecturers in the School of Therapeutic Sciences engage in teaching and learning activities, by bringing 21st Century learning and technology into the classroom”, says Barnard-Ashton, who leads the team at Wits who won the Vice-Chancellor’s Teaching and Learning Award (team category) in 2017.
As part of her presentation at #LIA2018, Barnard-Ashton included an example from Physiotherapy of how learning spaces in higher education need to move away from rigid, fixed desk lecture theatres. eFundanathi demonstrated a video app that the students could use in the eZone to practically learn clinical skills.
“After trying it with our second-year students, I will never go back to the traditional teaching methods I used before. It has reignited my passion for teaching, and the students eagerly participated. We all had fun!” says Vaneshveri Naidoo, a lecturer in Physiotherapy at Wits.
The eZone enables real blended learning and student collaboration by bringing together technology and flexibility of space. Professor Andrew Crouch, Deputy Vice-Chancellor: Academic, who supported Barnard-Ashton during the group session rounds of Learning Idols, reinforces the importance of redesigning learning spaces in his statement:
“Wits University has committed to developing five innovative, technology-rich learning spaces similar to the eZone across Wits campuses over the next two years.”
Barnard-Ashton says that a top three placement in Learning Idols emphasises that university initiatives like the eZone and eFundanathi can compete on an intellectual and innovation level against private businesses as hubs of excellence.
“It is very rewarding,” she says.
New MOOCs for agents of change
- Wits University
Wits University has added two new courses to its free, online WitsX/edX learning platform.
Course: Activism and citizen journalism through media
Media is a powerful tool for promoting social justice. If you are an activist involved in promoting or advocating for a social cause then this free online course is for you. Aimed at people working in civil society and NGOs, it provides a practical guide to using both traditional and social media to promote a social cause.
The course was developed in collaboration with the Centre for Learning, Teaching and Development (CLTD), under the WitsX partnership. The course is designed to equip participants to produce a journalistic story using mobile media tools, to promote social justice. Participants will learn to: identify newsworthy issues; define the limits and possibilities of different mobile platforms and tools, and identify an appropriate strategy and platform/tool to reach a defined target audience. The course also promotes ethical and safe media practices. The course draws on the innovative work of the Citizen Justice Network.
The lead academic is Paul McNally, from the Citizen Justice Network in the Wits School of Journalism. The course will run from 3 October to 31 October 2018.
Media play a critical role in democratic societies by informing citizens, facilitating and building freedom of expression, and fostering access to information. This course will help you to identify the principles and components of democratic media policy and practice, and to identify strategies for effective civil society engagement with these matters in African settings.
This course aims to empower civil society actors in support of a free, pluralistic and independent African media. It seeks to sustain the work of thelate South African media activist, Jeanette Minnie, who was devoted to robust civil society engagement with African media policy. Her work showed the value of civil society and media personnel in impacting on state policy, law and administrative action in the interests of freedom, pluralism and independence for media.
In 2014 Wits University becamethe first African University to partner with edX, the online learning destination founded by MIT and Harvard to offer massive open online courses (MOOCs) to a global learning audience.
Thefirst three MOOCson theWitsX platformwas launched in 2016 and to date 47 477 students have enrolled for eight courses on the platform. Three more will be added to WitsX and will start running in the first half of 2019.
Witsies win big in travel innovation competition
- Wits University
A cash prize of $10,000 has been awarded to Wits students for their winning travel idea.
The SITA Air Transport Community Foundation, based in the UK, has awarded a $10,000 prize to Wits University students Jules Ntumba, Tso Mello and Fiona Ndlovu.
The group, one of seven finalists, was shortlisted through a competition to address what information, tools or technology first-time air travellers in Africa need to make their journeys easy, successful and enjoyable. The travel innovation competition, a partnership between Wits University and the Tshimologong Precinct, was launched in March 2018 and the winners were announced at an awards ceremony held at Wits University on 20 July 2018.
Team One Exceptional, and its members, Ntumba, Mello and Ndlovu were awarded the top cash prize for their winning idea, which was targeted at the +50-year-old first time traveller. The trio from Wits University, who recently completed their Bachelor of Science degrees in Aeronautical Engineering in June, were ecstatic with the win and will use the prize money for a start-up company.
“Young people don’t usually have difficulties navigating around an airport, but an older, potentially illiterate traveller will experience challenges. It gets more difficult for them because they are not as tech-savvy as younger people. Our research showed that in Africa one out of three people above the age of 50 can’t read and we wanted to cater to them,” said Mello.
Head of Corporate Social Responsibility at SITA Air Transport Community Foundation, Amber Harrison said SITA’s focus is on information technology and education in Africa.
"We created this innovation award to highlight the challenges and opportunities for a continent that is seeing a changing demographic, coupled with growth in technology and aviation. The quality of submissions were of a high standard and it is encouraging to witness the brimming innovation in South Africa,” said Harrison.
Harrison said that an impressive level of originality, innovation and research was evident in the submissions. She believes that this is of significance as the aviation industry continues to grow and will require more skilled people.
Speaking at the awards ceremony, Professor Zeblon Vilakazi, Deputy Vice-Chancellor for Research and Postgraduate Affairs at Wits University, said that the SITA competition was a good example of the University’s quest for excellence.
“The University of the Witwatersrand prides itself on pushing the frontiers of excellence in its almost 100 years of existence. These initiatives play an important role as we need to ensure we stay at the frontier of knowledge,” said Vilakazi.
In collaboration with SITA, both aim to contribute to the building and supporting of the African aviation and ICT industry, boosting vital ICT skills, especially in the space of the fourth industrial revolution. Supporting home‐grown ICT educational development, creating jobs through entrepreneurship and leading research development across Africa, are all key initiatives and focus areas.
Dr Lerato Masisi, a lecturer at Wits University and one of the judges, said that the teams were judged on originality, target audience, solutions, report and presentations. “Due to the high calibre of ideas submitted for the competition, SITA decided to award two additional prizes for the runner ups,” said Masisi.
These two runner up teams included Team Ava, which was made up of Alice Yang, Sean Morrow, Linda Khumalo and Muhammed Chand and Team Wits Elites, made up of Rachel Mohlomi, Nqobile Mhlanga and Takatso Molekane. Both teams were awarded a cash prize of $1000.
Enabling youth to power the digital economy
- Wits University
Hundreds descended upon Wits to hear the legendary Jack Ma, Executive Chairman of Alibaba Group, address entrepreneurs, students and policy makers.
Wits University was selected as the site of the important event, Netrepreneurs: The Rise of Africa’s Digital Lions, organised by Alibaba and the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development in support of their mission to grow African economies through entrepreneurship.
The charismatic e-commerce billionaire enthralled the audience with his journey of humble beginnings and lessons learnt along the way.
During his talk he advocated for tax breaks to aid small businesses stating that big business does not need these as much as budding entrepreneurs. The event also served to launch the Jack Ma Foundation Netpreneur Prize for small businesses working to grow the continent’s digital economy. Entrepreneurs will compete for $1 million in prize money every year for the next 10 years.
The digital economy, which is set to revolutionise the economy, is seen as an equaliser and an opportunity for Africa which has the world’s youngest population and thus poised to benefit from the new economy provided that the lions and lionesses of Africa rise to the challenge.
Universities will continue to play a key role in unlocking Africa’s potential in the digital economy.
Wits Acting Vice-Chancellor and Principal Professor Tawana Kupe opened the event watched by audiences across the world. He later participated in a panel discussion themed Digital Talent: Enabling Africa’s to Power the New Economy, where he shared current and future steps by Wits University to accelerate entrepreneurship and the digital economy.
Wits is tackling head-on the challenge of nurturing innovation and youth entrepreneurship through the Tshimolong Digital Precinct and the Wits Centre for Entrepreneurship.
In another bold move to shift thinking and embed entrepreneurship in the lives of students and the University, Wits has launched the ‘Entrepreneurs ways’ said Kupe.
“This means that all Wits courses will directly or indirectly have an entrepreneural component that includes a digital dimension,” Kupe.
Entrepreneurship has been identifie as one of the solutions to the high unemployent rate in the country.
According to the Quarterly Labour Force Survey released in July 2018 by Statistics South Africa, the official unemployment rate has increased to 27.2 percent from 26.7 percent in the previous period.
Government has often been criticed for its failure in supporting small businesses. Ma however said this is common across the world. Banks and governments do not give to the little guys.
"Don't wait for government, by the time government comes it will be too late" he said adding that by the time government delivers the infrastucture, entrepreneurs would have missed out on the opportunities to deliver that which government is struggling to provide.
Unpack the source code of your African Identity
- Wits University
Fak’ugesi African Digital Innovation Festival announces its 2018 line-up.
The Fak’ugesi African Digital Innovation Festival, “Tap Your Afro Source Code”, has released its 2018 programme promising to yet again transform Johannesburg into a celebration of technology, creativity and innovation from across the African continent. The full program of activities running from 18 August to 29 September 2018, Fak’ugesi will take place at Tshimologong Precinct sharing activities in 2018 with Wits Art Museum and the Point of Order.
Dr Tegan Bristow, Fak’ugesi African Digital Innovation Festival director, says that the 2018 theme ‘Tap your Afro Source Code’ centres on African visions of technology by tapping into the sources of African tradition and culture alongside technology, creativity and innovation: “This year we are exploring how local culture can move and change the future of technology. How would you understand and unpack the source code of your African identity?”
Bristow says that the Festival will fully explore the algorithms, patterns and fractals of Africa. In digital art, music, games, virtual reality, digital makers or the way you braid your hair: “Fak’ugesi acts as a platform that brings together diverse digital and technology sectors to collaborate and share skills in digital media and technology innovation”.
A highlight in this year’s Fak’ugesi programme is a large collaboration with the Wits Art Museum in an exhibition project titled Digital Imaginaries: Premonition, the second leg of a three-city project, which started with Kër Thiossane and Afropixel Festival in Dakar, Senegal in May and will conclude at ZKM | Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe, Germany in November 2018. The project, an initiative between social scientists and artists, imagines and critiques how globalised digital technology and systems have already, and will continue, to shape and shift African futures. The exhibition, now on at the Wits Art Museum from the 24 July to 23 September was co-curated by Bristow.
Another highlight of the 2018 programme is the expanded Fak’ugesi Digital Africa Residency. Initially focused on bringing young aspiring digital artists together from the SADC region, this year includes further collaboration with Pro Helvetia, Johannesburg to include digital artists from North Africa, South Asia and Switzerland. This extended approach will enable students to do a deep dive into the algorithms, patterns and fractals of their indigenous cultures.
Along with supporting young up-and-coming digital arts, Fak’ugesi African Digital Innovation Festival will be hosting two international media artists: Marc Lee, a Swiss artist supported by Pro Helvetia and Brain House, a North American artist supported by the Watershed project. Lee will act as Resident mentor, offering open master classes and will be installing new interactive live work at the Tshimologong Precinct, while Brain House Bristow states will be joining Fak’ugesi to install new work at Tshimologong Precinct and conduct master classes. House explores the interdependent rhythms of the body, technology, and the environment. His background in both computer science and performance informs his research-based practice. Recent interests include artificial Intelligence, extractive industries, and urban rats. A collaboration between Fak’ugesi Festival & Watershed, this art/science programme, is brought to the Festival by the Centre for Water Research and Development, WITS, Brown University and Providence RI.
2018 will see the launch of the Fak’ugesi Arcade concept, announcing the start of a new era in supporting African games and gaming developers. Bristow invites the regional gaming community to discuss how the Festival can better support and help develop the game development community: “We want to better understand the needs and requirements, both as a platform and as a location for skills exchange and networking. The Fak’ugesi Arcade is partnering this year with Redbull Basement and Trace TV and will be rolled out in 2019.”
For a second year running, in partnership with Weheartbeat via Fak’ugesi Beats, a six-day beats lab residency will be running from 24 to 28 September. Curated by Weheartbeat, participants will embrace the 2018 Fak’ugesi theme, combining tradition with futurism. Bristow is excited about the programme and says that the outcome from these sessions will result in an EP release, available both digitally and on limited edition vinyl. The artists featured include: Potatohead People (Canada), S Fidelity (Switzerland), Zikomo (USA), Morena Leraba (Lesotho) and South African artists Bonj Mpanza and Hlasko.
Fak’ugesi Beats will open to the public through a series of workshops and master sessions on 27 September 2018. This will culminate in the Fak’ugesi Beats Bloc Party and closing event on Saturday the 29 September 2018. The Fak’ugesi Beats programme is in partnership with Weheartbeat, Pro Helvetia, Red Bull Music and Ballantine’s Whiskey.
In its fifth year, Bristow says the Fak’ugesi Festival attracts over 6000 participants and is widely recognised for its important role supporting and developing African technology, creativity and culture: “The Fak’ugesi African Digital Innovation Festival is the only one of its kind in Africa and the only digital arts focused festival in Sub Saharan Africa. It has a very special location via which many young digital makers have launched their careers and have become prominent digital makers.”
She says the 2018 Festival approach is a step back from the annual programming that will provide an opportunity for the programme directors to focus on the vision and development for the next five years. This will be supported by the Wits School of Art; the Digital Content Hub of Tshimologong Precinct in collaboration with Agence Française de Développement (AFD) and the French Institute of South Africa (IFAS) and the British Council ConnectZA.
For more information on the 2018 Fak’ugesi African Digital Innovation Festival visit www.fakugesi.co.za
About Fak’ugesi
Fak’ugesi - Joburg’s one and only African Digital Innovation Festival will take place in September 2018, with the theme ‘Tap your Africa Source Code’. The 2018 festival will focus on bringing to the table important African visions and futures, by tapping into the sources of African tradition and culture alongside technology, creativity and innovation. Explore how local culture can move and change the future of technology. What would you call a vernacular algorithm? What is algorithm in IsiZulu? In 2018 Fak’ugesi Festival calls on you to explore the algorithms, patterns and fractals of Africa! In digital art, music, games, VR, digital makers or the way you braid your hair.
Fak’ugesi, which means “Switch it on” or “add power” in urban Zulu, is focused on making young adults aware of digital innovation. It is an opportunity for young adults, with or without formal education, to learn or engage with tomorrow’s technology.
According to an Impact Report commissioned by the British Council ConnectZA- Fak’ugesi is believed to be the most important digital creativity festival in Africa.
About Wits University’s Tshimologong Digital Innovation Precinct
Setswana for “new beginnings”, Tshimologong is one of Johannesburg’s newest high-tech addresses in the vibrant inner-city district of Braamfontein, where the incubation of start-ups, the commercialisation of research and the development of high-level digital skills for students, working professionals and unemployed youths takes place. The Precinct was launched in September 2016 with strategic support from major companies including Microsoft, Cisco, TIA, Teraco, BCX, ACSA and MMI. Gauteng Province through its Department of E-Government and the City of Johannesburg have also provided significant support. The Precinct also houses the prestigious IBM Research’s Lab Africa – one of only 12 such facilities in the world. Website: www.tshimologong.joburg
About Digital Imaginaries
Digital Imaginaries is funded by the TURN fund of the German Federal Cultural Foundation (Kulturstiftung des Bundes). The related workshop series Competences and Visions for the Digitization of Africa in Dakar and Johannesburg with Fak’ugesi Festival is financed by the GIZ commissioned by the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development.
Engineering solutions for tomorrow
- Wits University
Final year engineering showcased their design-and-build projects which provided solutions to everyday life challenges.
Engineers are known to be the masterminds behind innovative designs, systems and structures that solve real life problems. The skills of engineers cut across various sectors.
The open day showcased the design-and-build projects of final year students in the School, which applied scientific methodology and theory for practical solutions to their identified problems.
Khwezi, a mobile app developed by students Refilwe Semenya and Ngoako Monyebodi, addresses the challenge of reporting incidents of sexual harassment on Wits’ campuses more efficiently.
Issues around gender-based violence persist at the culmination of Women’s Month in August, when scores of women made public outcries against the scourge and urged intervention from government and the public.
“This app is a way to combat sexual assault. We noticed that people are usually shy or scared to report sexual harassment incidents and the reporting procedure can be long and traumatising to the victims,” said Monyebodi.
The app includes a feature where the victim can give a full description of the offender, which compares this with previous offenders reported on the app.
Users of the app will also have access to a map, which indicates hotspots to avoid.
Aspiring biomedical engineers, Boitumelo Manji and Fiona Oolo who want to make their mark in the male dominated industry, applied their skills and knowledge to improve medical tools.
For their project, the pair designed an electronic stethoscope which can be used by medical practitioners to listen to internal sounds in the body, such as those produced by the heart, lungs and abdomen.
“The device offers real time data phonograms of internal body sounds and can capture and store them. This enables doctors to go back to the captured data and replay the sounds to check for abnormalities even when the patient is not there,” said Mantji.
The system is also able to detect from where in the body the sound is coming.
The three best projects received awards from Professor Estelle Trengove, Head of the School of Electrical and Information Engineering.
Students Lauren Barger and Vassiliki Marantos won the best poster for their project, Advanced Control of a Ball. The device they developed controls the position of a ball on a flat plate without the ball rolling off.
“We hope that our project will be used for future control engineering students, who will use the model to implement their own controllers. We are hoping for the project to be developed into a lab kit for the control department. The applications are simply an educational or testing platform, however the same theory applies to various other similar systems such as drones, suspension control in cars and many more”, said Barger.
Young digital entrepreneurs showcase cool innovations
- Wits University
Entrepreneurs at the Wits Digital Tshimologong Precinct show Johannesburg Executive Mayor, Herman Mashaba how creative they are.
Mashaba visited the entreprenuerson 16 May 2018 to explore how Wits University is developing digital entrepreneurs by incubating start-ups in the Tshimologong Precinct and also explored how the precinct is contributing to the elevation of Braamfontein into a tech-hub.
Tshimologong is an e-skills, software innovation and digital knowledge hub. It provides a venue in which it is possible to research and nurture tech hubs.
Welcoming the Mayor and his delegation at the precinct– which included Member of the Mayoral Committee (MMC) for Development Planning, Councillor Reuben Masango, MMC for Economic Development, Councillor Leah Ruth Knott and MMC for Finance, Councillor Funzela Ngobeni – Professor Tawana Kupe , Acting Vice-Chancellor at Wits University highlighted how the University is embracing new technologies by integrating digital methods into its teaching and learning strategy.
“We pride ourselves in integrating digital technology in all aspects of our teaching, learning, as well as research. We now have, under the Deputy Vice-Chancellor: Research and Postgraduate Studies, a division on e-research, for example, because we want to harness all these digital technologies in our quest to be a globally responsive, but also a University that uptakes new technologies. Also, the reason why we do this is to create access to education. The history of this country is the history of exclusion – educational exclusion, or even people get inferior education and also failing to develop and maintaining quality,” said Kupe.
“We as Wits we are committed to increasing access but access to quality education that is cutting edge and adopts the new and latest technologies.”
Lesley Williams, CEO of the Wits Tshimologong Digital Precinct and newly elected member of the Obama Leadership Programme explained to guests the essence of Africa making global contribution in technological advancements.
“For us, as Tshimologong, we believe in the narrative of Africa Rising. We also believe in the narrative of Joburg as a world-class city. Our contribution in that is making sure that we are contributing from a technological perspective. We want to take it a step further. As Africans, we believe, we have to go beyond being the consumers of world technologies. We need to be active producers – producers that are locally relevant, but producers that are exporting globally and that’s why we exist.”
During the visit, entrepreneurs exhibited their innovations to the mayor. Young innovator, Neo Hutiri and founder of Technovera - who won R1million in the 2016 #Hack.Jozi Challenge – showcased his innovation which enables patients to conveniently collect medication in under 2 minutes instead of spending hours on queues. This innovation is enabled through pelebox technology.
Another innovator, Skhona Khumalo, exhibited his brainchild, the Kwela Taxi app, which was launched last month. The app was designed to assist commuters with information pertaining to taxi prices, taxi routes and nearest taxi ranks.
First executive programme in Digital Business
- Wits Business School
Wits Business School (WBS) is excited to have launched its first executive education programme in Digital Business, the first of its kind in South Africa.
The programmes, which kicked off in March, will be rolled out during 2018 for digital solutions company BCX, a subsidiary of the Telkom Group.
“The programmes have been designed to equip businesses with skills, knowledge and insight into the future world of work, specifically training managers to lead on all fronts in an era of rapid and unpredictable digitalisation,” says Professor Brian Armstrong, Head of the BCX Chair in Digital Business at WBS. “This is an exciting venture for WBS, the Chair of Digital Business and Executive Education. It is a privilege to work with BCX in creating this new programme,” he concludes.
WBS took a proactive step in 2016 when it established the first Chair in Digital Business in Africa, through funding by Telkom, with the overarching aim of helping South African businesses thrive in the digital era.
An important focus of the Chair is the generation of new research in an area which, until now, has not been a formal area of study. Research will lead to the further development of academic curricula, including a Master’s degree in Digital Business, as well as various short learning programmes and executive courses.
The successful roll out of the pilot programmes for BCX will allow other organisations to benefit from the close working relationships between the Digital Chair and BCX, as well as Executive Education, says Dr Timothy Hutton, Acting Director of Executive Education at WBS.
“We designed the programmes in close collaboration with BCX, creating content that suits the needs of the company. It has been an immensely exciting process, and also a big learning curve for all involved,” says Dr Hutton.
A total of 205 managers at BCX were selected to take part in the programmes which are aimed at junior, middle and senior managers. The programmes,Future Leaders in Digital Business,Digital Business ManagementandDigital Business ExecutiveProgrammeare on average around 24 days in duration, completed in study blocks. Graduation is set for the end of February 2019.
“The beauty of the BCX programme is that it can be refashioned to address the needs of any organisation. Just as financial considerations cut across all business, so too does digital,” notes Hutton. “The programme can be structured to highlight specific aspects and pull out desired learnings. Within a rigorous academic framework, there is a lot of flexibility. For example, one of the modules is currently being re-designed as a stand-alone programme to be launched in the middle of this year.”
The BCX programme will be offered in various formats in the future, including online and contact, in-house and open enrolment, for both companies and individuals wanting to enhance their understanding of digital business.
“Working in the digital world does not only mean how to develop new strategies or market digitally and understand the financials of digital; it also means how, fundamentally, we and our customers remain human, how we anticipate and mitigate social consequences of digitisation, and how we understand the environmental costs and benefits of the digital world,” says Professor Armstrong.
“The rollout of the BCX Executive Education programmes is a very exciting step forward in preparing business leaders in South Africa, not only for the future world of work, but indeed also the rapidly changing current world of work. We are not always aware of this ‘digital presence’ in our daily lives. This programme will open eyes, ideas and innovative opportunities around this very fact.”
#SA4IR to explore how the 4th Industrial Revolution could shape SA
- Wits University
Wits, UJ, Fort Hare and Telkom to develop a national response to the Fourth Industrial Revolution that could shape the futures of South Africa.
The Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR) is set to dramatically change how humans interact with technology, how we express ourselves, communicate and engage in a new world.
While the potential of transformative technologies – such as artificial intelligence, big data, automation, cryptocurrencies, or augmented, virtual and mixed realities – is immense, we face profound, multi-layered and multi-faceted changes that are radically reshaping how we live, work, do business, and how governments engage with citizens.
How will these changes impact on human rights, legal and moral matters; or on fundamental transformations in human consciousness and identity? What are the possibilities, the fears, the hopes and the realities for us ‘sentient beings’ and how will these technologies shape new economic, social and political orders?
What does it all mean for South Africa?
To understand the nature and complexity of these developments, Telkom and three universities – Wits University, the University of Johannesburg and the University of Fort Hare – today launch:
#SA4IR - a partnership to explore how the Fourth Industrial Revolution could shape the futures of South Africa.
It seeks to build an inclusive developmental future for all South Africans by stimulating a national dialogue and developing a national agenda in response to the impact of the 4IR on the country.
The partnership will explore the impact of the 4IR on the economy and the new digital Economy; higher education and the future of work; inequality; citizens; society and the state; and other critical factors.
“We need to train scholars to deal with the challenges of the 21st Century, some which we may not yet have encountered,” says Professor Adam Habib, Wits Vice-Chancellor and Principal. “We need to work across sectors to develop the technology required for us to leapfrog across eons of poverty, unemployment and inequality, and in so doing to create a new world order that prioritises humanity before profits and power. We can’t stop the change, any more than we can stop the sun from setting, so let’s embrace it.”
Professor Tshilidzi Marwala, UJ Vice-Chancellor and Principal, adds: “The 4IR is changing our political, economic and social lives. Those who master the means and ways of the 4IR shall thrive. Those who fail to master this revolution shall be thrown into the dustbin of backwardness. We at UJ intent to lead this revolution for the benefit of our societies.”
Professor Sakhela Buhlungu, Fort Hare Vice-Chancellor and Principal, adds: “The 4IR is meant to be a game changer for South Africa’s current and future economic growth, for all imaginable sectors of human-activity and citizen-centricity. Based on its core design principles (Interoperability, Information Transparency, Technical Assistance and Decentralised Decisions), the human-sphere will have a highly inter-correlated and technology-dependant environment for solving daily challenges of human-activity by breaking our limitations on technical, social and digital information processing. Apart from its anticipated benefits for humans, we further need to be cognisant of the things that may go wrong, such jobs losses, negative impact on human rights, and even loss of life. Thus, as public institutions, we need to train the next generation of highly skilled experts and leaders to assist us to harness the potential that this revolution is going to deliver.”
“The 4IR is transforming the world economy and dialogue around its implementation is imperative to ensure South Africa’s future economic participation,” says Mr Sipho Maseko, CEO of Telkom SA Ltd. “When we consider the 4IR, it’s important that we are also cognisant that our decision are narrowing the current digital divide. Lowering the cost of access to broadband will be an important way that marginalised groups can gain access to the economy of the future.”
Ultimately, it is envisaged that a national action plan – SA4IR – will be formulated.
Creating collective memory
- Erna van Wyk
Creating a collective memory in a country with a fragmented past and persistent inequality needs money, skills and political will to preserve its history.
Since the early ’90s, varying materials related to former President Nelson Mandela, held in galleries, libraries, archives and museums (GLAMs) in institutions such as the Nelson Mandela Foundation or the Historical Papers Research Archive at Wits, have been collected and digitally preserved in individualised efforts to “digitise Mandela” and to make these collections available to the public to enhance a collective memory.
The next step is to bring these archives together. This goal has been set as one of the first three outcomes of the new WITS-NRF Digitisation Capacity Development Initiative: To establish a National Digital Library Aggregator Pilot Project – a central online portal from where viewers can access South Africa’s precious collections, including the possibility of a digital “Mandela Archive”.
“It is very costly and European countries have more money. Most institutions in Africa are inhibited by their lack of funding and as such have only taken baby steps towards purposeful digitisation for access and preservation of South Africa’s rich historical heritage,” she adds.
Now, with the WITS-NRF Digitisation Capacity Development Initiative, participating institutions could combine their efforts in implementing such a pilot project between five institutions: the Historical Papers Research Archive at Wits, the Nelson Mandela Foundation, the University of Cape Town, the Desmond and Leah Tutu Legacy Foundation, and the National Archives of South Africa.
“These institutions are already applying main archival and international standards of description and it will allow us to link our institutions’ archival collections and create a multi-institutional repository, endorsed by the International Council on Archives, in a portal or aggregator where the user can put in one search term and get the output from these five participating institutions,” Mohale says.
“Given South Africa’s fragmented past, archives, preservation and the digitisation of material such as the Nelson Mandela Papers here at Wits, are some of the ways to create a collective memory and enduring legacy for Madiba,” says Mohale.
Established in 1966, the Historical Papers Research Archive at Wits is one of the largest and most comprehensive independent archives in southern Africa – housing over 3 400 collections of historical, political and cultural importance, encompassing the mid-17th Century to the present.
“Digitising archives is important to not only preserve material for future generations or to create easy and open access to history, but also bring those forgotten materials back out into the current agenda. In South Africa we are historically fragmented in terms of understanding and knowledge of our histories, and digital archives play a role in accessing and enhancing memory,” Mohale says.
Erna van Wyk is Senior Multimedia Communications Officerin Wits Communications and Digital Director of Curiosity.
Read more in the fifth issue, themed: #Mandela100 where Wits students, academics, researchers, activists and leaders reflect on Nelson Mandela’s legacy and explore his impact over a lifetime.
The hidden technology
- Wits University
Automatic control is a technology that modern society cannot live without.
Professor Ian Craig, Group Head: Control Systems in the Department of Electrical, Electronic and Computer Engineering at the University of Pretoria, delivered the 2018 Bernard Price Memorial Lecture at Wits University.
In his presentation, titled: Automatic control: The hidden technology that modern society cannot live without, Craig explained why automatic control is so important: Where an automatic controller ‘thinks’ about what will happen next in the process that it controls, and based on the feedback, take the necessary steps and instruct corrective action to the actuators to drive a process in a desired direction.
“Almost all goods and many services consumed in today’s modern economy are impacted on automatic control and automation,” said Craig.
He touched on a range of areas – manufacturing, aircraft, and health systems to name a few – and explained that automatic control is a pervasive technology that is prevalent in the production of almost all goods and services consumed by the modern consumer.
“Control systems thinking provide a framework that can be applied to almost any system imaginable. Today, control engineering skills are in demand to optimally utilize increasingly complex systems and to the exponentially increasing number of sensors and actuators available. There are also many opportunities arising to apply automatic control to areas beyond the traditional physical engineered systems,” he added.
About the Bernard Price Memorial Lecture
The Bernard Price Memorial Lecture has been jointly hosted by Wits University and the South African Institute of Electrical Engineers since 1951.
The first such lecture in 1951 was delivered by Professor Basil Schonland, the founding director of the Bernard Price Institute (BPI) at Wits. The topic was: The work of the BPI: 1938-1951. It covered the history of the BPI, as well as the work of the BPI – including the work related to lightning. It also covered the role of the BPI in the development of RADAR as deployed around the South African coast, as well as in the East African and Mediterranean theatres of WW2.
Bridging the digital divide with photonics
- Wits University
Wits physicists and engineers team up to tackle Africa’s digital divide with home grown technologies
Africa has 20% of the world’s population but only 4% of its internet data access. This “digital divide”, with low internet connectivity reach, particularly in rural areas, is both economic and geographic in nature. A team of international researchers, coordinated by Professor Andrew Forbes from the School of Physics at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg (Wits), South Africa, and Professor Ling Cheng of the School of Electrical and Information gathered in South Africa recently to address this problem. Their solutions were published in Nature Photonics last month.
The “divide” can be broken down into two parts: an affordability gap due to low disposable income and a geographical gap, due to lack of infrastructure. If South Africa’s gap was to be addressed by state-of-the-art optical fibre then an additional 160 000 km of fibre would be needed. This is possible but very expensive. But getting people connected is a priority, particularly for South Africa, where Broadband has been estimated to raise GDP by R130 billion and create 400 000 jobs. The Wits team are concentrating on bridging the divide by connecting communities with free-space optical (FSO) links – a network of communication channels through air, much like wifi but much faster and with a longer reach.
“Light holds tremendous promise for fast connections across medium distances,” explains Professor Andrew Forbes, team leader of the collaboration and Distinguished Professor in the School of Physics where he heads up the Wits Structured Light Laboratory. “Even Google, Facebook and SpaceX have exotic proposals for Africa that include drones and other aerial vehicles delivering connections in a blanket manner. We are working on point to point solutions with sustainable photonics that are home-grown.”
“Internet is not a luxury but a right,” says Mitchell Cox, PhD engineering student working on the project. Existing FSO systems are able to comfortably sustain gigabit connection speeds over multi-kilometre distances. “With further research and development into advanced digital signal processing and coding schemes, this may be increased dramatically with relatively little expense,” says Professor Ling Cheng, from the School of Electrical and Information Engineering.
The team are working towards a multi-hop FSO link that will cover tens of kilometres across the digital divide. Forbes points out that working with this team of Scientists and Engineers has allowed some of the most recent scientific findings to be rapidly and efficiently deployed to tackle this challenge.
A recent report by the UN has highlighted that over 4 billion people in the world are “not connected”, with Africa having the lowest penetration (22%) and the highest gender divide (25%). “What is tragic is that economic upliftment is hindered by these divides, yet they are widening not shrinking with time,” says Forbes The UN estimates that $400m (just under R5 billion) allotted to bridging the gender digital divide remains unspent. The Wits team has already made several technical advances to address these issues and is about to embark on a commercialisation programme with a local listed company.
Building the world’s most powerful microscope using particle accelerators
- Wits University
Bruce Mellado, National Contact Physicist of South Africa at the ATLAS experiment at CERN, says there are future plans for a bigger, better LHC.
The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) has provided one of the most important discoveries in the world of physics, when the observation of the Higgs boson was made in 2012. And, while it will continue to operate as one of the worlds’ largest science experiments until well into the 2030s, scientists are already asking questions about what should come next.
Professor Bruce Mellado is the National Contact Physicist of South Africa at the ATLAS experiment at CERN and holds a dual appointment at the University of the Witwatersrand and iThemba LABS of the NRF. He supports the idea to build an accelerator that would be almost four times the size of the current LHC, which, at the moment is the world’s largest and most powerful particle accelerator.
“The LHC was critical in providing evidence for the existence of the Higgs boson, and the Higgs boson gives us an understanding of the origin of matter, but this is just the tip of the iceberg,” says Mellado.
Mellado was asked to present a plenary talk to about 500 physicists in Amsterdam, Holland, in April, where the scientists gathered to discuss the prospects for a new, more powerful accelerator. His talk on the opening day of the conference, was attended by the Director General of CERN, Dr Fabiola Gianotti, as well as other leading members of the international High Energy Particle Physics community.
The new proposed particle accelerator, called the Future Circular Collider (FCC), which would also be built by CERN, is envisaged to have an underground tunnel of 100km long, compared to the 27km tunnel of the current LHC.
Particle accelerators are massive structures with long underground tunnels where particles such as protons are collided against each other at very high energies, using a complex system of magnets and accelerating devices. As the biggest accelerator to date, the LHC has become the quintessential Big Science project.
“By colliding the particles against each other at speeds close to the speed of light, we physically break up these particles to see what they are made of,” says Mellado.
Matter is made of atoms with a nucleus made of neutrons and protons. By colliding particles at high energies it was shown that protons can be broken up into a number of various “building blocks”, such as quarks and gluons.
Mellado, like his colleagues, believes that building a bigger accelerator can provide evidence that even these structures can be broken up further.
“Quarks are currently believed to be elementary particles, but we think that if we take a closer look at higher energies we may see that quarks also have structures,” says Mellado.
In order to do this, we need the most powerful microscope that has ever been devised. This is one of the roles that the proposed FCC would be suitable for.
“By colliding electrons at high velocities at a target, like a proton, it works like a microscope, where you can zoom in closely into the structure of matter. The higher energy you have, the more you can zoom into the structure of the proton.” The increased energy would be provided by the increased length and more powerful magnets that the FCC would have.
In his talk, Mellado – who has published a number of seminal papers on the advantages of electron-proton collisions, including in the prestigious Physics Review Letters – discussed the possibility of attaching a small accelerator of electrons to the FCC that would create head-on collisions with the protons, to happen at the same times as proton-proton collisions.
Particle physicists are not only interested in what particles are made up of, but also how particles are created. According to Albert Einstein’s theory of relativity, E=MC2, matter (particles) can be created when you have large amounts of energy. One of the ways to do this, would be to collide two proton particles against each other. The large amounts of energy released in this collision means that new forms of matter could be created.
“Our ability to accelerate particles is very small in comparison to what is needed to explore the Universe, so our understanding of the Universe is very limited,” says Mellado. “With the FCC, we can take another step towards understanding nature better.”
While it may seem early to be talking about the future of the LHC beyond its lifetime, when it is still expected to be operating into the 2030s, Mellado says there is no time to spare.
“The first serious discussion about the LHC took place in 1984 and it started routine operations in 2010,” says Mellado. “The construction of such a complex facility required careful planning and designing, so we need to start talking now about the future of accelerators.”
From slow sand filters and to towers that measure energy and gases.
Sand sweeps water clean at home
The slow sand filter method has been used for centuries to treat water. It’s so effective that the World Health Organization has given it its stamp of approval: “Under suitable circumstances, slow sand filtration may be not only the cheapest and simplest but also the most efficient method of water treatment.”
However, this method has mostly been used on a large scale and isn’t suitable for the thousands of South African households who battle daily to have clean drinking water in their homes.
Busisiwe Mashiane, a fourth year chemical engineering student in the School of Chemical and Metallurgical Engineering at Wits, is researching and developing a slow sand filter to meet the needs of South Africans.
“Many South Africans living in disadvantaged communities across the country not only have difficulties accessing water but also face many health risks due to the lack of access to clean drinking water,” explains Mashiane.
“Our aim is to develop a low-cost but highly efficient water treatment system that can treat river water effectively and make it consumable. We want to ensure that, because people in these communities cannot afford elaborate water treatment methods, our system can assist in their basic human right of having access to clean potable water.”
How it works
A continuous water flow from a 25 litre tank feeds into a reactor tank (the sand bed). From here the water flows into a 25 litre transparent sterlisation tank, after which the clean water can be dispensed into a storage container for use.
The sand bed in the reactor tank is made up of layers of fine gravel, then activated carbon, and finally coarse gravel and fine sand.
A layer of biological matter, called the schmutzdecke, forms on top of the sand and the schmutzdecke in the water is prevented from flowing through the sand. This layer of biological matter ensures that the filtered water is free of harmful bacteria and pathogens, while the sand bed strips the physical impurities out of the water.
“Our research project is aimed at figuring out the mechanisms of the slow sand filter, to see how it functions under different conditions, and to find ways to optimise it,” says Mashiane, adding that the plan in future is to take the project out of the lab and into homes where it can make a difference in people’s lives.
“We want to discover what its limitations are and eventually find the best way to replicate the design and easily cut down the set-up time – currently between three to four months due to the need to wait for the biological layer to form.”
Researching the link between ecosystem and climate
“The Eddy Flux Tower is a piece of equipment which measures the exchange of energy and gases between the land surface and the atmosphere, and does so at landscape scale – over a footprint of about a kilometre. The towers were set up to measure carbon dioxide exchange, but also measure water exchange,” says Professor Bob Scholes, world-renowned scientist in systems ecology (regarding African savannahs) in the School of Animal, Plant and Environmental Sciences at Wits.
The Agincourt tower is part of a network of towers in the Skukuza and Malopeni villages in the Lowveld. It was erected by a research consortium that includes Wits University, the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), and various South African and German universities.
The project investigates the coupled carbon and water cycles of natural and disturbed savannah ecosystems in southern Africa. It aims to deepen the knowledge on how the natural environment functions in rural communities in southern Africa. This knowledge is crucial for understanding the link between ecosystems and climate, and how changes in land use may impact the climate in the future.
“These towers provide powerful insights into one of the key processes in the hydrological cycle, which control the amount of water entering aquifers [an underground layer of water-bearing permeable rock] and rivers for human use, and how it might change with a changing climate,” says Scholes.
The flux tower houses a range of sophisticated equipment used to measure how much carbon dioxide, water vapour, and energy move between the land surface and the atmosphere. Other measurements, including climate parameters (temperature, humidity, rainfall, atmospheric pressure), are made to get more information about processes of the savannah ecosystem.
“The research would help us understand changes in greenhouse gas concentrations and how they influence agricultural and ecosystem productivity,” says Scholes.
The Skukuza tower, erected in 2000, was the first in Africa and today there are about eight scattered around the country. Another six towers will be erected through the Department of Science and Technology’s South African Research Infrastructure Roadmap (SARIR), the first project of its kind in South Africa. SARIR is a strategic intervention to provide research infrastructure across the entire public research system that builds on existing capabilities and considers future needs.
Read more about the research conducted across faculties, disciplines and entities to help secure humanity’s most important resource for survival: water, in the fourth issue of Wits' new research magazine, Curiosity.
Tech giant recognises African machine learning research
- Wits University
Wits robotics researcher awarded Africa’s only grant in the 2017 round of the Google Faculty Research Awards.
Rosman is a researcher in robotics, artificial intelligence, decision theory and machine learning. His proposal for the Google Faculty Research Awards was one of 1 033 Research at Google received from 46 countries and over 360 universities – making Rosman and Wits University the only African researcher and university among the recipients.
“I am extremely happy that my proposal has been accepted. My research focuses on decision making in autonomous systems. I am interested in how an artificial agent such as a robot can acquire skills and behaviours through learning, and transfer this knowledge to new situations,” Rosman said this week.
“It is exciting that Google acknowledges the tremendous technology leaps in machine learning and data mining research that is currently being conducted in Africa, and at Wits,” he added. In recent years the University has launched numerous research projects and collaborations, such as the Wits Tshimologong Digital Innovation Precinct in Braamfontein, where the next generation of scholars is developing new technologies and leading innovation in various fields related to the Fourth Industrial Revolution. Read more about these developments in the second issue of Wits’ new research magazine, Curiosity: iHuman.
Rosman was appointed as Senior Lecturer at Wits in July last year and he teaches courses on robotics and machine learning. He also runs the Robotics, Autonomous Intelligence and Learning Laboratory at the University and was a co-organiser of the first Deep Learning Indaba in Africa that was held at Wits in March last year.
A Wits alumnus with a BSc (Honours) in Computer Science and a BSc (Honours) in Computational and Applied Mathematics, Rosman also holds a MSc in Artificial Intelligence and a PhD in Informatics from the University of Edinburgh.
He holds a joint appointment as a Principal Researcher in the Mobile Intelligent Autonomous Systems group at the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) and is the Chair of the IEEE South African joint chapter of Control Systems, and Robotics and Automation.
About Research at Google
The Google Faculty Research Awards Program aims to recognize and support world-class, permanent faculty pursuing cutting-edge research in areas of mutual interest. The goal is to identify and strengthen long-term collaborative relationships with faculty working on problems that will impact how future generations use technology. The award is highly competitive - only 15% of applicants receive funding - and each proposal goes through a rigorous Google-wide review process.
About the School of Computer Science and Applied Mathematics
The School of Computer Science and Applied Mathematics (CSAM), in the Faculty of Science, offers enriching programmes which are in the forefront of national interests. The unique programmes include Big Data Science, Data Analytics, eScience and eResearch. The School offers Advanced Mathematics of Finance and other Applied Mathematics courses which include Computational Methods, Mathematical Modelling and Analytical Methods which provide skill-sets in solving abstract industrial problems. Its pioneering research has positioned CSAM amongst South Africa’s best and ensured that it is globally competitive.
Accelerating high-tech training
- Wits University
Wits students contribute to the upgrade of the high-tech software and hardware at the CERN ATLAS detector.
In 2012, the world was astonished by the announcement of the discovery of the Higgs boson at the Centre for Nuclear Reseach (CERN) in Switzerland. That announcement completed physicists understanding of what we know of the part of our world that we can see and feel, namely normal matter.
The discovery of the Higgs boson, however, inspired the worlds’ physicists into a whole new world of study, searching for the answers to the mysteries of the things in our universe that we cannot see.
“Normal matter, in other words, the things that we can see and feel around us comprises only about 4% of what is actually in the universe. While we know that there is a lot of matter and energy out there we do not really know what it is and how it is related to the known matter.” says Professor Bruce Mellado, the National Contact Physicist of South Africa at the ATLAS experiment at CERN from the School of Physics at the University of the Witwatersrand.
The Department of Science and Technology funds the South Africa CERN (SA-CERN) consortium. This avenue is essential for South African students and researchers to access this leading global research infrastructure.
Wits is the single largest contributor from South Africa to CERN. This includes theoreticians and experimentalists together with a group of 35 students from a wide variety of historical and financial backgrounds that are highly involved in the search for new bosons. These students from Wits University spend significant amount of time at CERN, where some of them play an active role in the upcoming upgrading of the ATLAS particle detectors, that is situated in the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). The LHC will be upgraded in 2023-2024 to increase its sensitivity in order to enhance the potential for new discoveries.
“The LHC is the largest particle accelerator in the world, and it is used to accelerate two high energy particle beams in opposite directions in a circular route, and set them on a collision course with each other,” says Ntabiseng Lekalakala, an M.Sc. student from Wits University, who is now based at CERN.
“By colliding the particles against each other at speeds close to the speed of light, we physically break up these particles to see what they are made of.”
These collissions happen at a rate of one every 25 nanoseconds (a nanosecond is one thousand-millionth of a second).
Dingane Hlaluku, a student at the Wits School of Physics, is working on the software upgrade of the detector. He completed his Masters in Physics at Wits in 2017 and has developed a keen interest in software engineering of largely distributed systems. In October 2017, he was invited to deliver a plenary presentation on the status of the detector upgrades to the Tile Calorimeter of the ATLAS experiment – which included some of the world’s top physicists in High Energy Physics.
“Dingane giving a plenary presentation summarising the upgrade activities of the Tile Calorimeter of the ATLAS detector was a honour to us all,” says Mellado.
One of the biggest challenges at the ATLAS experiment is to sift through the huge amounts of big data that the experiment delivers, and to only capture the relevant data. This is where Dingane’s software update plays a crucial role.
After the upgrade, the readout electronics will need to cope with digital data with full granularity at about 40 MHz, which means the electronics will need to process data at a minimum rate of 9.6 Gigabytes per second to the off-detector readout components. This is equal to downloading three full feature-length Blueray DVDs per second. The off-detector electronics that is used to control, configure and monitor the process will be required to send data at a rate of about 4.8 Gigabytes per second.
“The software is augmented to look for specific signatures from different regions of the detector in three stages/levels and discard uninteresting events in real-time.” says Hlaluku.
In the current configuration of the detector, data is processed, digitized and read out at 100 KHz.
The fourth annual High Energy Particle Physics (HEPP) workshop took place this January 21st to February 2nd at the Wallenberg Research Centre at Stellenbosch. Professor Alan Cornell, from Wits University and a co-chair of the workshop has been instrumental in the growth of the field in South Africa. “It is great to see so many new students choose to do research in our field. The attendance of this year’s HEPP workshop is double that of three years ago,” says Cornell.
Another Wits student who is contributing to the upgrade of the hardware for the ATLAS detector is twenty-four-year-old PhD student Joyful Mdhluli.
Mdhluli has been involved in the ATLAS experiment at CERN for two years. The experience has changed her life.
“I’ve been able to attend lots of conferences, where I’ve met different kinds of people from different parts of the world, and I’ve also learnt a lot about High Energy Physics,” she says.
“I realised that High Energy Physics basically involves a lot of interesting stuff, like astronomy and dark matter.”
Mdhluli’s research is on trying to find materials that can withstand the high levels of radiation for parts of the ATLAS detector.
“If you want to study particles beyond the standard model, you need to get efficient and accurate data, so if the materials in the detectors deteriorate over time, then that means the signals that they get over time are not reliable. So, we are trying to make it as efficient as possible by making sure that the materials they are using will be able to last long periods and will have reliable signals coming through,” she says.
Professor Elias Sideras-Haddad, Mdhluli’s PhD supervisor and a member of the ATLAS experiment, is enthusiastic about training students in nuclear and radiation physics: “The ATLAS experiment operates under high levels of radiation. South Africa has excellent capabilities to undertand how detector components respond to radiation. Our work with the ATLAS experiment opens a new dimension and it demonstrates that South Africa has a lot fo offer,” says Sideras-Haddad.
Wits’ involvement at CERN has already led to actual technological innovation in South Africa, where the Cape Town-based company Trax Interonnect built a new 16-layer electronics board specifically for the ATLAS detector upgrade. This board was until recently the most complex printed circuit board ever produced in South Africa.
“The production of the board for ATLAS was a challenge. Since then, we have improved on our own capabilities and now we are able to produce even more complex boards,” says Daniel Dock, Managing Director of Trax Interconnect.
Speaking at the HEPP workshop in Stellenbosch, Mathis Wiedeking of iThemba Laboratories said that South Africa has a long standing collaboration CERN.
“Student training and the education of our next generation scientists is a top priority and a foundation for research development. South Africa plays a visible role in this field of research and contributes quite significantly,” he said. “The SA-CERN consortium has the capacity to attract young people and get kids interested in science, and it plays a huge role in sparking the interest in sience and technology among young South Africans.”
Mellado agrees. “Our collaboration with CERN provides us with an excellent opportunity to develop human capacity in areas of high-tech that are badly needed in South Africa, contributing to the training of a new generation of leaders. Technology transfer to South African industry is an important by-product of this interaction,” says Mellado.
DigiMine, the future of mining research
- Wits University
Celebrating the research of the new Sibanye-Stillwater Digital Mining Laboratory (DigiMine) at Wits University.
To celebrate the launch of the Digital Mining Laboratory (DigiMine) sponsored by Sibanye-Stillwater at the University of the Witwatersrand later this month, the Wits Mining Institute (WMI) will host a seminar on 26 and 27 March 2018 showcasing its high-tech DigiMine and research being done.
According to WMI director Professor Fred Cawood, the seminar is part of a week-long celebration by the partners in the DigiMine project, which will be formally unveiled on 28 March by Neal Froneman, CEO of Sibanye-Stillwater.
“The seminar is for anyone interested in digital mining in the underground environment,” said Professor Cawood. “We will be showcasing our laboratory, which comprises a 24/7, digitally monitored, realistic underground mining environment, as well as our research agenda to develop digital technologies for mining applications; delegates will also witness some of our research outcomes that have been developed in recent years by the WMI and its partners.”
Keynotes at the event will come from two of DigiMine’s key partners: the National University of Sciences and Technology (NUST) in Pakistan, and Sibanye-Stillwater who will give their view of mine digitisation in the 21st century. Presentations will also be made by selected postgraduate research students and partner organisations. Read more.
About the Wits Mining Institute (WMI)
The WMI conducts and facilitates multidisciplinary research, encouraging partnerships to ensure a sustainable business model. Its flagship programme is the digital mining laboratory (DigiMine), where its focus is to conduct tests, research and development for transferring surface digital technologies into the underground mining environment. It also identifies and develops skills required to operate 21st century, technologically-intensive mines, which feed into a programme for developing modern skill-sets at artisan, technician and professional levels for the mining sector. Visit https://www.wits.ac.za/wmi/
About Sibanye-Stillwater
Sibanye-Stillwater is an independent, global precious metal mining group, producing a unique mix of metals that includes gold and the platinum group metals (PGMs). Domiciled in South Africa, Sibanye-Stillwater owns and operates a portfolio of high-quality operations and projects, which are grouped by region: the Southern Africa region and the United States region. Globally, Sibanye-Stillwater is the third largest producer of palladium and platinum and features among the world’s top ten gold producing companies. Visit https://www.sibanyestillwater.com/
SA will not escape this revolution
- Zeblon Vilakazi
Professor Zeblon Vilakazi’s editorial in the latest issue of Curiosity, Wits’ new research magazine:
Welcome to the third issue of Curios.ty, which features research and researchers that interrogate capital within the context of political economy, monopoly capital, corruption, and the rapid disruption of the status quo and the world as we know it today.
Let us consider the capital wielded globally in terms of the economic, social and political power of the big five tech companies - Apple, Amazon, Google, Facebook and Microsoft. The New York Times columnist, Farhard Manjoo, has provocatively referred to them as the ‘frightful five’, declaring that they control the world’s most important platforms – smartphones, app stores and a map of our global social interactions – in a way that is unprecedented in human history.
Who would have imagined a world where the largest hotel company (AirBnB) doesn’t own a single piece of real estate, and the largest private transport company (Uber) does not own a fleet of taxis? Take the new cryptocurrencies (Bitcoin, Ethereum, Ripley) that are traded on alternative exchanges or the latest Wits MOOCs available on the EdX platform. These examples are indicators of how capital has, over the past decade, been disrupted by the ‘frightful five’.
Recent events in North Africa and the Middle East – and the US Presidential election results – also point to the power of these platforms in reshaping regional political events in some of the world’s most powerful nations.
Moisés Naím, the Venezuelan thinker and internationally syndicated columnist, writes in his book, The End of Power, that globalisation, economic growth, a growing global middle class, the spread of democracy, and rapidly expanding telecommunications technologies have changed our world and created a fluid and unpredictable environment which has unsettled the traditional dominions of power.
Some refer to this context as the Fourth Industrial Revolution. It is a wave of change that uses technologies such as artificial intelligence, autonomous vehicles, virtual reality, and robots to enhance our cognitive abilities. Most previous technology revolutions enhanced our muscle power; this one is characterised by social and technical interfaces and will impact on the world of work and the economy.
South Africa will not escape this revolution. We will need to grapple with these changes as we simultaneously contend with transformation, social cohesion, poverty, inequality and unemployment. If not sufficiently daunting, we need to manage these changes in the context of sluggish economic growth still reliant, largely, on resources.
These are some of the questions that Wits researchers and students are exploring. By extension, Wits will implement a new research and postgraduate strategic plan (2018-2022), that speaks to the transformation of the future, whilst addressing the challenges of today.
Professor Zeblon Vilakazi is the Deputy Vice-Chancellor for Research and Postgraduate Affairs at Wits University.
Read more about capital in the context of political economy, monopoly capital, corruption and ownership in the third issue of Wits' new research magazine, CURIOSITY.
How the humanities can equip students for the 4IR
- Ruksana Osman
An understanding of the interaction of humans with technology and technology with humans are key to grasp the impact of the fourth industrial revolution.
The term “fourth industrial revolution” is understood in various ways. Some people are excited about it. Others are cautious. Some assume it means that technology and robots will take over every human activity. And still others imagine that this “revolution” will lead only to joblessness and automation.
There are also those who are sceptical and insist it’s no revolution at all. They argue that it’s just an improvement and fusion of various technologies – like artificial intelligence and 3D printing – and acceleration in productivity.
In all these instances, the interaction of technology with humans and humans with technology is underestimated. The emphasis on interaction is key to understanding the fourth industrial revolution. And this epoch will, like all times of change, require universities to push the boundaries of teaching and learning.
Universities will need to ensure that students are equipped with approaches to learning that involve agility, adaptability and curiosity. It will be a challenge for us all.
The fourth industrial revolution will also raise many questions for universities to consider. What needs to shift in how lecturers teach and how students learn and will be learning? What does the blurring of the lines between the physical, digital and technological mean for social relationships and for student learning? What do these shifts mean for different countries? Is learning in an environment with peers (virtually or in a class) better than learning online?
In seeking answers, societies must create the space to have conversations across social, academic, industry and community boundaries. The purpose of these conversations is to determine priority areas that need to be improved by the rapid technological changes we are currently experiencing as well as thinking about how we redefine the human condition.
Universities have a crucial role to play in these conversations. And a humanities education has a lot to offer when it comes to preparing students for the fourth industrial revolution.
Harnessing the humanities
A humanities education inculcates the importance of reflecting on the vast array of methodological and societal issues that arise from any practices. These include the technological and computational practices that underpin the fourth industrial revolution.
Critical thinking, debating and creative problem solving are taught in the humanities. This kind of critical orientation allows students to explore the complex human-to-human relations and the human to robotic relations that we are already encountering and that will become ever more common.
This isn’t to suggest that only the humanities are relevant. Cross-disciplinary communities of researchers and educators matter and will matter now more than ever.
This is particularly true in South Africa where the education system hasn’t provided for the breaking down of boundaries between the sciences, let alone between the disciplines in the humanities. Collectively we will need to do more when it comes to drawing on approaches from various disciplines, which will allow for quantitative reasoning, problem solving and systems thinking that are socially relevant.
Such partnerships are already happening in small pockets, and are yielding promising results.
Collaborating and mutuality
For instance, the Faculty of Humanities at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg collaborates with the Faculty of Engineering and the Built Environment to offer a joint undergraduate programme that meshes engineering with arts to make a programme in game design and digital arts.
Bachelor of Arts and Bachelor of Engineering students work alongside each other in courses that are team-taught to design innovative high tech games. It’s not all fun: games, after all, are a means of challenging ourselves, controlling outcomes, competing, and figuring out successful strategies of doing things.
Students from this programme draw on a variety of skills like problem solving, inferential thinking and visualisation. They have produced games that are frequently downloaded from various app stores.
Similarly, the university’s faculties of science and humanities offer a postgraduate programme on e-Science or Data Science. The programme brings together science and humanities students and staff to work on complex, big data problems. They’re also taught to think of ways to visualise and communicate this information and to question the predictive powers of big data.
Students are exposed to various interdisciplinary approaches like statistical computing and modelling, data visualisation, text analysis, and geographical information systems. Master of Arts students take courses in data privacy and ethics alongside MSc students. This course is team-taught and students engage with complex problems from two or more science and humanities disciplines.
These and other examples of innovative teaching and learning help to disrupt the current techno talk that dominates conversations about the fourth industrial revolution. It’s essential that we bring our ideas to the fore and reshape the conversations in ways that resonate with who we are, where we are located and what this means for us and our futures.
Technological advances are reshaping our lives, and our policies should be designed to enhance its creative and empowering potential.
Across the world communities are adjusting to new ways of working, doing business, consuming goods, socialising and researching as technological advances that have come to be known as the fourth industrial revolution change how we do things.
The likely effects of the fourth industrial revolution are determined largely by who you are, what you do, how wealthy you are and where you live.
Some in the wealthy nations see these changes as opportunities for a better work-leisure balance. Developing countries have vastly different challenges and need to be thinking about how these technologies will affect employment, economic growth, job security and inequality, among others.
We should consider the risks and the opportunities that these technologies may offer to improve the lives of the millions who live in poverty and on the margins of the economy. We think we should be guided by:
A focus on overall systems, not just technologies. We should try to understand the overall system of technological change and not fall into technological determinism. We have the power to determine the course of technological change. Developing countries and all segments of society should have a say in how these technologies develop. After all, much of technological research is funded from public resources.
Technologies must empower people, not determine the fate of people unilaterally. Technology offers the possibility to make our lives a lot better and more meaningful. It also has the potential to be destructive. Our policies should be designed to enhance its creative and empowering potential and to reduce its destructive and negative consequences.
The International Labour Organisation has taken a particular interest in the labour market consequences of this revolution and has set up a consultative process to focus on the future of work. We are fortunate that President Cyril Ramaphosa is co-chairing this commission. It is an important vehicle for SA to play a role on the global stage to shape our future world.
We have to acknowledge that technology might be disruptive. Advances may result in costs for businesses as they adjust. Advancements could negatively affect employment levels. The focus must be on looking at innovative ways to ensure that technology serves to support and empower, rather than replace, workers. We should consider policies that will manage these transitions in the labour market so that society, rather than individual workers, bears the costs of adjustment.
We should start with an understanding of what we mean by "work". We tend to focus on paid work and ignore unpaid work, and the interactions between paid and unpaid work. The reality is that there is a gendered distribution of unpaid work, with a large number of women having to deal with the burdens of low-paid work and an unequal burden of unpaid care work. Technological change could change the nature of paid and unpaid work. In most developing countries, most jobs — especially for women — have been created in the informal economy. The conversation on technological advances must also look at work in the informal economy.
Technological change has different effects on different groups. We need to understand how this change will affect inequality and what policies and mechanisms can ameliorate the costs for the most vulnerable sections of our population and how it can lead to greater levels of equality. Because the challenges in developing countries are far different from those in developed countries, we need to craft a strategy that does not simply respond to the negative aspects of the fourth industrial revolution but rather uses it to build a more equitable world.
Technological change is not a process that is independent of social norms and regulations. Instead, these fundamentally shape the process of technological change and its outcomes. The worst response would be a one-size-fits-all approach that is based on how wealthy countries will adjust to this new world of working. It also means that we need to urgently start having these important conversations in order to ensure we are drivers of and not responders to the fourth industrial revolution.
As we continue to grapple with unsustainably high levels of unemployment we must be cognisant of the potential of technology in the labour market. If we want to harness the potential of technology as a tool to build something better, we need to be thinking about using the fourth industrial revolution to create a labour market that deals with inequality.
How we recreated a lost African city with laser technology
- Karim Sadr
LiDAR, was used to “redraw” the remains of the city, along the lower western slopes of the Suikerbosrand hills near Johannesburg.
There are lost cities all over the world. Some, like the remains of Mayan cities hidden beneath a thick canopy of rainforest in Mesoamerica, are found with the help of laser lights.
Now the same technology which located those Mayan cities has been used to rediscover a southern African city that was occupied from the 15th century until about 200 years ago. This technology, called LiDAR, was used to “redraw” the remains of the city, along the lower western slopes of the Suikerbosrand hills near Johannesburg.
It is one of several large settlements occupied by Tswana-speakers that dotted the northern parts of South Africa for generations before the first European travellers encountered them in the early years of the nineteenth century. In the 1820s all these Tswana city states collapsed in what became known as the Difeqane civil wars. Some had never been documented in writing and their oral histories had gone unrecorded.
Four or five decades ago, several ancient Tswana ruins in and around the Suikerbosrand hills, about 60 kilometres south of Johannesburg, had been excavated by archaeologists from the University of the Witwatersrand. But from ground level and on aerial photos the full extent of this settlement could not be appreciated because vegetation hides many of the ruins.
But LiDAR, which uses laser light, allowed my students and I to create images of the landscape and virtually strip away the vegetation. This permits unimpeded aerial views of the ancient buildings and monuments.
We have given the city a generic placeholder name for now – SKBR. We hope an appropriate Tswana name can eventually be adopted.
Bringing the city to life
Judging by the dated architectural styles that were common at SKBR, it’s estimated that the builders of the stone walled structures occupied this area from the fifteenth century AD until the second half of the 1800s.
The evidence we gathered suggests that SKBR was certainly large enough to be called a city. The ancient Mesopotamian city of Ur was less than 2km in diameter while SKBR is nearly 10km long and about 2km wide.
The ancient homesteads at Suikerbosrand are shown against an aerial photograph from 1961. The two rectangles show the footprint of the LiDAR imagery.Karim Sadr
It is difficult to estimate the size of its population. Between 750 and 850 homesteads have been counted at SKBR, but it’s hard to tell how many of these were inhabited at the same time, so we cannot easily estimate the city’s population at its peak.
Given what we know about more recent Tswana settlements, each homestead would have housed an extended family with, at the least, the (male) head of the homestead, one or more wives and their children.
Many features of the built environment at SKBR seem to signal the wealth and status of the homesteads or suburbs that they are associated with. For example, parallel pairs of rock alignments mark sections of passageways in several different parts of the city.
South African archaeologist Professor Revil Mason, who has carried out a great deal of research on stone walled ruins around Johannesburg, called these features cattle drives, built to funnel the beasts along certain routes through the city.
If these were cattle drives the width and location of these passageways would have signalled the livestock wealth of the ward or homestead that constructed them, even when the cattle were not present.
In the central sector of SKBR there are two very large stone walled enclosures, with a combined area of just under 10, 000 square meters. They may have been kraals and if so they could have held nearly a thousand head of cattle.
Monuments to wealth
Among the largest features of the built environment at SKBR are artificial mounds composed of masses of ash from cattle dung fires, mixed with bones of livestock and broken pottery vessels. All this material appears to have been deliberately piled up at the entrance to the larger homesteads.
These are the remains of feasts and the ash heaps’ size publicised the particular homestead’s generosity and wealth. The use of refuse dumps as landmarks of wealth and power is known from other parts of the world, like India, as well. Even the contemporary gold mine dumps of Johannesburg can be seen in this light.
Other monuments to wealth and power at SKBR include a large number of short and squat stone towers – on average 1.8 - 2.5 metres tall and about 5 metres wide at their base. The homesteads with the most stone towers tend to also have unusually large ash heaps at their entrance. The practical function of the towers isn’t known yet: they may have been the bases for grain bins, or they may mark burials of important people.
It will take another decade or two of field work to fully understand the birth, development and ultimate demise of this African city. This will be done through additional coverage with LiDAR, intensive ground surveys as well as excavations in selected localities.
Ideally, the descendants of those who built and inhabited this city should be involved in future research at this site. Some of my postgraduate students are already in contact with representatives of the Bakwena branch of the Tswana who claim parts of the landscape to the south of Johannesburg. We hope that they will actively become involved in our research project.
We’ve come up with a TB test that’s cheaper, quicker and more accurate
- Bavesh Kana
Tuberculosis (TB) is a disease that kills more people due to a bacterial infection than any other disease in the world.
In 2016, the World Health Organisation reported over 10 million new infections and 1.7 million deaths. In South Africa, TB remains one of the leading causes of death.
Countries with high TB burdens are tackling the problem in two ways: with the BCG vaccine – the most widely administered vaccine in human history – and a chemotherapeutic regimen. Nevertheless, there are still multiple obstacles to getting the disease under control.
To make major strides, the world needs better interventions, vaccines and ways of diagnosing TB. In addition, new drugs are needed to tackle drug resistant strains and reduce treatment duration.
Extensive effort has been put into improving diagnostics. This makes sense for two reasons: diagnosing people earlier and faster means they get onto treatment earlier, and it reduces the risk of transmission.
There are three ways in which TB is diagnosed: through a sputum smear test; by growing bacteria in a lab through a process known as culturing; and by using molecular diagnostics to detect DNA components of the bacteria.
But each has limitations preventing them from being scaled up. We set about bridging this gap.
In our study we’ve identified a way to speed up the age-old sputum smear test by using an invisible ink that lights up when it comes in contact with the TB bacteria. The ink significantly reduces the processing time to get a positive reading on a test. It’s also inexpensive which means our new method paves the way to introducing a test in communities where dozens of diagnostic tests need to be administered each day.
Limitations to existing tests
The current range of TB diagnostic tests have various limitations.
For example, the sputum smear is 100 years old. It’s outdated, clumsy and takes long to process. It’s also not very accurate because each sputum sample must contain more than 10 000 bacteria for an accurate test. This means it doesn’t work with patients who have a low number of bacteria.
The challenge is that people with an HIV and TB co-infection have significantly lower levels of bacteria because HIV remodels the way the disease occurs in the lung.
Diagnosing TB in this cohort of people is problematic, particularly in countries like South Africa with the highest HIV and TB co-infection rate in the world.
Another limitation with smear methods are that they can’t distinguish between living and dead bacteria – making it hard to tell if a person is responding well to treatment.
One of the other methods, culturing, also has serious limitations. For one, it’s a lengthy process. Culturing TB in a laboratory can take up to 42 days because TB is a slow growing organism. This is problematic for treatment and care because it is easy to lose people from the health care system during this time.
Culturing is also difficult in situations where resources are stretched. This means it can’t be scaled up and implemented in a community setting.
Finally, there’s the molecular diagnostics test. One such test is the GeneXpert which is being rolled out in South Africa. But its challenge is that it’s expensive and it can’t tell the difference between living and dead organisms.
Invisible ink
Our study focused on ways to improve the sputum smear test because it can be scaled up and implemented in communities.
To improve it, we decided to target a specific part of the TB bacteria – its cell wall. This protects the bacteria from the immune system in the body.
TB bacteria are rod shaped. Similarly to a capsule, the bacterial cell wall forms a protective coat that covers the bacteria. It is incredibly complex. It is thick and has many layers and is the reason why TB treatment takes a long time to take effect: drugs need to penetrate the wall.
But the defence wall in fact delivered the solution we’ve pioneered. It is built with mycolic acids, which is made of a chemical molecule (trehalose) unique to the TB bacteria family. As part of our study, the chemical molecule was fused with another chemical (a fluorophore) to create a stain that’s naturally fluorescent and changes colour (known as solvatochromic). The combination is called DMN-trehalose.
The DMN-trehalose is the brainchild of Dr Carolyn Bertozzi at Stanford University in the US whose lab conceived the idea and generated DMN-trehalose before bringing it to South Africa for tests in clinical samples.
The beauty of DMN-trehalose is that it colourless when it’s outside a TB bacteria. But as soon as it is in the presence of TB-infected sputum, TB bacteria immediately internalise it. Once the DMN-trehalose is inside the bacterial cell, it gets built into the cell wall and lights up the organism.
The advantage of our method is that it promises to reduce the processing time and complexity of the smear test. Another advantage is that it is very specific to TB because trehalose is only found in the TB bacteria family.
Lastly, the DMN-trehalose will only stain living bacteria, meaning it’s possible to tell whether treatment is working or not.
Next steps
Now that our study has shown proof of principle, it’s being tested in a pilot study at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg.
The pilot will take one year and will look at both the sputum smears and oral swabs to assess how well DMN-trehalose works. It will assess sputum samples from people before treatment to establish if accurate diagnosis is possible, and after completing treatment to see if the regimes worked.
The pilot will help us compare it to the current staining method in sputum smear tests. If it produces similar results, the new test could become the preferred method because it requires less processing.
Effective, cheap and scalable diagnostics are urgently required for TB. For this, the new DMN-trehalose stain has great promise. It’s also an excellent research tool to help understand TB transmission and how TB bacteria remodels their cell walls during TB disease.
Why it would be in everybody’s interests to regulate cryptocurrencies
- Desné Masie
Cryptocurrencies originated as an alternative payment mechanism to traditional currencies.
There are growing calls for regulation of the cryptocurrency market, which is rapidly approaching a market capitalisation of $1 trillion. But there’s little agreement about the forms this should take.
If the case for government regulation is strong, the case for a clear, coordinated regulatory approach is even stronger. It would increase the flow of institutional capital into cryptocurrency markets. And that would further strengthen corporate governance in cryptocurrency companies.
The trick for regulators is to balance investor protection and systemic stability with the need to protect innovation and encourage capital formation in different legal systems.
At present the regulatory environment is a muddle because there’s rapid divergence in the regulation of cryptocurrencies across jurisdictions. Countries like Japan, while thorough, have a more open approach. China is more strict.
Sovereign governments need to develop coherent frameworks for cryptocurrency oversight. But solutions will only be found through international cooperation in this cross-border market.
Growing concerns
Cryptocurrencies originated as an alternative payment mechanism to traditional currencies. But they are now also traded on spot exchanges as highly speculative investment assets.
Recent spin-off crowd funding opportunities such as initial coin offerings have become a particular cause of concern. These involve startup cryptocurrency companies offering initial investment stakes in new token issues. China and Vietnam have banned them. Japan has taken a friendlier attitude while the UK and the US have adopted a wait and see approach. South Africa, like many other developing countries, offers zero protection to investors in initial coin offerings.
These different responses are due to different legal definitions of cryptocurrencies. The rapidly evolving technology behind them doesn’t help the situation either.
The precise nature of an initial coin offerings depends on its structure as well as its context which can change quickly and have hybrid characteristics of financial instruments.
The definition, and hence legal treatment, of the tokens issued under an initial coin offering can be as diverse as a currency, commodity, security, property, loan, deposit, derivative or forex contract. Agreeing a taxonomy of cryptocurrencies defined by how they’re used is clearly one of the most urgent tasks facing regulators.
Towards a taxonomy of cryptocurrencies
Cryptocurrency expert Lawrence Wintermeyer has argued that distributed ledger technology powered digital assets could be organised into three potential buckets: cryptocurrencies, cryptocommodities, and cryptotokens.
But the lack of harmonisation across jurisdictions is a wider problem than nomenclature.
Cryptocurrency companies sometimes use the distributed nature of these assets – which sit on digital ledgers held by multiple token holders – to argue that there is no issuer. They also sometimes argue that these assets are not securities, and that they should therefore not be subjected to a particular jurisdiction’s securities laws.
There are also clear cross border regulatory gaps. What makes it difficult to reconcile these is that the assets can easily be transferred and their origins are difficult to trace. Tokens could be issued in a more token-friendly jurisdiction like Japan. The same tokens could land up in the hands of unassuming retail investors in stricter jurisdictions such as the US.
Avoiding money laundering and financial crime
This cross border confusion allows token companies to pick and choose jurisdictions with favourable rules. This could make money laundering easier.
There are a few steps governments can take to close these gaps.
They should support investment in technology that makes the provenance of tokens clearer while preserving their encryption. Regulators could then enforce an “indicator of origin” as a standard. This would make it less easy for the assets to be transferred illegally.
Offshore centres like Jersey have got a lot of bad press in recent the backlash against international financial centres. But there’s a great deal to learn from well-regulated offshore jurisdictions. They are beginning to take the lead with potential applications of international best practice and corporate governance for cryptocurrencies. They offer investors in digital assets an extra set of gatekeepers’ eyes, and potentially, a more calculated risk.
In jurisdictions like Jersey issuers of initial coin offerings have to jump through quite a few hoops. This includes using a regulated service provider which has to make an application to the Jersey companies registry for a consent. The service provider is among a number of requirements that provide checks in relation to anti-money laundering and countering the financing of terrorism.
Current frameworks and global co-ordination
But what could a coordinated global regulatory approach to cryptocurrencies look like?
Harmonisation via a code of conduct or voluntary signatory to a global compact could certainly stop token companies from cherry picking jurisdictions to their advantage. Not being signatories to the codes would place token companies outside the market.
A multilateral code of conduct or global convention or compact, such as those administered by the inter-governmental Financial Action Task Force on Money Laundering, or a United Nations co-ordinated approach could be model solutions.
Standard regulatory codes are particularly critical for some pockets of the investment community. For example, there has been a significant surge in the establishment of investment funds looking to invest in initial coin offerings on behalf of sophisticated investors.
Standard codes for institutional investors in the first instance, could help both regulation as well as innovation. Institutional investors, unlike retail investors, can withstand, and even benefit from, the upside of volatility over time.
For now, the poorly regulated speculative hoarding of cryptocurrencies reduces the potential of assets like this to become a public good. This ultimately affects the potential value of the tokens by amplifying volatility.
Paying attention to this is important for investors and regulators as well as issuers. There will also have to be a degree of self regulation by issuers as global regulators get up to speed.
WiSER professor wins inaugural Humanities Book Award
- Wits Communications
The Academy of Science of South Africa has identified Prof. Keith Breckenridge as the winner of its Humanities Book Award for his book on the Biometric State.
Breckenridge is Deputy Director of the Wits Institute for Social and Economic Research (WiSER).
The award will be presented to Breckenridge for his book Biometric State: The Global Politics of Identification and Surveillance in South Africa, 1850 to the Present.
The book shows how the South African obsession with Francis Galton's universal fingerprint identity registration served as a 20th Century incubator for the development throughout the south of the current systems of biometric citizenship.
The ASSAf Humanities Book Award is presented to a writer of a scholarly, well-written work of non-fiction published up to three years prior to its nomination. The book should be noteworthy for its contribution to developing new understanding and insight of a topic in the Humanities.
Chosen from among 58 entries, Breckenridge's book is claimed to have reawakened international interest in the fine details of South African state-building, showing that our history can reveal and explain patterns of state formation in Europe, the Americas and Asia, and our peer states on this continent.
The book, reviewers have commented, engages problems that have broad interdisciplinary significance, reworking them to place South African history at the centre of a new global explanation. It has produced new explanations of the roots of Galton's eugenics, of social Darwinism, of Gandhi's distinctive anti-progressivism, of the limits of the colonial state's will to know, of the surveillance capacities of the apartheid state, and the current global enthusiasm for biometric social welfare.
The book does this by combining very wide comparative reading with the fine-grained archival research that has been the hallmark of South African historiography for two generations. It is carefully and fluently written and encourages South African social scientists, historians, in particular, to be comparative, and theoretically ambitious, deploying the detail of what we know best about our own society to shape debates in the global academy.
The prize will be awarded to Breckenridge at the inaugural ASSAf Annual Humanities Lecture and Book Award event on 9 March 2017 in Pretoria.
Broadly, Breckenridge writes about the cultural and economic history of South Africa, particularly the gold mining industry, the state and the development of information systems. Read more about his publications.
Wits offers new post graduate courses in e-Science
- Wits University
Programme will create opportunities for students in a variety of fields to gain an interdisciplinary perspective on the emerging fields of Data Science.
Wits University is leading the charge in combating the large shortage in scientists and professionals qualified in dealing with e-Science, including Big Data.
The University, in association with five other South African Universities and research institutions, has started two new Masters degrees, that deal with Big Data, namely a M.Sc. in e-Science, and a M.A. degree in e-Science.
Situated in the Wits School of Computer Science and Applied Mathematics, the M.Sc. degree aims to train postgraduate students in computational, mathematical and statistical methods to solve data-driven problems. This programme will create opportunities for students in the Computer Science, Statistics, Physics, Electrical Engineering, Medicine, Biological Sciences and other technical fields, to gain an interdisciplinary perspective on the emerging fields of Data Science. The M.A. degree, which is situated in the School of Social Sciences in the Humanities Faculty, aims to train students in the use of statistical methods to conduct data-driven research in the social sciences and humanities.
Starting in 2018, students from Wits, University of Pretoria and North West University can enrol at the university where they are registered at.
The University of Limpopo, University of Venda and Sol Plaatje University will join the programme for the 2019 intake.
For the first year of the 18-month programme, students will attend their coursework classes at Wits, irrespective of which university they are registered at, before returning to their home institution for their research project.
Students who enrol for the M.Sc. degree will have to take two compulsory courses, namely: Research methods and capstone projects in data science, and Data privacy and ethics, as well as four electives, while students enrolling for the M.A. programme will have four compulsory courses, namely Research methods and capstone project in data science; data privacy and ethics; principles of quantitative social research and advanced topics in quantitative social research. Both programmes are funded by the Department of Science and Technology, through the Council for Science and Industrial Research (CSIR). The 2018 intake of 30 students will be fully funded.
For the 2018 intake students are required to have a background in mathematics, statistics or computer science. However, from 2019, bridging courses will be added for students who don’t have a strong mathematics background.
Williams, named in 2011 by the Mail&Guardian as one of its “Top 200 Young South Africans”, has for the past 17 years been actively engaged in setting up and running collaborative work spaces and associated programmes.
She joined Wits on Monday and describes herself as being “enthusiastic about collaboration with particular passion for shaping the future of business that contributes to social innovation and enables participatory leadership.”
Williams established the first Impact Hub in Africa, “Impact Hub Johannesburg”, in 2010 and today there are more than 100 Impact Hubs in major cities around the world. Impact Hub is a community of spaces, people and programming with an impact mission.
Professor Adam Habib, Vice-Chancellor and Principal of Wits University, welcomed Williams and said she has been mandated to ensure that the Tshimologong Precinct also achieves its full potential.
“Through Tshimologong, Wits is enabling the development of a new generation of digital technology experts, innovators and entrepreneurs. The Precinct is providing space for our country's most creative young minds to develop the new digital technologies that are crucial to South Africa’s economic growth and international competitiveness,” he says.
Professor Barry Dwolatzky, Head of Wits University’s Joburg Centre for Software Engineering (JCSE) and founder of the Tshimologong Precinct says, “I’m really excited to welcome Lesley as our CEO. She brings a wealth of experience and boundless energy and enthusiasm to this important strategic initiative. Going forward my own role will be to support Lesley and her team in various ways with a particular focus on growing strategic relationships both locally and internationally.”
ABOUT WITS UNIVERSITY’S TSHIMOLOGONG DIGITAL INNOVATION PRECINCT
Setswana for “new beginnings”, Tshimologong is Johannesburg’s new high-tech address in the vibrant inner-city district of Braamfontein, where the incubation of start-ups, the commercialisation of research and the development of high-level digital skills for students, working professionals and unemployed youths takes place. The Precinct was launched in September 2016 with support from major companies including Microsoft, Cisco, Datacentrix, Telkom, ACSA and MMI. Gauteng Province through its Department of E-Government and the City of Johannesburg has also provided significant support. The Precinct also houses the prestigious IBM Research’s Lab Africa – one of only 12 such facilities in the world. Website: www.tshimologong.joburg
Tshimologong's first accelerator programme now open for applications
- Wits University
The Journalism and Media Accelerator (JAMLAB) will be home to innovators who want to develop new forms of journalism.
Applications open today for a new six-month innovation support programme for existing or new South African journalism and media teams.
JAMLAB will provide participating teams with the tools, facilities, contacts and the support necessary to realise their ideas and ambitions, combining professional mentorship with a collaborative and creative tech-advanced working space.
Up to six teams will be selected for the programme, which runs from July at the Wits Tshimologong Digital Innovation Precinct in Braamfontein. This will be the first accelerator programme to launch at Tshimologong.
Successful applicants will receive:
A six-month fellowship at Wits Journalism
Free workspace and membership at the new Tshimologong Precinct co-working space
Mentorship and coaching from experienced media, start-up and tech experts, and entrepreneurs
Free places on a three-month Wits ‘Creating the Media’ certificate course
Access to a software development team at Tshimologong
Opportunities to pitch to potential investors and funders
JAMLAB will be seeking to ensure that it addresses historic inequalities of opportunities in South Africa and that those who are selected are a diverse group of people who understand and want to engage the widest range of South African audiences.
The partners are especially keen to see women and women led teams apply.
Indra de Lanerolle, JAMLAB director, says: “We are looking for great new ideas that can change the media and journalism landscape. We want strong teams that are passionate about stories, information, opinion and ideas. They must also have a keen interest to engage with new audiences. Whether non-profit or for profit, brand new or old hands, as long as you have the energy to do something new that can make a real difference to media and journalism in South Africa.”
Professor Barry Dwolatzky, Director of the JCSE and founder of the Tshimologong Precinct, says that this is an exciting collaboration: “We are delighted to work with such esteemed partners to focus on creating new ideas that bring technology and journalism closer together. As the first accelerator programme to launch at the Precinct, we are both excited and happy to host the next generation of journalists and media moguls.”
Are you up for Wits’ first Digital Innovation Challenge? Do you have the smarts and skills in location technology?
An exciting new initiative is calling on developers and entrepreneurs with innovative ideas on how to solve the Wits Campus Personal Navigator Challenge to submit their entries at www.tshimologong.joburg/challenge before applications close on 3 March 2017.
The Wits Campus Personal Navigator Challenge is the first in a series of four annual digital innovation challenges, called the CEFF Digital Innovation Challenge, led by the Joburg Centre for Software Engineering (JCSE) at Wits University with sponsorship from the Carl and Emily Fuchs Foundation (CEFF).
The first such challenge sets its focus on new ways to assist students with visual and physical disabilities, by providing them with a ‘personal navigator’ to help guide them from one campus location to another.
Professor Barry Dwolatzky, Director of the JCSE, explains that in 1986 Wits University established the Disabled Students Programme with the aim of supporting students with disabilities. This programme, now called the Disability Rights Unit (DRU), has grown to assist over 1000 students and staff with a broad range of disabilities. He notes that the challenge for developers and innovators will be to create a system that safely guides students between locations using predefined accessible routes, bearing in mind the well documented inaccuracies of commercially available GPS systems.
“The system could be a simple standalone device that attaches to a walking cane or wheelchair or be a wearable device. This unique navigation system may work independently or in conjunction with relevant existing or future systems (software, apps, maps, etc.) to provide visual or audible directions and information to the student. To do this the proposed system might also use multiple sensors installed at key points on campus which will provide location information and alerts to a base unit installed on a walking cane, wheelchair or wearable device,” Dwolatzky says. Apart from coming up with an innovative solution those entering the challenge will be assisted in turning their idea into a viable start-up.
The Wits Campus Personal Navigator Challenge will see approximately 100 aspiring digital entrepreneurs benefit from further training and the opportunity to participate in a weekend-long hackathon. Following this, the top ten entrants will each be given three months’ membership in the Tshimologong Digital Innovation Precinct incubation programme, and the top three an additional seven months’ membership. In addition, one start-up in will spend four weeks at one of the Tshimologong Precinct’s international partner hubs located in Canada, USA, Netherlands, UK or India.
“This initiative will encourage young developers to refine their skills in location technology while also benefitting their fellow students and the greater University community and we encourage aspiring digital entrepreneurs not to miss out on this great opportunity,” says Dwolatzky.
About the JCSE
The Joburg Centre for Software Engineering (JCSE) is a three way partnership between government, academia and industry. Based at Wits University, the JCSE is multifaceted with various programmes and facilities positioning it as a focal point of a software development industry for South Africa and the rest of the continent.
The JCSE strongly supports the City’s “Joburg 2030 Vision”, which sees Johannesburg becoming a World Class city with service delivery and efficiencies that meet global best practice. It supports this goal by promoting best practice in software development within an African context; growing the country’s capacity to deliver world class software; and developing research and training initiatives to strengthen the local software development industry.
Wits’ optics research among best in 2017
- Wits University
Research into optics and photonics by Wits physicists has been highlighted as some of the most influential in 2017.
The Optical Society of America (OSA), the leading international society for the field of optics, has named research into light and quantum communications by Professor Andrew Forbes and his team at Wits’ Structured Light Laboratory as one of the 30 most exciting peer-reviewed optics research to have emerged over the past 12 months.
The top research has been published in a special issue of OSA’s monthly news magazine, Optics & Photonics News.
OSA says a panel of editors reviewed 125 research summaries from scientists from around the world and selected 30 that they felt most ‘clearly communicated breakthroughs of interest to the optics community’, among them Forbes’ article, titled: Blurring the Classical-Quantum Divide.
The research shows that sometimes Nature cannot tell the difference between the quantum and the classical (or real) worlds, and that a grey area does exist between the two worlds called classical entanglement. This has exciting implications for fast and secure data transfer in the future and will aid technological advances that seek to establish more secure quantum communication links over long distances.
About the Optical Society of America (OSA)
Founded in 1916, the Optical Society (OSA) is the leading professional organization for scientists, engineers, students and business leaders who fuel discoveries, shape real-life applications and accelerate achievements in the science of light. Through world-renowned publications, meetings and membership initiatives, OSA provides quality research, inspired interactions and dedicated resources for its extensive global network of optics and photonics experts.
Energetic engineering at EIE Open Day 2017
- Wits University
The ‘Brainternet’, robotic arm, mosquito repeller, adaptive digital hearing aid, leaf recognition software – our future engineers show their stuff.
The School of Electrical and Information Engineering held its first Open Day in three years this week, showcasing 44 exciting laboratory projects completed by fourth year students did this year.
As part of the curriculum, these electrical and information engineering students paired up to use all the engineering skills and knowledge they had gained as undergraduates to design and build their projects.
This fourth year project by Irfaan Mohamed & Nabeel Seedat, titled: Grip control of robotic prosthetic hand using haptic feedback, drew quite a crowd. Here Irfaan (standing) demonstrate how the hand and sensors work by using Deepam Ambelal (sitting) as their testing subject.
Robotic hand in action --> project by Irfaan Mohamed/Nabeel Seedat, 4th yr Electrical and Information Engineering students. #EIEOpenDaypic.twitter.com/M5LXbFgdAQ
“Staff members set the projects and vaguely specify what is required; and then the students have to plan the entire project, show what technology they are going to use, assign different tasks between them, and build the final project,” says the new Head of School, Associate Professor Estelle Trengove.
“Most of the projects have at least a bit of innovation in them and some of them are even prototypes that can be developed further,” she adds. Industry representatives and the School’s funding partners also attend the Open Day to see these innovations that could spark a new generation of technologies in future.
Being appointed as the new Head of School earlier this year, Trengove has also set her sights on rethinking the curriculum in order to fit future engineers with the necessary holistic skills for a rapidly changing world.
The School’s curriculum is benchmarked against the Engineering Council of South Africa (ECSA) outcomes, and its accreditation was recently successfully reviewed during the ECSA’s five-year-visit.
Says Trengove, “We will continue to meet and exceed the ECSA’s benchmark in the future. We do also need to introduce innovation and entrepreneurship into the curriculum that could mean some programme changes in future. It is very important for our students to have innovation and entrepreneurship skills in order to create a new generation of scientists and engineers that meet the needs of modern society.”
Africa app'tly rising
- Deborah Minors
There are over 300 tech hubs in Africa and maybe 52 or more in South Africa, one of which is the Wits Tshimologong Digital Innovation Precinct in Braamfontein.
Here South Africa’s digerati develop radical tech to advance the continent.
Tshimologong incorporates the Joburg Centre for Software Engineering (JCSE) and the Learning Information Networking Knowledge (LINK) Centre, an academic research and training body that focuses on digital innovation, digital transformation, and information and communications technology (ICT) policy and regulation.
Techknowledgy factory
A partnership between Wits University, the JCSE, the LINK Centre, the City of Joburg and others, Tshimologong is an e-skills, software innovation and digital knowledge hub. It provides a venue in which it is possible to research and nurture tech hubs – those “digital incubators that design futures for people”.
“In this way, tech hubs perfectly demonstrate the integration of tech and people. They are the veritable iHuman,” says Dr Lucienne Abrahams, Director and Senior Lecturer at LINK and Corresponding Editor of The African Journal of Information and Communications, LINK’s peer-reviewed journal.
“The people who inhabit Tshimologong are tech developers and tech entrepreneurs. The precinct offers facilities and training in coding and app design, mentorship, facilitating tech start-ups, a tech accelerator programme, and postgraduate degree programmes,” she says.
Game on!
Abrahams conducts research on institutions and economic sectors in the digital knowledge economy. Her doctorate explored the positioning of universities in the 21st Century knowledge economy. Her thesis describes the evolution of Tshimologong and its research and development mission as:
“A quantum innovation game, with multiple players playing multiple games of significant levels of difficulty at the same time, in ways that constantly interweave with each other. The probability of losing … appears to be low, but the win occurs over the very long term. The probability of winning the objective over a quantum set of games appears to be high.”
Neo Hutiri, a tech entrepreneur with a Master’s in industrial engineering from Wits, knows this game well. Hutiri won the 2016 #Hack.Jozi Challenge, an annual competition that Tshimologong hosts to find digital solutions to challenges faced by Joburg citizens. Hutiri’s Technovera innovation enables people with chronic conditions to collect their repeat medication quickly and efficiently.
"Africa has really interesting challenges and this makes it fertile for impactful social entrepreneurship. In my case, I was a patient who realised people lose time when collecting medication. My passion for the impact of technology keeps me hungry for innovation. An unmet need is the holy grail that entrepreneurs chase. It is that resolute belief in a problem that gets me out of bed every day – even when things are not going so well and the bank account is close to empty,” says Hutiri.
Disruption through innovation
Another player is Lehlonolo Ramongalo, MD of Figtory, a tech start-up incubated in Tshimologong. Figtory designs and builds intuitive business applications and business models that solve specific problems using creative approaches.
“Johannesburg and Africa are problem-ridden, providing an environment where problem-solvers can create value for themselves and their clients,” says Ramongalo, who describes his entrepreneurial experience in Johannesburg as “a painful and rewarding process”.
Figtory’s business philosophy is disruption through innovation. “We do this through a process of empathy where we become the user or client. Through empathy we understand user pains and can start a process of taking the pain away,” he says.
Such an analgesic is Figtory’s innovation in agriculture. eGooma is a facilities management solution that enables any real estate asset type – an orchard of crops on a farm or a building – to be able to see, learn, measure different variables, and help its custodians make decisions using the web, mobile, cognitive computing and smart sensory technologies.
“One problem we are trying to address at scale with eGooma is to have real-time reporting of the amount of water and energy real estate asset types are using at runtime so that inefficiencies are identified quickly at the point of waste,” says Ramongalo.
Crafters, hackers, tinkerers and makerspaces
Aside from incubating start-ups, Tshimologong is a makerspace. This refers to an environment where ‘makers’, including crafters, hackers and tinkerers, congregate to innovate.
Makers are “digitally sophisticated hobbyists…building all kinds of custom objects” according to a paper by Dr Chris Armstrong, who has a PhD in media studies from Wits and is a Visiting Fellow at LINK.
“Makers who gather to tinker and hack in the maker collectives of SA display a wide range of innovation practices. Our study revealed innovation modes in tinkering, hacking, DIY and organic innovation; innovation from poverty/necessity; process, incremental, and repurposing innovation. We found that the default position among Gauteng makers who gather to tinker and hack in the maker collectives of SA display a wide range of innovation practices.”
The rub of the tech hub
Tshimologong clearly now hosts a makerspace for crafters, hackers, and tinkerers while it simultaneously incubates innovation and continually investigates: ‘What’s next?’ But it wasn’t always so. This is Tshimologong today, but its evolution from a training centre in 2004 to an integrated research and development entity over a decade later proved as stimulating, yet as confounding, as tech itself. Those involved frequently locked horns as institutional agendas and resource priorities collided.
“The evolution of the vision of the JCSE, which was set up to promote the growth and development of the local software engineering sector, to the Tshimologong Precinct, has been an incredible journey. We have seen a great deal of success over the past 12 years, and are now working to increase the size of the impact that we will make,” says Professor Barry Dwolatzky, Director of the JCSE and founder of the Tshimologong Precinct.
Research entanglement
In her PhD, Abrahams advances the theory of research entanglement. This is a metaphor for how researchers at universities engage in research activeness and transition towards research intensiveness, and how this transition influences the position of the University in an emerging knowledge economy.
“The theory of positioning universities for research activeness and research intensiveness is a theory that gives substance to the broad notions of complexity and adversity in building university research,” says Abrahams, who argued that such adversity may have briefly inhibited those pushing for a new research direction in the digital knowledge sphere, now taking shape in the form of Tshimologong. However, research actors tend to push through these challenges as they are driven by “the attraction of complexity and adversity”.
Abrahams suggests that there needs to be a balance between research activeness and research intensiveness so that research endeavour is sustained and research volume and quality increases. However, the absence or discouragement of research entanglement at universities limit the opportunities for moving from research activeness to intensiveness.
“Positioning universities for research activeness or research intensiveness requires active research entanglement of the actors and institutions in the games of adversity that are played out with respect to access to and competition for research resources; to contestation over research-oriented values; and to the possible trade-offs among academic, social or economic value created as outcomes of research,” says Abrahams.
Hutiri is a case in point:
“Academia trained me to think critically about solving problems whilst my technical background helped me turn ideas into product. I continuously apply lessons from concepts I was exposed to at university. Your academic career is sometimes used to measure your ability to start and complete something. The networks one builds at University become so important when you start your business. These relationships open doors,” he says.
Africa rising?
Ramongalo offers a caveat: “Africa is rising because there are so many problems to solve. There have been interesting developments out of Kenya, Rwanda and Nigeria but limited impact in my view. If African tech companies do not rise and engage problems head on, we will have companies from other parts of the world coming here to solve the problems.”
Having incubated start-ups like Technovera and Figtory, Tshimologong is poised to research and nurture tech innovation that enhances and advances Africa – and Wits University – in the 21st Century digital knowledge economy.
Read more about digital innovation and the interface between humanity and tech in Wits' new research magazine, CURIOSITY, the iHuman edition.
Interpreting brainwaves to give amputees a hand
- Deborah Minors
Biomedical engineers at Wits are researching how brainwaves can be used to control a robotic prosthetic hand.
Such a brain computer interface (BCI) will enable amputees and people with motor impairments to regain some hand mobility.
BCIs can use electroencephalograms (EEGs - brainwaves - to interpret human intentions from electrical signals in the brain and use these to control an external device such as a prosthetic hand, computer, or speech synthesizer.
The prosthetic robotic hand relies on EEGs extracted via electrodes on the skull, or electromyography (EMG) obtained from electrodes recording muscle signals, for information. A BCI will interpret these signals and translate them to instruct the movements of the artificial hand.
“I envisage a BCI capable of controlling a robotic prosthetic hand that will enable people with motor disabilities to write, hold a glass or shake hands,” says Abdul-Khaaliq Mohamed, Lecturer and PhD candidate in the School of Electrical and Information Engineering at Wits.
Mohamed coordinates a research group of six students studying different aspects of potentially controlling a robotic hand. Most BCI experiments to date have centered on basic hand movements such as finger taps, button presses or simple finger grasps.
Mohamed’s research group focuses uniquely on a combination of hand movements including wrist extension, wrist flexion, finger flexion, finger extension and the tripod pinch.
“In South Africa, stroke victims may benefit significantly from this technology,” says Mohamed. “Stroke afflicts an estimated 132 000 South Africans per year.”
Currently, a prosthetic hand costs around US$100 000 (about R1,35 million), an investment out of reach for most South Africans.
Thumbs-up for this research that will use 3D-printing to create a prosthetic hand for US$78 (R1 053), thereby increasing access to healthcare for many.
Talking tech and African languages
- Buhle Zuma
Is tech killing indigenous African languages? Prof. Leketi Makalela, head of Languages, Literacies and Literatures in the Wits School of Education talks back.
Discussions on the status of African languages portray a dim view. For centuries, African languages have been under threat as one conqueror after another has imposed their preferred language on various nations on the continent. Subsequently, African languages have low status in our institutions and continue to be marginalised in all spheres of power, including government quarters.
In South Africa, English continues as the lingua franca, despite government policies that protect and promote vernacular languages.
There have been warnings about the death of these languages. However, indigenous languages are far from extinct says Professor Leketi Makalela, Head of Languages, Literacies and Literatures in the Wits School of Education.
“Where government has failed, technology is bringing hope to the people,” says Makalela. “African languages were probably going to die, were it not for technology, social media and popular culture. Technology is going to take African languages forward and these languages are going to evolve to fit into the digital age and any future world shift.”
Ironically, this change is one of the major criticisms levelled against technology, and especially social media, where variations of spelling abound, and where the platforms are also implicated for contributing to the decline in literacy and writing standards.
“People are concerned about change and this has been an ongoing major debate in human language development. The great divide is about whether the change results in decay or progress. A conservative will say it is decay because there is nostalgia for the past and everything is being disorganised by modernity. This has to do with aging as well – the older you are, the more you want to keep things the same,” says Makalela, who is also the Editor-in-Chief of the Southern African Linguistics and Applied Language Studies Journal and Chairperson of Umalusi Council’s Qualifications Standards Committee.
To put things into perspective, Makalela says the primary question that needs to be asked in such debates is: “What is the purpose of language?”
“We need to question what language is and why we have language as human beings before we look at the structure (syntax and spelling). People obsess about the aesthetics of the language and yet language is here for meaning-making. The ‘net speak’ and contraction of words are a natural evolution of language and a reflection of the time. The structure of language keeps changing because people are changing.”
One of the significant, laudable changes brought about by social media is that they break down linguistic barriers. Makalela believes we should celebrate that communication technology is contributing to the decolonisation of languages.
“The Balkanisation of African states in 1884 in Berlin was attached to the languages. The Bantustan policy of apartheid architect H.F. Verwoerd was based on supposed linguistic differences,” says Makalela. “African languages were separated intentionally, not because they were or are different, but because the strategy was to divide and conquer. Technology has now made it easy for linguistic groups to realise how similar they are than they were previously told.”
Communities such as #BlackTwitter, mother-tongue appreciation groups on Facebook and blogs where young creatives share works in their languages and culture are defying institutions and moving languages into the 21st Century. Local television programmes are also playing their part in promoting multilingualism with many creative works moving between three and more languages, recreating and reinforcing the South African linguistic reality.
“We cannot talk about economic development and social cohesion without taking into account the issues of language because languages are central to social cohesion. You can’t expect a Zulu and a Tswana person to socially cohere if there is no crossover of language,” he adds. “One of the barriers that must be removed to drive this growth is for linguistic groups to be open to the influence of non-mother tongue speakers,” explains Makalela.
“There seems to be a sacredness and unwillingness to allow others to learn African languages, which often makes it closed to outsiders. If we really want our languages to flourish, we have to open the doors to non-mother tongue speakers so that there is nothing like KZN isiZulu vs Gauteng isiZulu (which is seen as weak isiZulu). In fact, it’s a time to redefine what we call standards.
English became a dominant language because it opened its doors to non-mother tongue users. The type of English used today is heavily multi-lingual with 80% of the words in the language not original English. In addition, 80% of users are not traditional mother tongue speakers. English thrives and lives on donations from other languages.”
Another area where Makalela would like to see transformation is the use of technology in the classroom to promote multilingualism. “While technology is often seen as eroding African values, accelerating moral degeneration and the loss of ubuntu, practice is suggesting that it is having an opposite effect on languages. Let us focus on creating shared meaning and understanding through opening up our languages and using technology to contribute towards fostering social cohesion in our diverse society.”
Can you read my mind?
- Deborah Minors
In research thought to be a world first, biomedical engineers at Wits are connecting a human brain to the internet in real time.
The "Brainternet" project streams brainwaves onto the internet. Essentially, it turns the brain into an Internet of Things (IoT) node on the World Wide Web. IoT refers to connecting any device with an on and off switch to the internet.
Brainternet works by converting electroencephalogram (EEG) signals (brain waves) in an open source brain live stream. A person wears a powered, mobile, internet accessible Emotiv EEG device for an extended period. During this time, the Emotiv transmits the EEG signals to a Raspberry Pi – a credit card sized little computer - live streams the signals to an application programming interface (code that allows software programmes to communicate), and displays data on a website that acts as a portal. This is currently an open website where the public can observe the individual’s brain activity.
Brainternet is the brainchild of Adam Pantanowitz, a lecturer in the Wits School of Electrical and Information Engineering, who supervised fourth-years Jemma-Faye Chait and Danielle Winter in its development.
“Brainternet is a new frontier in brain-computer interface systems. There is a lack of easily understood data about how a human brain works and processes information. Brainternet seeks to simplify a person’s understanding of their own brain and the brains of others. It does this through continuous monitoring of brain activity as well as enabling some interactivity,” explains Pantanowitz.
“Ultimately, we’re aiming to enable interactivity between the user and their brain so that the user can provide a stimulus and see the response. Brainternet can be further improved to classify recordings through a smart phone app that will provide data for a machine-learning algorithm. In future, there could be information transferred in both directions – inputs and outputs to the brain,” says Pantanowitz.
Improving the accuracy of TB testing
- Wits University
Wits scientists have developed technology that ensures the efficacy of equipment that tests for tuberculosis (TB).
Tuberculosis (TB) affects some 35-million people globally. The introduction of technology that tests for TB using molecular diagnostics was a game changer for national TB programmes.
The technology increased access to TB testing, which then improved diagnosis and treatment and ultimately inhibited further infection. However, when the World Health Organization endorsed this molecular diagnostic test, there was no quality assurance in place for checking the accuracy of the testing instruments.
A team of scientists from Wits, led by Professor Wendy Stevens and Professor Lesley Scott in the Department of Molecular Medicine and Haematology, in collaboration with Professor Bavesh Kana from the Department of Science and Technology/National Research Foundation Centre of Excellence for Biomedical TB Research, developed the SmartSpot technology. SmartSpot guarantees the quality of the molecular diagnostic tests.
In South Africa, SmartSpot has been used on all 289 GeneXpert testing instruments in the national TB programme since 2011. Over a year, SmartSpot showed that 2.6% of the TB tests were inaccurate, and that test modules needed replacing.
In the absence of SmartSpot verification, 78 000 test results out of the three million tests performed at the time would have been inaccurate. This would have led to an incorrect diagnosis. As a result, some patients would have remained undiagnosed and either died or infected others, while others would have been subjected to unnecessary, costly drugs with unpleasant side effects.
This technology, developed at Wits in collaboration with local and international partners, impacts significantly on the healthcare of thousands of people and has been exported to more than 30 countries, with more in the pipeline.
Read more about the interface between healthcare, humanity and technology in Wits' new research magazineCURIOSITY, theiHuman edition.
Using high tech to tell the story of ancient man
- Wits University
Origin Centre's new Virtual Reality experience uses state of the art communications technology to tell the story of what makes us human.
The history of where we come from and what makes us human will come alive like never before when the Origins Centre, located at Wits University, launches its new Virtual Reality production at the Tshimologong Precinct on 14 September, and at the Origins Centre on 25th September, (a public holiday).
The production, which brings together cutting-edge digital technology with stories of ancient stone age technologies of our 2,6-million-year history, tells a complete story of our development into society, by using the same visual materials that are used by scientists in the research process.
“This is the first time that VR has been used in Origins Centre at Wits, and the first production of the archaeology and palaeontology stories that are told in the Museum, using photographs, text panels, casts of human ancestral skulls and real stone tools,” says Steven Sack, Director of the Origins Centre.
The production, which was made possible through a collaboration between Sack and Professor Barry Dwolatzky, Director of Tshimologong, has been facilitated by the Rock Art Research Institute, the Evolutionary Sciences Institute and the South African Rock Art Digital Archive, that are all located at Wits University. The National Institute for the Humanities and Social Sciences has supported two young researchers, Dr Tammy Hodgkiss and Lara Mallen, to lead the content development.
“The VR experience immerses viewers in a journey through time, from the African early hominin fossil skulls, significant changes in ancient tool use, and the innovations of the Middle Stone Age, to the captivating spirit world of southern African San rock art. You will follow in the footsteps of the researchers who are solving the mysteries of Africa’s rich past,” says Dr Tammy Hodgskiss of the Evolutionary Studies Institute, and an expert in this field of research.
The Origins VR production will be used to update the material currently on display at the Origins Centre and will assist in bringing younger voices and women researchers into the story of what we know about rock art and the early modern human ways of living.
“Tshimologong is Wits University’s exciting new digital innovation precinct in Juta Street, Braamfontein. The VR production was developed by Alt-Reality, one of the start-up companies we are incubating. It will be launched as part of the annual Fak’ugesi Festival we host in Tshimologong,” says Dwolatzky, who has personally funded part of the production.
The production involved a collaboration between VR production house AltReality and archaeologists Tammy Hodgskiss (Evolutionary Studies Institute, Wits) and Lara Mallen (Origins Centre). The music score has been created by Jill Richards, with indigenous instruments performed by Mpho Molikeng.
Barry Dwolatzky (Director of Tshimologong) and Steven Sack (Director of Origins Centre) have had lengthy discussions about how to connect the work of Tshimologong with that of the Origins Centre and Dwolatzky has donated some of the funding himself to enable this production. The National Institute of Health Stroke Scale (NIHSS) also contributed through a programme at the Origins Centre that they have funded, which looks for ways to diversify narratives.
The VR installation will make part of a permanent display at the Origins Centre. It will launch at the Origins Centre on 25th September 2017.
Details
Fak’ugesi launch
Date: 14 September 2016
Time: 12h30
Venue: Tshimologong Digital Innovation Hub, Braamfontein
Origins launch
Date: 25 September 2017
Time: 10:00 – 16:HOO
Venue: Origins Centre, Wits University
(Hu)man vs. Machine
- Schalk Mouton
In a world controlled and dominated by robots, is there still space for humans?
We've all seen this movie before: Man builds machine. Machine starts to speak. Man gets into trouble. Then, the variations start: Machine starts to cry (or grin wickedly). Machine saves man. Or kills him (and returns in the sequel to kill the man again).
The Fourth Industrial Revolution is upon us and everyone is afraid. Computers, robots, Artificial Intelligence (AI) and other yet-to-be invented technologies are about to change our lives.
In the near future, you may not have to drive yourself to work (because your car will do the driving, and you may not have a job anyway); your fridge will order your food (if it doesn’t already); and your car will book itself in for a service – and negotiate and approve the fee – without you even knowing about it.
Researchers at Wits are finding more and more unique and interesting ways to employ technology and AI in the workplace and to improve people’s lives and well-being. The Wits Centre for Mechanised Mining Systems provides key support to mines undergoing mechanisation, while, in the Faculty of Health Sciences, researchers have found ways to control a robotic arm with the brain, or a wheelchair by using eye movement. They have also used the Vestibulo-Occular Reflex (an impulse our eyes use daily unbeknownst to us that fixates our vision while we move our head) to control the mouse cursor on a computer game.
In this increasingly technology-driven world, our future seems uncertain. With robots and machines doing more of the tasks that we are supposed to do – and in many cases doing it better – the question arises of where we fit into this future. Lists of jobs that become obsolete are published at increasingly frequent rates, and every week there are new jobs that are red listed. Are we turning into lap dogs, existing only to be served by – and to provide entertainment to – robots?
While there are genuine concerns about possible job losses in the Fourth Industrial Revolution, Professor Andrew Thatcher, Chair of Industrial and Organisational Psychology at Wits, says that we are naturally built to make use of technology, and there could be more potential benefits than threats in this new world. “Using technology is literally built into our DNA,” says Thatcher. “Introducing, designing and implementing technology is a very integral part of who we are as human beings. In fact, a large portion of people’s jobs is about coming up with the right technology, designing, building and implementing the new technology, and teaching people how to use different technology.”
While the automation of the workplace might cost some workers jobs, the mechanization of industrial workplaces, like mines, can benefit in a variety of ways, including a safer and healthier working environment; increased productivity and improved profitability; better opportunities for more fulfilling work; a more satisfactory working environment for women; and technological challenges that attract skilled people to the industry. Thatcher believes that the changes technology brings are a natural process and that while some jobs might be lost, new technologies will create much more jobs in the process.
“Change that technology brings have happened right through the ages. If you go right back to early humans, in the Palaeolithic age, we went from running around trying not to get eaten and picking and eating what fruits we could get hold of, to tool use, and that changed the different tasks that we undertook,” says Thatcher. “In fact, tool use is a very important part of our own human evolution, so as we go through the ages, we see tech changing. We don’t see the banging of two rocks together as being tech, but at the time that was advanced technology. Nowadays we don’t see computers as technology, but in the mid- to late 1970s it was radically changing the way work was being done. Computers created many jobs.”
Like Thatcher, Dr Christopher Wareham, a Lecturer in Bioethics and Moral Philosophy in the Steve Biko Centre for Bioethics in the Faculty of Health Sciences, believes the revolution will benefit society. “There is an over-emphasis on potential harm,” he says.
Wareham doesn’t believe that our world will become a place where we become completely redundant and served by an army of robots. However, should we, at some stage, be in a position to build a robot well enough to have sufficient “human” abilities, we would be obliged to consider its interests in the same way that we consider the interests of humans. “It would be similar to creating a person or a child,” he says.
Wareham explains that on some definitions, you don’t have to be a human to qualify as a “person”, and not all humans automatically qualify as being persons. The definition of a person is one of the most controversial areas in moral philosophy. Wareham defines a person as an entity capable of “reflective self-control”. This requires, firstly, the ability to grasp and apply moral reasoning and secondly, the ability to regulate one’s behaviour in light of those reasons. “This is controversial, since it may exclude mentally impaired human beings and perhaps infants from being categorised as full persons,” he says.
By this definition, it may be possible for robots with the right abilities to be classified as persons. “It is important that we start looking at this type of vision of how we interact with robots,” he says. “If we create a new form of sentient being on the planet, we should treat that being in the same way we should behave towards other sentient beings. The current mistreatment of animals shows how we may go badly wrong in the unethical treatment of sentient beings. Hopefully, we will treat them better than we currently treat animals.”
This could include the right to a decent existence, but with that right there are responsibilities. With robots or cars having increasingly automated capacities, who would be liable should a robot kill someone? Or, more realistically, if a self-driven car runs someone over?
“This issue is mostly under discussion in most jurisdictions, and legal principles are still being developed,” says Professor Pamela Andanda from the Wits School of Law. “The common approach is to automatically hold the insurer liable if there is no evidence of defect, that would point to the default manufacturer’s liability, or failure of the owner to update the software, or authorising inappropriate use that would lead to the owner’s liability.”
But, back to the question: If there are going to be machines that do everything better than us, where do we fit in?
Both Thatcher and Wareham say that, as we are social beings, this is where our future lies. In being social.
“ATM banking is more accurate and quicker than a human bank teller, and we can do our banking over the phone. Yet, we still want to have someone at the other end of a phone line to complain to in order to get the sense that they understand,” says Thatcher. “Similarly, while a computer can fly an aeroplane much better, and it would probably be safer for computers to fly our planes, nobody would get into an aeroplane while knowing there is no pilot. We need to be assured that there is someone in control that values their own life as much as we value ours.”
Wareham believes that the new economy will become more social, with people filling roles that require social interaction, like bar tenders. But, is there enough of a market for that?
The Fourth Industrial Revolution will create many new jobs, believes Thatcher. However, these jobs will not necessarily be where they are now. People might have to reskill themselves, or even move to another country. "If you move the job within the same country, it creates a certain set of problems, but you create another level of problem if you move it across national borders,” he says.
This is a particular concern for a country like South Africa, with low education levels and few tech skills. “What ends up happening is that the automation comes from the United States, Japan or Europe, which means that the people here in South Africa lose jobs because they are not involved in the design or implementation of the automation or the training of the automation,” he says. “As a society, we do not need to be scared of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, but as a country we do need to be concerned about our role in the future of the global knowledge economy, to ensure that we are active creators and participants rather than passive users of new technologies.”
Read more about the interface between humanity and technology in Wits' new research magazineCURIOSITY, theiHumanedition.
Light to break bandwidth ceiling
- Wits University
The rise of big data and advances in information technology has serious implications for our ability to deliver sufficient bandwidth to meet the growing demand.
Andrew Forbes, Distinguished Professor in the Wits School of Physics and Head of the Structured Light Laboratory, and collaborators, are looking at alternative sources that will be able to take over where traditional optical communications systems are likely to fail in future.
“The team demonstrated over 100 patterns of light used in an optical communication link, potentially increasing the bandwidth of communication systems by 100 times,” says Forbes.
Traditional optical communication systems modulate the amplitude, phase, polarisation, colour and frequency of the light that is transmitted. Despite these technologies, it is predicted that a bandwidth ceiling will be reached in the near future.
“But light also has a ‘pattern’ – the intensity distribution of the light – that is, how it looks on a camera or a screen. Since these patterns are unique, they can be used to encode information,” he explains. “Future bandwidth can be increased by precisely the number of patterns of light that we are able to use. Ten patterns mean 10 times increase in existing bandwidth, as 10 new channels would emerge for data transfer.”
Currently, modern optical communication systems use only one pattern. This is due to technical hurdles in how to pack information into these patterns of light, and how to get the information out again. The team showed data transmission with over 100 patterns of light, exploiting three degrees of freedom in the process.
“We used digital holograms written to a small liquid crystal display and showed that it is possible to have a hologram encoded with over 100 patterns in multiple colours,” says Forbes. “This is the highest number of patterns created and detected on such a device to date. We have effectively shown that packing more information into light has the potential to increase bandwidth by 100 times.”
The next stage is to move out of the laboratory and to demonstrate the technology in a real-world system. The approach can be used in both free-space and optical fibre networks.
In a related study, Forbes and his fellow Wits physicists demonstrated that real-time error correction in quantum communications is possible. “This has tremendous implications for fast and secure data transfer in the future and will aid technological advances that seek to establish more secure quantum communication links over long distances,” says Forbes.
“Essentially, the research demonstrates that sometimes Nature cannot tell the difference between the quantum and the classical (or real) worlds and that a grey area exists between the two worlds called ‘classical entanglement’. By working in this grey area between the classical and the quantum, we can show fast and secure data transfer over real-world links.”
Read more about the interface between humanity and technology in Wits' new research magazineCURIOSITY, theiHuman edition.
Researchers demonstrate quantum teleportation of patterns of light
- Wits University
Technique paves the way for high-bit-rate secure long distance quantum communication.
Nature Communications today published research by a team comprising Scottish and South African researchers, demonstrating entanglement swapping and teleportation of orbital angular momentum “patterns” of light. This is a crucial step towards realising a quantum repeater for high-dimensional entangled states.
Quantum communication over long distances is integral to information security and has been demonstrated in free space and fibre with two-dimensional states, recently over distances exceeding 1200 km between satellites. But using only two states reduces the information capacity of the photons, so the link is secure but slow. To make it secure and fast requires a higher-dimensional alphabet, for example, using patterns of light, of which there are an infinite number. One such pattern set is the orbital angular momentum (OAM) of light. Increased bit rates can be achieved by using OAM as the carrier of information. However, such photon states decay when transmitted over long distances, for example, due to mode coupling in fibre or turbulence in free space, thus requiring a way to amplify the signal. Unfortunately such “amplification” is not allowed in the quantum world, but it is possible to create an analogy, called a quantum repeater, akin to optical fibre repeaters in classical optical networks.
An integral part of a quantum repeater is the ability to entangle two photons that have never interacted – a process referred to as “entanglement swapping”. This is accomplished by interfering two photons from independent entangled pairs, resulting in the remaining two photons becoming entangled. This allows the establishment of entanglement between two distant points without requiring one photon to travel the entire distance, thus reducing the effects of decay and loss. It also means that you don’t have to have a line of sight between the two places.
An outcome of this is that the information of one photon can be transferred to the other, a process called teleportation. Like in the science fiction series, Star Trek, where people are “beamed” from one place to another, information is “teleported” from one place to another. If two photons are entangled and you change a value on one of them, then other one automatically changes too. This happens even though the two photons are never connected and, in fact, are in two completely different places.
In this latest work, the team performed the first experimental demonstration of entanglement swapping and teleportation for orbital angular momentum (OAM) states of light. They showed that quantum correlations could be established between previously independent photons, and that this could be used to send information across a virtual link. Importantly, the scheme is scalable to higher dimensions, paving the way for long-distance quantum communication with high information capacity.
Background:
Present communication systems are very fast, but not fundamentally secure. To make them secure researchers use the laws of Nature for the encoding by exploiting the quirky properties of the quantum world. One such property is entanglement. When two particles are entangled they are connected in a spooky sense: a measurement on one immediately changes the state of the other no matter how far apart they are. Entanglement is one of the core resources needed to realise a quantum network.
Yet a secure quantum communication link over long distance is very challenging: Quantum links using patterns of light languish at short distances precisely because there is no way to protect the link against noise without detecting the photons, yet once they are detected their usefulness is destroyed. To overcome this one can have a repeating station at intermediate distances – this allows one to share information across a much longer distance without the need for the information to physically flow over that link. The core ingredient is to get independent photons to become entangled. While this has been demonstrated previously with two-dimensional states, in this work the team showed the first demonstration with OAM and in high-dimensional spaces.
Paper Abstract:
High-bit rate long distance quantum communication is an mooted technology for future communication networks and relies on high-dimensional quantum entanglement as a core resource. While it is known that spatial modes of light provide an avenue for high-dimensional entanglement, the ability to transport such quantum states robustly over long distances remains challenging. To overcome this, entanglement swapping may be used to generate remote quantum correlations between particles that have not interacted, the core ingredient of a quantum repeater, akin to repeaters in optical fibre networks. Here we demonstrate entanglement swapping of multiple orbital angular momentum states of light. Our approach does not distinguish between different anti-symmetric states, and thus entanglement swapping occurs for several thousand pairs of spatial light modes simultaneously. This work represents the first step towards a quantum network for high-dimensional entangled states and provides a test bed for fundamental tests of quantum science.
Q&A about Watson, the iHuman supercomputer
- Refilwe Mabula
In 2011, a faceless, emotionless voice named Watson famously defeated two of the greatest champions of Jeopardy!, an American TV gameshow.
The victory of Watson, a cognitive computing system developed by IBM, wowed the Tech industry. Watson can answer questions posed in natural language. Watson can understand all forms of data, interact naturally with people, and learn and reason at scale. Artificial Intelligence (AI) is on the rise and more companies are relying on AI for cognitive solutions to complex problems.
Refilwe Mabula spoke to Andrew Quixley, IBM’s Watson Platform Sales Leader in Africa, to learn more about this super system named after the tech giant’s first CEO, Thomas J. Watson.
How does Watson understand human language?
Watson’s ability to extract meaning from language manifests in three ways. Firstly, through understanding the intent of what somebody is saying, Watson can extract intention from a statement or question.
Secondly, Watson understands emotions.Watson is trained to detect a series of emotions and uses these to respond accordingly. Humans can respond intuitively to each other because we have emotions of our own and empathy. We know how to respond to frustration, for example, something a machine is usually unable to detect. Watson can, however.
Thirdly, Watson has a handle on humans through words. The words we use when we write indicate something about our personality. Watson can take a handwriting sample or a sample of you speaking and determine your personality from your word choice and verbal expression.
Which languages does Watson understand?
Watson is being trained to communicate with people in their native languages as a native speaker would. This means being able to understand idioms, metaphors, and turns of phrase unique to a language. Originally Watson reached an audience of 400 million English language speakers. Today Watson also understands Arabic, Brazilian, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, and Spanish. Watson also has conversation
Watson also has conversation and language translation capabilities such as Dutch, Traditional Chinese, and Simplified Chinese, for companies looking to build conversational agents or chatbots.
How old is Watson?
In the ‘90s, we set ourselves a challenge of beating one of the world’s greatest chess players and we developed a computing system called Deep Blue. The rise of big data – 2.5 billion gigabytes of data are created daily – and the world’s need to make sense of it ultimately resulted in Watson.
In competing in Jeopardy! Watson demonstrated that it was possible for systems to understand how human beings communicate with each other. Watson is on track to reach 1 billion people by the end of 2017.
Where can we find Watson?
Watson is a cloud-based cognitive service that can be embedded in anything digital. Access Watson from your home, phone, or office – anywhere you have an internet connection. Learn more at www.ibm.com/watson.
Read more about the interface between humanity and technology in Wits' new research magazineCURIOSITY, theiHuman edition.
Death of the chalkboard and the demise of the sage on the stage
- Deborah Minors
The launch of a high-tech eZone, eFundanathi – “Learn with Us”, is set to revolutionise teaching and learning at Wits.
In a vast hall that previously housed sewing machines, a student scribbles on a wall and Harry Potter emerges. Next door, in a former domestic science lab, students in hospital greens lounge on bright bean-bags and fixate on a wall-mounted monitor. Adjacent to them someone extracts a prosthetic limb from a 3D printer. In a keyhole-shaped pod, two heads bob in muted debate while alongside, a couple wrestles with an X-Box. These aren’t lazy Millennials loafing – they are Wits students in the classroom of the future and the future is now.
Accessing a digital playground
The eZone and eFundanathi (learn with us) team is the brainchild of Paula Barnard, an Occupational Therapist and PhD candidate who lectures eLearning (educational technologies) at Wits. A joint initiative of the School of Therapeutic Sciences and the School of Education, the eZone is a physical learning space that uses cutting-edge technology and advanced eLearning tools to deliver education that prepares students for the 21st Century.
“South Africa needs trained healthcare and other professionals but escalating costs inhibit access for students who cannot afford fees and textbooks. Furthermore, increasing student numbers impact lecturer-student ratios and actual space. As a physical learning space, the eZone creates a platform for transformation and responds to the call for curriculum renewal and transformative pedagogy,” says Barnard.
The eZone is equipped with broadband Wi-Fi, 80 laptops, 20 iPads, and 20 Galaxy tablets. Here students can connect to Skype or Google Hangouts and interact with academic experts worldwide instantly. There’s a split projector on the wall that enables group learning by reflecting multiple images posted by students simultaneously, for comparison and discussion. There are GoPros for students to take into the field for assignments and other content development so that they can edit the footage.
eLearning has been lauded internationally for dramatically transforming the teaching and learning space. Through eLearning, study costs are significantly reduced, student access to learning materials improves, and the teaching environment allows for rapid innovation.
Sibusiso Moya, a third-year occupational therapy student, says: “The eZone is a place where one can explore the yet undiscovered gems of technology-based learning and medical practice – not the proverbial 3D-interactive image in which one learns or attempts to learn from when faced with Anatomy. This is a space I feel that one can explore other elements to their interests [and] not just the baseline degree. You can test the waters of an unaffordable interest.”
eLearning ebb and flow
Classroom configuration is central to eLearning. The eZone has a ‘cave space’ for solitary introspection while colourful bean-bags stimulate ‘cave opportunities’ for informal interaction. Hexagonal storage seating can be dislocated and relocated for fluidity of teaching and learning. The eZone walls are whiteboard marker friendly so Harry Potter can be erased quicker than you can say “Expelliarmus!”
“Furniture can be configured to different contexts so that students feel comfortable in their space. Concentration is enhanced when movement happens. What’s more, students are actively creating content rather than simply passively absorbing what a lecturer is saying,” says Barnard.
Professor Patricia McInerney is a nurse and Associate Professor in the Centre for Health Science Education. She co-published a paper on teaching and learning theories and teaching methods in the Health Sciences. McInerney is Acting Director of the Centre for Learning, Teaching, and Development (CLTD) at Wits.
“In some faculties, eLearning strategies are used as an adjunct to help students understand the material, and in others the sole method of delivery is online. While technology is great in helping students learn and in getting education to greater numbers, teachers must remain the human face behind the technology,” says McInerney.
Blended learning and the new pedagogy
The eZone marks a shift in pedagogy towards new models of applied knowledge and learning for a high-tech world. But people remain central. Blended learning integrates face-to-face and online learning activities to deliver a comprehensive curriculum. For Barnard, an Inspiring Fifty Women in Technology Africa 2017 nominee, there is more to it.
“The eZone allows for true connectivity where students can learn together, in a tethered community of practice, where the lecturer guides their learning path. They can access global experts instantly, live stream into clinical placements anywhere, and pose questions to each other or others elsewhere to develop new ideas and knowledge to meet the needs of our communities. It’s about taking learning out of the classroom and into the real world, even if you can’t leave the classroom,” she says.
Barnard’s PhD focuses on the integration and uptake of blended learning in undergraduate occupational therapy. In 2014, she co-authored a paper entitled The Influence of Blended Learning on Student Performance in an Undergraduate Occupational Therapy Curriculum.
“Change is scary, especially when technology, digital immigrants [lecturers] and digital natives [students] teach and learn. The body of knowledge is changing – a student is going to Google something you say in class and challenge you. This new pedagogy provides students and lecturers with the opportunity to learn, unlearn and relearn,” says Barnard.
Are lecturers obsolete?
“No. You’re still teaching and you’re still crafting the learning process. But now teachers must be more artful at creating knowledge,” says Barnard. “We need to build continual curiosity in our students and that’s a learning experience that’s different to the sage on the stage.”
Read more about digital innovation and the interface between humanity and tech in Wits' new research magazine, CURIOSITY, theiHumanedition.
Human rights in a digital world
- Reshma Lakha-Singh
Digital access itself does not untangle past inequalities. In many cases, it may even increase inequality.
Thandeka Mavuso drowns the sounds of the vacuum cleaner by listening with her earplugs to Kaya FM streaming on her mobile phone. She calls her nephew, Sibusiso, at 3pm every day, using WhatsApp, after the school transport drops him at home in Orlando East, Soweto. When the need arises, Thandeka transfers money to family members during the week, using her mobile phone. She has access to the uncapped WiFi in her employer’s home from Monday to Friday. Over the weekend, she goes cold turkey with data. It is a saving of R350 a month in data and airtime costs from her modest monthly salary.
The right to swipe
Access to the internet as a basic human right has become more relevant as key services that enable basic human rights increasingly work off the internet. As Thandeka’s lifestyle evolves, so too, must the definition and scope of her human rights. In Internet Freedom – a Positive Right to Internet Access, Indra de Lanerolle, leader of the South African Network Society’s Research Project at Wits Journalism, comments:
“The Constitution protects the right to freedom of expression – a basic human right to communicate and to receive information and ideas. We have to consider that internet access is now a requirement for that right to be realised.”
De Lanerolle adds that there is a contradiction in freedom of expression as we begin to see both the opportunity of the internet to extend these freedoms and the reality of the internet as constraining them. “Historically, services and jobs would be found in the newspapers. Communication networks have now converged around the internet and it is the means through which everything happens.”
Still dialling up...
Although digital access intends to help people break free from historical disadvantages, the opportunity for digital access cannot be disentangled from pre-existing social and economic inequalities. This is according to Professor Jason Cohen, Head of Information Systems at Wits and his colleagues Thomas Grace and Jean-Marie Bancilhon. In a paper titled Digitally Connected Living and Quality of Life: An Analysis of the Gauteng City-Region, South Africa, the authors use data collected from the 2013 Quality of Life survey conducted by the Gauteng City-Region Observatory to examine the relationship between quality of life and the extent to which individuals are digitally connected. The dataset covered 27 490 individuals living in the Gauteng City-Region and helped the researchers better understand the interface of connectivity with aspects of inclusion and exclusion.
“All things being equal means that being more digitally connected provides a better quality of life, but the likelihood of being digitally connected is only if you earned more and had access to a disposable income. A signal to us in this data was that digital inequality co-exists with other forms of inequality,” says Cohen.
The devices for digitally connected living typically consist of personal computers and mobile technologies such as tablets, cellular phones or smartphones. Network infrastructure is needed to enable devices to connect with each other and this includes access to fixed-line broadband and fibre networks, and/or wireless networks which include WiFi hotspots and mobile networks.
“Having access to these technologies is a function of one’s existing socioeconomic power,” explains Cohen. “Those who are not connected are locked out of the advantages enjoyed by those who are connected. Government services, financial services, access to health information, and employment opportunities are all going online. There is the potential to widen inequalities. This does not mean that we must stop moving forward with digital access and innovation, but it does mean that access should not remain a function of one’s socioeconomic privilege.”
Digital privilege
Cohen stresses that existing socioeconomic conditions may impact the way a person is able to use technology. “Even with access, inequality can still widen if there are unequal digital literacy skill levels and unequal opportunities for how people use the internet and for what purposes. The problem is more complicated than we think.”
He adds that digital autonomy is another dimension of digital inequality. “Your ability to have unrestricted access that is not bound by time, proximity and money is another form of digital privilege. It becomes more difficult to embrace digitally connected living without digital autonomy. But, for many, access is restricted by location and by time. So the idea that people can just use technology to break through historical disadvantages is unrealistic.”
Access to digitally connected living is supposed to halt the perpetuation of social and economic inequalities and provide opportunities for people to improve their quality of life. However, digitally connected living depends on – and cannot be disentangled from – pre-existing opportunities for social and economic inclusion.
#DataMustFall
In 2016, former Metro FM and 5FM DJs Tbo Touch and Gareth Cliff addressed Parliament’s telecommunications and postal services portfolio committee about the high costs of data in South Africa. This resulted in a nationwide call for local mobile networks to decrease the price of their data. In June 2017, the #DataMustFall hashtag returned to Twitter, with calls for a social media blackout to protest the high costs of data.
The Minister of Telecommunications and Postal Services tasked the Independent Communications Authority of South Africa and the Competition Commission to determine the extent of competition amongst mobile operators, as competition is the primary tool to reduce costs.
‘Internet for All’, an international project of the World Economic Forum, has partnered with the South African government to bring internet access to millions of South Africans through public-private collaboration. Aligned to government’s National Development Plan and South Africa Connect, it will address the barriers that prevent universal internet access. The project is already operational in Argentina, Rwanda, and Uganda.
City of Joburg and City of Tshwane initiatives to provide WiFi hotspots have assisted in improving the quality of life of users. However, experts argue that initiatives around access alone are insufficient. Digital skills and autonomy of use must be addressed and differences in purposes of use should result from free choice, rather than socioeconomic circumstances.
Read more about digital innovation and the interface between humanity and tech in Wits' new research magazine, CURIOSITY, theiHumanedition.
The future of work
- Imraan Valodia
Tech advances are already impacting skilled white-collar and unskilled workers whereas the digital revolution affected mainly semi-skilled, blue-collar workers.
The Fourth Industrial Revolution is here. Across the world, communities are adjusting to new ways of doing business, consuming goods, socialising and conducting research through technology. The sheer speed and scope of continuous technological development probably mean that there is no stopping this new wave of development, but at the same time, it is crucial that we remain vigilant about the possible repercussions that may arise from introducing new technology. For our society, two issues – job security and inequality – are especially important.
As is the case with all new innovations, there are opportunities for interesting new developments that benefit humanity (technology could greatly assist in areas of health, conflict, and the environment for example) but also threats of bringing about significant negative consequences such as under-employment, large job losses, smaller proportions of the workforce having access to jobs, increased inequality and a rise in poverty.
The International Labour Organization has taken a particular interest in the labour market consequences of this revolution and has established a multi-year consultative project to focus on the Future of Work. This issue topped the agenda at a panel discussion in Geneva this year, where I raised the following points:
It is important to acknowledge that the experiences of technology are very different for developing and developed nations. Rich countries are having discussions around work-life balance and using technology to ensure that workers have more leisure time because of the flexible work arrangements that technology allows. This is unlikely to be the case for most workers in South Africa and most other developing countries. Given our extremely high levels of unemployment and the extent of low-paid jobs (almost half of workers in South Africa earn less than R3 500), it is very unlikely, except for a very small number of workers with high earnings, that the trade-off is between work and leisure. Instead, our society needs to provide much more, better-paid jobs.
Developments in society are controlled by us, through our policy and governance systems and by how we choose to use them. We cannot avoid technological advancements but we can decide how to maximise the benefits and minimise the drawbacks.
We have to acknowledge that technology will be disruptive. New advances are likely to result in extra costs for businesses as they adjust. There is also a chance that some of the advancements (particularly in the artificial intelligence arena) are going to replace human endeavours. Many of our large firms in the financial, mining and other sectors are likely to change the composition of their workforces over the coming decades. The focus must be on looking at innovative ways to ensure technology serves to support, rather than replace, workers.
We should carefully analyse what we mean by ‘work’. We tend to focus on paid work and completely ignore unpaid work, and the interactions between paid and unpaid work. The reality is that there is a gendered distribution of unpaid work, with a large number of women having to deal with the burdens of low-paid work and an unequal burden of unpaid care work.
In most developing countries, most jobs, especially for women, have over the last three decades been created in the informal economy. The conversation around technological advances must also look at work in the informal economy.
Technological change has different impacts on different groups. We need to understand how these new technological changes will impact our already high levels of inequality and understand what policies and mechanisms can ameliorate the costs on the most vulnerable sections of our population (who are unable to absorb these ‘shocks’), and how technology can lead to greater levels of equality.
This means that it is incumbent on us as academics, policymakers, and social partners to start urgently having conversations that talk to measures to protect and promote the Decent Work agenda. At the very least there should be measures to ensure that workers who are most vulnerable are protected by some basic standards. One of these is a national minimum wage that would guarantee an income which, although still below the living wage, is a significant increase for 47% of workers in the country in 2017. But there are other social measures such as a Basic Income Grant, which should be considered as protection mechanisms for the most vulnerable in society.
Wits has recently launched an interdisciplinary five-year project that focuses on inequality in South Africa. It seeks to:
identify the key areas where inequality shapes the life chances of individuals across their lives, such as education, health, spatial geography, food security, and the economy,
understand how power and inequality are produced and reproduced within these areas, as well as how power and inequality intersect across these areas,
imagine an alternative configuration of power that generates affirmative state action, provides greater equality of access to relevant resources, and fundamentally alters the structure of power in society, and
develop an agenda for inclusive growth of productive forces.
A key component of this project will be to analyse technological developments in the country and their impact on the working class and the poor. Given South Africa’s complex current labour market challenges, we as a society need to carefully consider this debate, engage with the research in the area, and develop plans for the future. Technological change is not a process that is independent of social norms and regulations. Instead, these social norms and regulations fundamentally shape both the process of technological change and its outcomes.
The worst response would be to assume a one-size-fits-all approach that is based on how wealthy countries adjust to this new world work order. South Africa has a combination of serious structural and economic problems; massive inequality, high levels of poverty, and unemployment make us far more vulnerable to these inevitable changes. It also means that we need to start having these important conversations in order to ensure that we are the drivers, and not the responders, of the Fourth Industrial Revolution.
Professor Imraan Valodia is the Dean of the Wits Faculty of Commerce, Law, and Management. He is an NRF B-rated researcher and holds a doctorate in Economics.
The mud beneath the digital magic
- Robert Thornton
The bones of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, like every industrial revolution in the past, come from the dirt under our feet.
The gold that you see at the end of your charging cable is a good example. If you live in Johannesburg, dig a hole and you will almost certainly have gold in your spade. With the right skill, time, and knowledge, it is entirely possible to refine that to pure gold with nothing more than what you already have in your house and garden. Tens of thousands of people do this every day in Johannesburg, although you will only hear of them on the news when some of the so-called ‘illegal’ miners die underground. Without them, and those like them all over the world today, the digital world and the Fourth Industrial Revolution would struggle to exist.
The stuff that makes your cellphone do amazing things comes from the mud of rivers in the Congo and India, from the high mountains of Bolivia, and from the Amazon lowlands. The rocks that are scratched and blasted out of remote mines provide elements that few people have heard of – tantalum, tellurium, caesium, neodymium, and other rare earth elements. We all know about gold, silicon, titanium and other more common materials that make up the backbone of this new age, but these, too, are extracted from the Earth at great cost.
A lot of it is ugly, unregulated, unprotected, more than dangerous and sometimes criminal. At present, we do not know how much of these essential elements come from the backbreaking and often lethal work of artisanal miners – people who work with little more than a spade, pick and bucket. Unless you know exactly what to look for, you will not see this industry that provides a living for hundreds of thousands across the Highveld and other gold-bearing regions. Our research shows that these manual methods manage to refine almost 100% of the gold out of the ore. Industrial processes are still not capable of doing this.
Indigenous African mining and metallurgical technologies have existed for more than a thousand years in southern Africa. We are exploring how contemporary artisanal and small-scale miners do this today and comparing this with what was done in the past. Its impact on people and societies is gradually coming into view. Government policy that continues to ignore it or seeks to criminalise it is increasingly short-sighted. This is as much a part of the southern African future as it was in the past.
Presenting both challenges and opportunities, artisanal and small-scale mining provides an increasingly substantial portion of the world’s supply. Artisanal mining and metallurgical technology compete successfully with highly-capitalised industrial mining. It requires almost no capital investment but requires hard work, skill, and courage. While underground extraction of ore attracts the most attention, the bulk of the labour is consumed in processing ore above ground by large communities of workers including men, women, and children.
In short, the Fourth Industrial Revolution relies substantially on mines and mineral deposits worked by hand with little more than Stone Age technologies. The products travel along secret networks that are much like the “Silk Routes” or spice trading networks of the ancient world. These materials move directly from teams of miners’ small villages into the global digital and technological economy.
The miners themselves are directly connected to global markets through their cellphones. They are highly aware of their own skill and value and negotiate prices for their products. While they are ‘illegal’ in terms of South African law which protects the big mines, they are certainly not criminal. They have pride and they are resilient in the face of police harassment and criminal exploitation.
‘High tech’ has evolved slowly from the first iteration of the theoretical digital computer in the mind of Alan Turning, through the first computers built of vacuum tube ‘valves’, and ultimately through to the vast digital storehouses that make the global internet possible. But the complex chemistry and physics of the materials on which all of it depends still comes from human labour and the artisanal skill of people who are both willing and able to take it out of the Earth and provide it to the global markets.
Associate Research Professor Robert Thornton is an ethnographer and cultural and medical anthropologist. His current research focuses on African indigenous knowledge and practices of traditional healing. His new research focus is ‘Metals, Magic, and Medicine’, which explores the history of traditional healing in the South African archaeological and ethnographic context. This involves studying early mining and high-temperature technologies in relation to ritual sites and healing practices.
Read more about the Fourth Industrial Revolution and the interface between humanity and technology in Wits' new research magazine CURIOSITY, the iHuman edition.
Tech as eyes and ears
- Refilwe Mabula
Wits alumnus, Elash Mistry was elated when he became the first blind person in Africa to be admitted as a fellow of the Actuarial Society of SA in 2017.
During his time at Wits, almost 20 years ago, Mistry was assisted by Rykie Woite, then of the Wits Disability Unit, who transcribed Mistry’s material from print to electronic format. Fellow students read and recorded Mistry’s lecture notes onto “ancient” cassette tapes and he would transcribe them into braille. This was tedious for Mistry and Woite because of the editing required to adapt the study materials. Mistry later used screenreading software and raised graphics that Woite created for him to access his notes, study, and write examinations.
Fast forward to 2017 when an array of advanced assistive technologies are available to improve the functional capabilities of students with visual, physical, learning, and hearing disabilities, and enable equal access to education. Dr Anlia Pretorius, Head of the Wits Disability Rights Unit (DRU) says technology is an integral part of her unit to facilitate easier learning for students with disabilities.
“Technology is changing the world and for our students with disabilities, it can be life-changing in that it can improve accessibility, break down barriers, allow access to information and provide greater independence. It forms a vital part of how the DRU is able to support our students and we are proud to have specialist computer centres at Wits, all of which are accessible and equipped with state-of-the-art assistive technologies,” she says.
Jermaine George, a blind fourth-year Bachelor of Music student, uses VoiceOver for his studies. This is a screen reader built into his MacBook, which converts text into speech and allows him to work on his computer. George, who has been blind since birth, is a “speed freak” who prefers technology to braille.
“Braille is a very slow medium and I need to get things done immediately. I don’t have time to sit and read something first and then process it, and then think about it and then do something about it. I just do everything electronically,” he says.
Although George is able to enjoy technology like sighted people, mobility on the large Wits Braamfontein East campus remains challenging for him and other students with visual and physical disabilities. To address this, the Joburg Centre for Software Engineering (JCSE) at Wits launched the Wits Campus Personal Navigator Challenge in 2017. The Challenge aims to find digitally innovative ways to assist students with visual and physical disabilities by providing them with a ‘personal navigator’ that guides them from one campus location to another. Professor Barry Dwolatzky, Director of the JCSE, notes that most students at the DRU have mobility challenges and although most buildings on the Wits campuses have wheelchair ramps, it is still difficult for students with disabilities to move around.
“This unique navigation system may work independently or in conjunction with relevant existing or future systems with improved software, apps or maps, to provide visual or audible directions and information to the student. To do this, the proposed system might also use multiple sensors installed at key points on campus which will provide location information and alerts to a base unit installed on a walking cane, wheelchair or wearable device,” he says.
Andrew Sam, an Adaptive Technologist at the DRU, researches the latest ATs and trains students to use them. He says that although ATs for students with visual impairments have advanced, challenges remain for Deaf students.
“Supporting Deaf students with Sign Language is still difficult, as there are only a small number of interpreters who are qualified to sign at an academic level. Currently, technology is unable to reliably replicate Sign Language interpreting because, just as languages and dialects differ per region, the same applies for Sign Language,” he explains. “In addition to providing Sign Language interpreting, the DRU uses real-time captioning where spoken content is typed using a laptop and seen in real time by a student on another device like a tablet or smartphone.”
Assistive technologies used at the Wits Disability Rights Unit
Blind/partially blind students:
Screen reading software (Window-Eyes, Jaws, NVDA)
Screen magnifiers (ZoomText)
Braille displays
Braille embossers, printers and graphics printers
BraillePen (portable note taking smart device)
Software for Braille music
Eye-Pal reader (scanning device which converts printed text into speech)
Read & Write (software reading and highlighting content on the screen)
Dragon Naturally Speaking voice recognition software (speech to text software)
Screen reading software
Physical disabilities
Eye-trackers (device which allows users to control the mouse with their eyes)
Dragon Naturally Speaking voice recognition software (speech to text software)
Motorised wheelchairs
Adjustable furniture
Read more about the interface between humanity and technology in Wits' new research magazine CURIOSITY, the iHuman edition.
Wits to host first Deep Learning Indaba in Africa
- Wits University
The Indaba will bring leaders in machine learning and artificial intelligence to Wits University to teach and mentor students, researchers and entrepreneurs.
The first Deep Learning Indaba will take place at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa, from 10 – 15 September 2017.
Over five days, the Indaba will bring leaders in the fields of machine learning and artificial intelligence to Wits University to teach and mentor students, academics, researchers, technologists and entrepreneurs in the theory and practice of deep learning, one type of machine learning that uses deep neural networks and that is the basis of recent advances in text-to-speech systems, language translation and object recognition.
More than 300 attendees, hailing from 23 African countries, as well as from countries across the world, will participate in one of the largest machine learning teaching events globally. The Indaba aims to create a shared space to learn, teach, and to debate new developments in machine learning and artificial intelligence, and our African contributions to this scientific endeavour.
“Beyond the technical exchange, the Indaba will create opportunities for new research connections, to foster a better understanding of the variety of career paths in the field, and, we hope, through new friendships, perspectives and backgrounds, take the steps to realising a more diverse, racially-representative, and multicultural machine learning community,” says lead organiser of the Indaba, Shakir Mohamed, a Wits alumni and research scientist at DeepMind in the UK.
For Wits, the Indaba is an important opportunity to create a network of skilled individuals to solve problems and create new industries. “Remarkable centres of industry mushroom around strong, forward-looking research institutions such as Wits. There are many pressing challenges facing our continent and connecting with others throughout Africa and abroad helps the flow of knowledge into our country,” says Professor Ebrahim Momoniat, applied mathematician and the Dean of the Faculty of Science at Wits.
Speakers
The Indaba has attracted machine learning scientists from across the globe as speakers, including Nando de Freitas, Wits alumnus a lead research scientist at DeepMind. De Freitas is an authority in the field of machine learning, and in particular in the subfields of neural networks, Bayesian inference and Bayesian optimisation, and deep learning. He will be presenting a tutorial on aspects of convolutional neural networks at the Indaba.
George Konidaris, also a Wits alumnus, Assistant Professor at Brown University and Director of the Intelligent Robots Lab will also be teaching at the Indaba. Konidaris is a leading researcher at the intersection of robotics and machine learning and will be speaking about reinforcement learning, one of the topics in machine learning that addresses how artificial agents can learn from experience.
Richard Klein, Wits lecturer from the School of Computer Science and Applied Mathematics, will be speaking about recurrent neural networks. “My primary interest is in using machine learning and computer vision to support education and teaching endeavours. Using machine learning to visually understand how an audience is reacting to a speaker can help improve the quality of presentations and assist lecturers and presenters to better connect with their audience.”
Given the increasing focus on machine learning, the Indaba aims is to stimulate the participation of South Africans, and Africans more generally, within the research and innovation landscape surrounding deep learning and machine learning.
While African machine learning is a strong and varied field, African attendance and participation in internationally leading machine learning conferences is extremely low. This Indaba hopes to change as it is critical that Africans are the contributors, shapers and owners of the coming advances in machine learning.
Says Momoniat, “These are technologies that have the potential to empower our citizens and address many of the challenges facing our country and continent. The development of these skills needs to happen locally, to an international standard, so they can specifically target local problems. Conferences such as this are the key in forming and upskilling the local community of practitioners.”
New ultra-clean isotope geoscience laboratory opens up a new world of research
- Wits University
New laboratory will work closely with the University of Johannesburg to offer southern African scientists a local solution for isotope analysis.
Earth science research on the African continent just made a massive leapfrog into a new era with the launch of the state-of-the-art, ultra-clean Wits Isotope Geoscience Laboratory, known as the WIGL.
This laboratory, based in the School of Geosciences at Wits, offers scientists from a wide range of disciplines such as ecology, palaeontology, medicine and, of course, geosciences the opportunity to perform ultra-clean, contamination-free experiments that separate isotopes from Earth materials. “Isotopes, elements with variable numbers of neutrons, are incredibly powerful tools used to trace processes operating on the Earth,” says Dr Grant Bybee of the Wits School of Geosciences and Director of the WIGL. “Instead of shipping our samples to Europe at a huge cost in terms of time, money and resources, scientists in southern Africa will have a world-class facility on their doorstep.”
The elements and isotopes that this laboratory aims to separate are normally present in extremely low abundance in rocks, meteorites, fossils and water. “Elements like Pb, Sr, Cu, Zn are normally only present at the part per million or part per billion level in these materials and so it is crucial that we process these samples in an extremely clean and contamination-free environment,” says Bybee. “If not, researchers run the risk of contaminating precious samples with elements from the surroundings, obscuring the natural isotope signal of the samples.”
Normal air contains over 1 million particles cubic foot, but the complex air filtration system in WIGL, reduces this by about a million times to 1-10 particles per cubic foot. Along with a completely metal-free environment – everything in the lab is constructed of durable, acid-resistant, plastic – this air quality ensures that any sensitive samples processed in the WIGL remain contamination-free. “It would be an excellent place to work for those that suffer from allergies!” says Bybee. As you progress further into the laboratory, the environment gets cleaner and cleaner, ensuring that most sensitive chemical techniques aren’t jeopardised.
The laboratory took over a year to build, using high-tech components. Due to the sensitive nature of the laboratory, every single part had to be built from non-metallic material, and any unavoidable metal parts have to be carefully covered with plastic coating. In total, the WIGL cost just over R6 million to build, and was funded by Wits University.
The WIGL is made up of four separately sealed rooms, where the air quality and flow is carefully controlled. A working sample, like a crushed rock, would enter through the first room, where it would be weighed on an incredibly precise scale. It would then pass through a secure air-controlled hatch, where, in the second room, it would be dissolved in strong acid like hydrochloric acid and prepared for analysis in the third and fourth rooms. Special resins and chemical techniques allow the researchers to separate the elements of interest. Once this is completed, samples would be sent to an ultra-precise mass spectrometer at the Department of Geology at the University of Johannesburg, where the exact amount of each isotope would be measured. “The two labs at Wits and UJ have developed an incredibly strong collaboration aimed at advancing our understanding of Earth processes using high-quality isotope measurements,” says Bybee.
The use of elemental and isotopic analysis is extremely important in geosciences, where scientists study the composition, age and processes operating on the Earth. However, isotopes are also highly effective in other scientific fields such as medicine – for example in the diagnosis of cancer and bone diseases – and in palaeosciences for establishing the origin, movement patterns and diets of now extinct animals, including our human ancestors.
The WIGL builds on a strong a history of pioneering isotopic work at Wits University in which many ground-breaking techniques and ideas were generated. “This is a first for the geoscience community in South Africa and the WIGL team is geared up to facilitate and inspire the next generation of scientists to produce important, interdisciplinary science,” says Bybee.
SA students benefit from major digital electronics update at CERN
- Wits University
International scientists share knowledge with SA students and industry at a workshop, dedicated to the CERN electronics upgrade.
South African students and industry are benefiting from the major digital electronics challenge of upgrading the ATLAS Tile Calorimeter at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN.
The Tile Calorimeter of the ATLAS detector covers the central region of the detector and it is designed to measure the energy and position of particles that result from high-energy proton-proton collisions provided by the LHC. The Tile Calorimeter detects particles called hadrons, which are copiously produced in high-energy proton-proton collisions.Following the discovery of the Higgs boson in 2012, the LHC is developing a long-term plan to increase the intensity of the collisions. This is necessary to provide a lot more data with which to explore the Higgs boson and its coupling to other particles; the search for other bosons and other new particles. In 2016 the LHC delivered collisions with an intensity significantly surpassing the initial design. The LHC envisions major upgrades in the future that will increase the data available by about 100 times.
“The Tile Calorimeter will undergo a major replacement of its on- and off-detector electronics for the high luminosity programme of the LHC starting in 2026,” says Professor Bruce Mellado, who coordinates of the contribution to ATLAS by South Africa.
All signals will be digitised and then transferred to the off-detector electronics, where the signals will be reconstructed, buffered, and sent to the first level of the trigger at a rate of 40 MHz, or 40 million times every second. This will provide a better precision of the calorimeter signals used by the trigger system; will provide more information and will allow the development of more complex trigger algorithms.
Mellado and colleagues from the US and Europe organized the ATLAS Tile Calorimeter Upgrade week at iThemba Laboratories in Cape Town from March 15th to 17th, where scientists from around the world, working at the ATLAS experiment at CERN gathered to discuss the technicalities of the upgrade.
Sponsored by the Department of Science and Technology and the National Research Foundation, the event provided a unique opportunity for local students and industry to gain information and knowledge from highly respected scientists from around the world.
“The ATLAS upgrade represents a major challenge in digital electronics that South African scientists and industry are profiting from,” says Mellado. “The generation and real-time processing of digital signals forms the first stage of what is usually referred to as the Big Data problem. In the process of pursuing this type of complex problems, South African students encounter the opportunity to acquire unique skills, which are brought to the country.”
Local industry also profits from these activities. Based on a design developed for the upgrade of the off-detector electronics of the Tile Calorimeter, South African industry was able to manufacture in 2016 the most complex electronics board in the country to date.
The production of the board was possible thanks to a concerted effort in investing and innovating that now enables local industry to produce complex boards more efficiently and affordably.
The workshop was kicked off with an open session chaired by Mellado. The first speaker was the Director of iThemba Laboratories, Dr. Faiҫal Azaiez, who welcomed the participants and gave an overview of his vision for the laboratory and its international projection. The Director emphasized the commitment to support the development of instrumentation for South Africa. Daniel Dock, Managing Director, TraX Interconnect (Pty) Ltd, gave a presentation on the history and capabilities of the South African electronics industry. Dock gave an overview of the complexities behind the manufacturing of high-density electronics board, with emphasis on the techniques that had to be developed to manufacture the board for the ATLAS Tile Calorimeter.
The open session was concluded by a colloquium by Dr. Oleg Solovyanov, the Project Leader of the ATLAS Tile Calorimeter. Solovyanov reviewed the most important features of the detector and plans for the upgrade.
Studying the making of smart cities
- Deborah Minors
Professor Ronald Wall is an economic geographer and urban planner and the Johannesburg City Chair in Economic Development at Wits.
The City of Johannesburg initiated and funded the Chair, which focuses on applied results and the provision of strategic knowledge to inform the City’s policy-making.
Wall’s research explores themes of urban and regional competitiveness, foreign direct investment, multinational corporations, smart city studies, happiness economics, food security, and inequality.
“I conduct international studies on urban and regional economic development focusing on the interdependence of globalisation and urbanisation,” says Wall.
He applies Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and statistical techniques to databases that are concerned with economic networks (trade, corporate ownership and investment flows) in thousands of cities, as well as the urban characteristics of these cities – innovation levels, governance, inequality, labour and infrastructure.
Wall’s work is unique not only because it focuses on cities in the developing world, but because it observes cities as integral parts of global and regional economic systems.
“This is important to a city like Johannesburg as the research provides a relative, comparative understanding of the city’s power and position within the global, African and South African economy.”
This enables one to trace Johannesburg’s changing competitiveness in the world economy, as well as compare the determinants of this to thousands of other cities.
Biostatistics is the analysis and interpretation of data generated in the biological and health sciences to inform clinical or health policy and practice.
Professor Tobias Chirwa is a biostatistician in the School of Public Health at Wits and Head of the Division of Epidemiology and Biostatistics.
“In many African countries, there is a shortage of well-trained biostatisticians. The few people that are trained are often overwhelmed. To ensure that data is used to inform public health policy and practice for the benefit of the people in Africa, we need to prioritise training of African postgraduate biostatisticians who can provide the required analysis to a high standard,” says Chirwa.
Chirwa, who heads the School of Public Health at Wits from February 2017, is one of seven leading African researchers to receive a portion of a R70 million (£3.337-million) funding injection from the Wellcome Trust and the Department for International Development in the UK.
Funding to the amount of £46 million over five years was awarded through the DELTAS Africa scheme.
DELTAS is the Developing Excellence in Leadership, Training and Science Initiative, which aims to establish world class research environments at African universities, and training opportunities for the next generation of researchers.
Wits leads the sub-Saharan African Consortium for Advanced Biostatistical Training. This group of African and northern institutions will use the funding to develop a network of biostatisticians who will deliver statistical courses for biomedical researchers, develop and implement statistical theory to analyse health data, and create the framework for improved biostatistical skills among health researchers and academics in nine African countries.
Designer proteins, the new generation of HIV vaccines being put to the test
- Penny Moore and Lynn Morris
South Africa has made tremendous advances in providing lifesaving antiretroviral therapy for HIV infected people.
The country has the largest treatment programme in the world.
Despite this, the HIV epidemic continues to ravage key populations, especially young women. In 2016 there were more than 270,000 new infections in South Africa – a figure which has been fairly consistent in recent years.
This continued spread of the disease suggests that treatment will not ultimately end this epidemic. An HIV vaccine remains an urgent need.
Many HIV vaccines have already been tested, using approaches that have led to effective vaccines for other infectious diseases. A trial in Thailand in 2009 was the first HIV vaccine to show some protective effect. But the 31% protection it offered was too low to warrant a wider roll out.
Follow-up trials to try and confirm the results in the Thai trial are now underway, including a large scale study of 5 400 volunteers in South Africa.
While the world waits for the outcomes of these trials, researchers have turned to new strategies based on lessons learnt from studying the immune system of HIV-infected people. For example, researchers now know, in extraordinary detail, how the immune system of some HIV-infected people is able to make rare antibodies, called broadly neutralising antibodies.
When tested in the laboratory these antibodies are able to block various strains of HIV from across the world. These are precisely the types of antibodies that a vaccine should ideally elicit. And scientists are using their findings as a roadmap to develop the next generation of HIV vaccines.
Three new vaccine concepts, all based on cutting edge protein engineering, will shortly, or have already entered human trials and have the potential to revolutionise the HIV vaccine field.
Kickstarting the immune system
All humans have millions of B cells in their bodies that produce antibodies and protect them from an infection. But only a small number of these B cells have the potential to produce the broadly neutralising antibodies that fight the HIV virus.
In the first new concept, high-tech nanoprotein engineering has enabled scientists to develop a designer protein called eOD-GT8. The protein is specifically engineered to trigger these rare B cells, and turn them into the broadly neutralising antibodies.
In studies in mice, this “designer” protein was able to kickstart the process and set the immune system down the right pathway to fight the virus.
Over the next year eOD-GT8 will be tested in small-scale trials in humans to determine whether targeting these rare B cells is an effective way to generate the right kind of HIV antibodies.
Making a good mimic of HIV
A second challenge in HIV vaccine design has been to make a good mimic of the HIV proteins that broadly neutralising antibodies recognise.
This approach, of presenting the immune system with a close mimic of viral proteins, has been the basis of most vaccines, including the polio and hepatitis vaccines.
But the challenge with the HIV protein that is targeted by broadly neutralising antibodies is that it rapidly falls apart when it is produced in a laboratory. As a result, it is not a good mimic. For the past 10 years, scientists have tried to come up with new ways of preserving the complex structure of this HIV protein.
Only recently, using an African virus isolated many years ago, vaccine researchers have finally learned how to biologically “glue” this envelope protein together using chemical bonds, resulting in a good mimic of the protein as it exists on the virus.
This stable protein, called BG505.SOSIP has shown promise in vaccine studies in monkeys, where we now see better antibodies than with previous proteins.
BG505.SOSIP will also soon be tested in small-scale trials in Africa and the US to see whether humans also recognise this protein, and make antibodies that would be able to block virus infection.
Training the immune system
The third new approach is based on how antibodies and HIV change over time in infected people. Research in South Africa and in the US has shown that antibodies become “broader” over many years, through an “arms race” between the virus and the immune system. As antibodies attempt to stop the virus, it mutates to escape and changes its coat.
Newly emerging antibodies learn to recognise the different coats the virus has tried. In doing so, some antibodies become experts at recognising every form of HIV. Eventually this leads to antibodies able to recognise viruses from across the world, the broadly neutralising antibodies that vaccines aim to elicit.
In a trial that started in August, scientists in the US are using this knowledge to vaccinate volunteers with four different coat proteins representing viral changes, in the same order seen in an HIV infected person. The hope is that this will train the immune system to recognise many different viruses, so that in the event of a future virus exposure, these antibodies will provide broad protection against HIV infection.
Towards an AIDS-free future
The next two years will therefore be a critical phase for HIV vaccines. Not only will we learn whether more traditional approaches, such as the Thai vaccine, can be improved enough to roll out.
We will also learn whether these three entirely new concepts, the result of years of research by scientists across the world, can reshape the HIV prevention landscape and, hopefully, take us closer to ending the HIV pandemic.
Virtual reality breathes new life into African fossils, art and artefacts
- Tammy Hodgskiss
More digital avenues are being added to South Africa’s museums – and now the country has its first full VR exhibit.
Digital technology has become an integral part of our everyday lives. So it was only a matter of time before the ways people interact with the past and ancient artefacts in museum settings became digital, too.
The problem is that technology can be extremely expensive. Many museums just don’t have the funding to obtain, develop and maintain fancy devices or interactive digital gadgets. Some big European and North American museums, which receive millions of visitors each year, have been able to afford virtual reality (VR) and various other digital technologies. These are an appealing and popular element of the visitor experience.
For example, you can tour the British Museum in London using VR. Visitors to the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, DC can download an app to experience one of the exhibits in VR.
More digital avenues are being added to South Africa’s museums – and now the country has its first full VR exhibit. It will launch at the Origins Centre at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg on 25 September and will take visitors on a journey through hundreds of thousands of years of human history, art and innovation. I am a Middle Stone Age archaeologist and ochre specialist, and have been part of the team putting the exhibit together over the past four months.
Along the way, we’ve had to work out how to marry facts, interpretations, stories and technology. This hasn’t always been easy, but there have been a number of lessons along the way: most crucially, about the value of collaborative, interdisciplinary work to bring science to life.
Getting started
Steven Sack, the director of the Origins Centre and Professor Barry Dwolatzky, who runs the university’s Tshimologong Digital Precinct, were the exhibit’s initial champions. The precinct is a technology hub. Dwolatzky was so enthusiastic about the idea of VR at the Origins Centre that he personally donated money towards it. Armed with this and a grant from the National Institute of Humanities and Social Sciences, we got started.
The next step was to develop VR hardware – headsets loaded in the content we went on to produce. For this, we had to look beyond academia and bring in a team from Alt-Reality, a company in Johannesburg.
My role was to provide guidance on my own areas of expertise, and to act as a link between the Origins Centre and Professor Chris Henshilwood, for whom I work at the university’s Evolutionary Studies Institute. It was one of the institutes that provided a great deal of content for the VR exhibit.
Lara Mallen, a rock art specialist who was the curator at the Origins Centre, was a crucial part of the project: her knowledge of the centre’s displays and her intricate understanding of the rock art was vital in developing the content.
I bugged many of my peers in the Evolutionary Studies Institute, Rock Art Research Institute and School of Geography, Archaeology and Environmental Studies at Wits University as well as researchers at other institutions for their opinions and images. We also sourced video and digital content from their research that we could include in the VR exhibit. They were all intrigued and excited by the chance to share their work in a totally new, different form.
Then came the balancing act: what would work well in VR, how much content could we have and what was missing. It was a very organic and ever-changing process. We continually revised, cut and added content.
The visitor can chose what they want to see and what they want to learn more about. They can see (and hear) how people made stone tools and ground ochre 100,000 years ago, or they can be transported into a painted rock shelter while also being able to see the individual images right up close.
Telling stories in new ways
As an academic I wanted to make sure that we presented a factual yet exciting summary of the Origin Centre’s content. That wasn’t at all straightforward.
We had to decide what stories we chose to tell, how we wanted to tell them – and whether our interpretations were correct. Bringing the past into a digital space creates so much more overt space for interpretation and different narratives. Traditional museum panels explain what an object is and how old it is. The VR actually shows how it worked and the process archaeologists have used to find that out.
One of the most valuable aspects of this project has been the opportunity to diversify traditional narratives around archaeology. Women and children have been somewhat neglected in archaeological interpretations, especially since in the past most histories were written by (white) men. This has tended to present a simplistic picture of prehistoric societies: men hunting, women gathering.
But there was more to it than that. Stone tools had to be made; poison was collected on use on the tips. Fires needed to be built and ochre ground to create paint for ritual. VR gives more space to explain the answers and explore the nuances of prehistoric societies.
Collaborating with a team of researchers of different ages, backgrounds and genders means a more unbiased picture of the past can be created. The VR content allows anyone to interact with the artefacts – female, male, young and old. They can immerse themselves in it and draw their own conclusions.
The digital experience might also appeal more to younger people and hopefully bring more young visitors into the museum. But it’s accessible, enlightening and informative and older people will enjoy it too.
Collaboration is exciting
As a scientist, I think these kinds of interactive museum displays are vital in aiding deeper understanding and interest in a topic. The same applies to archaeological research.
Being able to manipulate or reconstruct artefacts and use them helps us to understand how and why they were used or created. Being in the team that has conceptualised and created the Origins Centre’s VR content has reminded me that collaborative and interdisciplinary work – even though sometimes tricky to start – can be so fulfilling and revolutionary.
In the age of the internet, censorship has acquired a new face
- Glenda Daniels
Abandon the naive thought that, with the internet and free flow of information, governments are retreating from repression of the media.
The Committee to Protect Journalists’ (CPJ) new report shows that governments, including “democratic” ones, have found other ways to try to control information.
The CPJ’s World Press Freedom Report 2017, released ahead of World Press Freedom Day on May 3 and titled The New Face of Censorship, also shows that violence against journalists has spiked.
Censorship is now complex and no longer the crude practices of the past when newspapers were banned and editors thrown in jail in the manner of October 19 1977, South Africa’s Black Wednesday.
The latest CPJ report spells out how “new information technologies, for example, the global, interconnected internet; social media platforms; and smartphones with cameras were supposed to make censorship obsolete”. Instead, they have made it more complicated. Everyone is grappling with the same problems albeit in different contexts.
The report breaks the myth that the internet is free and can’t be controlled. Governments are using suppressing “hate speech” to suppress other information that shows them up.
The new technologies that also allow criminal and militant groups to bypass the media and speak directly to the public have made the world exceptionally dangerous for journalists reporting from conflict zones, according to the editor of the report, Joel Simon, who is the executive director of the CPJ.
In Simon’s book, The New Censorship: Inside the Global Battle for Media Freedom, the strategies to control and manage information fall into three broad categories: repression 2.0, masked political control and technology capture.
In South Africa we are seeing technology capture at the SABC, with the battle for control over broadcasting. This is not a new story — the National Party controlled it prior to democracy. But now we are seeing ownership being used to do this, with TV channel ANN7 dedicated to promoting President Jacob Zuma and his political faction.
We are also experiencing increased electronic surveillance of cellphones and emails by the state security agency, journalists report.
Beyond the new, old ways of censorship still persist. For example, The New Face of Censorship report says:
• Violence against journalists has increased, with 48 journalists killed in 2016 and eight killed so far this year. The worst country listed is Mexico, followed by Syria and Iraq. The deadliest countries for journalists in 2016 were Syria, Iraq and Yemen. The most dangerous beats were war, politics and crime.
• In Turkey, 19 journalists were jailed in President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s crackdown.
• In Thailand, a TV channel was suspended.
• In Venezuela, the government recently suspended the broadcasting of CNN.
• In Brazil, the judiciary appears to be in cahoots with government: a judge ordered the removal from websites of a story about the Brazilian president’s wife.
• In China, journalists can and have been charged with, and jailed for, “inciting separatism” if they are caught talking to foreign media. All journalists’ work goes through the government ministry in charge of media. So censorship is part of life in China.
• And in the United States, nine media outlets were denied access to an informal White House press secretary briefing. Reporters in the US are harassed by online trolls, set by the precedent of the president, who regularly vilifies journalists.
• In South Africa, the high court in Pretoria ruled in December that criminal defamation is constitutional, which is a problem for freedom of expression. It was also noted that journalists are regularly attacked while covering protests.
This is the depressing scenario in which journalists operate around the world, minus one or two northern European countries such as Finland, which topped the World Press Freedom Index in 2016 for the seventh year in a row.
What is the best way to fight this, with a decreasing pool of professional journalists who are faced with fake news?
Stick with fact-based journalism. Leave opinion to the opinionistas, and mark it clearly on the comment and analysis pages. Check facts, check contributors and have tight systems in place to avoid damage to brands by hackery and fakery. When in doubt, refer to the Press Code on conflict of interest, right to reply and hate speech — although what the latter is appears to be up for grabs.
Glenda Daniels is a senior lecturer in media studies at the University of the Witwatersrand
Technology confirms theory about Earth’s oldest venomous species
- Julien Benoit
Baron Franz Nopcsa, a particularly colourful figure in the history of palaeontology, was right.
Nopcsa was an Austro-Hungarian aristocrat who discovered and identified a number of dinosaurs and other fossils around the world. In 1933, during a trip to South Africa, he looked at the remains of a therapsid found a couple of years earlier by Robert Broom, a pre-mammalian relative called Euchambersia.
Nopcsa declared that this was probably the earliest venomous species ever recorded. But his theory couldn’t be confirmed or disproved because venom and venom glands don’t fossilise. That’s where technology comes in. I was part of a team at Johannesburg’s University of the Witwatersrand that collaborated with London’s Natural History Museum to test Nopcsa’s theory using CT scanning and 3D imaging techniques.
The results? Nopcsa was right, and at 255 million years old, Euchambersia is officially the oldest venomous animal that ever roamed the Earth.
Even more intriguing is that Euchambersia is related to early mammals, not to snakes (which is probably the creature you think of when it comes to venom). Actually, many existing mammals produce venom: among them shrews, some primates and the weird Australian Platypus. Numerous scientists have hypothesised that mammals were all venomous in the distant past but lost their venom producing glands along the way.
So how did we discover the truth about Euchambersia?
Uncovering Euchambersia’s secrets
Broom’s find is one of only two Euchambersia specimens ever discovered. Both were discovered in the same area, near the town of Colesberg in South Africa. One is kept at the Natural History Museum in London; the other at the Evolutionary Studies Institute in Johannesburg.
Each specimen was CT scanned at its respective institute, and the London data was sent to my colleagues and I in Johannesburg. CT scanning is a cutting edge technique that resembles medical imaging. It allows scientists to observe and “dissect” fossils digitally using computer software. Thanks to this technique, we can produce 3D models of previously unreachable internal structures.
With these virtual images of the internal anatomy of the only two known specimens of Euchambersia, we had in hand the most comprehensive dataset about this species that’s ever been gathered.
Analysing them, we made several fascinating discoveries. It emerged that Euchambersia had anatomical adaptations which were compatible with venom production.
First, there was a wide, deep and circular depression in the skull for a venom gland on the upper jaw. This was connected to the canine teeth and the mouth by a fine network of bony tubes and furrows. We also discovered previously undescribed teeth hidden in the vicinity of the bones and sediment that filled the skull. As is usual for fossils, the skull is filled with sediment and some teeth were preserved inside this sediment but hadn’t been spotted before. These were two incisors with preserved crowns and a pair of large canines, all ornamented with a sharp ridge.
A ridged dentition like this would have helped Euchambersia to inject venom into its prey. Pre-mammalian therapsids dominated terrestrial ecosystems well before dinosaurs even appeared. They diversified as herbivores and carnivores, large and small, burrowing and ground-dwelling species. As the earliest venomous species and a representative of this early wave of pioneering species, Euchambersia directly reflects the extraordinary adaptive capabilities of these mammalian forerunners.
In addition, since mammals might have been primitively venomous, Euchambersia would be one of the last remnant of this distant and toxic ancestry of ours.
Professor Barry Dwolatzky honoured by his peers for his outstanding contributions to ICT sector.
Dwolatzky, the driving force behind Johannesburg’s new high-tech development, the Wits Tshimologong Digital Innovation Precinct, has been honoured with the Distinguished Service in ICT Award.
The award presented by the IITPSA in association with EngineerIT. According to article published online on ITWeb the award was presented to an individual 'who is seen as a role model and mentor, who has made an outstanding, career-length contribution to the SA ICT industry and who has shown a long-term commitment to the aims and objectives of the Institute'.
This year’s challenge was aimed at developing digital location solutions that will best solve Joburg’s street address issues – a very crucial aspect for a city and municipality as an address specifies a point of service delivery and makes the city function better for everyone.
The winners
The first, second and third place winners are:
Thapelo Sekwena, a junior software developer at SAAB. With partner Ganwell Banda they developed an app that uses a combination of gamification, crowd sourcing and augmented reality that simply asks users for addresses in exchange for rewards on places that need addressing or validation.
Methembe Dlamini, a Masters student in Computer Science from the University of Johannesburg. His app deals with the need to locate a certain point even without knowledge of the exact address. By linking a person’s contact information with their current address, where they reside can be established.
Absalom Mpanze, analyst developer at Standard Bank. His app’s intention is to take peoples’ footsteps to create a unique code for that place and point in time, which is shared. Every point is unique, as is the code, and it guarantees accuracy. Individuals use this code to accurately find addresses and will be prompted to name their streets if none exist.
Director for Corporate Geo-Informatics for the City of Johannesburg Marcelle Hattingh says, “Street addresses specify points of service delivery. They are essential for electricity, water, refuse, sewage, emergency services, land ownership, parcel deliveries, safety and security, being able to vote and countless other critical services and functions.
“Street addresses that are not clearly displayed or not displayed at all make it difficult, and sometimes impossible, to deliver essential services to residents of the city. In some informal settlements, we still have areas where street addresses don’t exist at all.”
Barry Dwolatzky, Director of JCSE and Professor of Software Engineering in the Wits School of Electrical and Information Engineering, says Joburg is the centre of the digital economy in South Africa and in Africa, and the aim with the Tshimologong Precinct is to create a digital innovation hub where “we could bring together all the amazing innovative people in our city”.
“The JCSE has now twice run the #Hack.Jozi Challenge (an annual bootcamp for startups) and will be doing the third one soon. This is the first GeoJozi Challenge we ran and it has been a remarkable journey to see young people be innovative, creative, and energetic, and come up with these great ideas.”
It is not only the three top winners that have benefitted from this challenge. From 80 submissions, 10 contestants were chosen following a rigorous series of briefings, pitches and shortlisting.
Says Prof. Dwolatzky: “In choosing the top ten, the solutions that showed the entrants had more deeply understood street address challenges in our city were the ones that stood out. In addition, contestants that had done user requirement analyses and fieldwork offered more appropriate solutions.”
The 10 finalists have all completed an intensive period of Geographical Information System (GIS) training, as well as professional software practice, start-up and business modelling, and social media training.
More GeoJozi Developer Challenge solutions
A property game similar to Monopoly but which only uses real addresses
A system that helps to identify and name locations within informal settlements
The quick harvesting of crowd sourced addresses to enhance address databases
An app which allows users to navigate to locations without knowing the address or GPS co-ordinates
A voting and reporting system for people to vote for street names or to report address issues they encounter
An innovative address plate which is the key element of a system that sources and validates addresses and displays them on the address plate device
A system that provides verifiable and identifiable addresses located in informal settlements
A system which creates a unique code for a point in time which is shared and linked to a map layout to locate an address
The ability to use geo-caching to link a home owner’s identity to a set of coordinates specific to their address.
Fellow of light
- Wits University
Andrew Forbes elected as Fellow Member of a leading international optics and photonics association.
The OSA Board of Directors said Forbes is one of 96 OSA members, representing 19 different countries, who have been elected as the newest class of OSA Fellows.
“Fellow membership in OSA is reserved for members who have served with distinction in the advancement of optics and photonics,” the OSA said in a statement.
Elizabeth Rogan, CEO of the OSA, said Forbes is being honoured “specifically for significant contributions to structured light at the classical/quantum regimes, as well as directly at the source in the form of novel lasers, thereby serving as a role model for Africa.”
OSA Fellows are selected based on several factors, including specific scientific, engineering, and technological contributions, a record of significant publications or patents related to optics, technical or industry leadership in the field as well as service to OSA and the global optics community. As a reflection of The Optical Society’s global reach, 59% of this year’s Fellows reside outside the US.
“Heartiest congratulations to the 2017 OSA Fellows, who are excellent examples of optics and photonics innovators and will be outstanding representatives of The Optical Society,” said Alan Willner, 2016 President of The Optical Society and Steven & Kathryn Sample Chair in Engineering, University of Southern California, California, US. “The new Fellows join an illustrious group who has collectively had great impact on our field and society at large.”
Forbes and his team are also exploring new techniques with optical communication that include researching how to pack information into light, transmit it over distance and then unpack the information on the other side. This year the team has shown that data can be transmitted with over 100 patterns of light, effectively increasing in the amount of information that can be 'packed into light'.
About The Optical Society
Founded in 1916, The Optical Society (OSA) is the leading professional organization for scientists, engineers, students and business leaders who fuel discoveries, shape real-life applications and accelerate achievements in the science of light. Through world-renowned publications, meetings and membership initiatives, OSA provides quality research, inspired interactions and dedicated resources for its extensive global network of optics and photonics experts.
Tshimologong - Jozi's new digital playground
- Wits University
Wits is transforming Braamfontein into a young, vibrant precinct for its notable tech-savvy and innovative community.
The University of the Witwatersrand and its partners in government, business and industry have officially launched the Wits Tshimologong Digital Innovation Precinct in Braamfontein, Johannesburg.
Setswana for “new beginnings”, Tshimologong is Johannesburg’s newest high-tech address in the vibrant inner-city district of Braamfontein, where the incubation of start-ups, the commercialisation of research and the development of high-level digital skills for students, working professionals and unemployed youths will take place.
Through Wits’ Joburg Centre for Software Engineering (JCSE), Tshimologong has been three years in the making and is a dynamic development that encourages tech innovation and collaboration between the University’s researchers and students and the private, public and civil society sectors in Johannesburg.
“We hope that transforming Braamfontein into Africa’s premier technology hub will inspire new talent, create jobs and lead to an economic renaissance,” says Barry Dwolatzky, Professor of Software Engineering in the Wits School of Electrical and Information Engineering and Director of JCSE.
Dwolatzky, who has been driving the Tshimologong-initiative, envisions 24/7 activity in the new precinct, with events running day and night, as well as a hub where ideas are hatched and creativity has a space to breathe.
“Tshimologong will be a start-up incubator, business accelerator and source of skills. The focus is on digital hardware, software and content. We are creating a hub space where people can get together, brainstorm and work on creative projects,” he says.
Building the city's technology ecosystem
Programmers, designers, developers, entrepreneurs and start-ups will congregate in this half-a-city-block along Juta Street. It has flexible open-plan co-working areas with broadband connectivity for ICT start-ups, meeting and refreshment zones, computer laboratories, training rooms, maker spaces, creative content development environments, and administrative and infrastructure support offices.
Drawing on models that have proved hugely successful in major cities around the world, Wits is driving the development of a successful technology ecosystem in the centre of Africa’s most important business and economic hub. It will complement the University’s suite of ICT-related offerings in research, courses and programmes in software engineering, data science, big data, digital business, and others.
“Wits aims to inspire the development of a new generation of digital technology experts, innovators and entrepreneurs and Tshimologong will provide an enabling space for our country's most creative young minds to develop new digital technologies that are crucial to South Africa’s economic growth and international competitiveness,” says Professor Adam Habib, Vice-Chancellor and Principal at Wits University.
Open through membership
Not only accessible or open to University researchers and students, the Precinct is membership-based and will provide a space for skills development in the software and digital technology sector, help address unemployment, and encourage the growth of new businesses.
An important element of the Tshimologong Precinct is the recently launched IBM Research Lab, the first such facility anywhere in the world that is tightly integrated into an innovation hub.
An addition to the Tshimologong development is the establishment by Wits of The DIZ (Digital Innovation Zone), a fantastic space in Smit Street Braamfontein where creatives, innovators and programmers can come together and collaborate.
2016 GeoJozi Developer Challenge
- Wits University
Partnering with Wits University, the City of Joburg launches a developer challenge to address issues.
With R300 000 in prizes to be won, the 2016 GeoJozi Developer Challenge is calling on developers with an interest in apps, maps, data, urban development, cities or technology to enter.
Developers, aged 30 or under, can help the City of Johannesburg to improve its systems of identifying streets, buildings, stands and dwellings across the 1,645 km2 municipality.
Across the world, street addresses and location are used as fundamental tools for managing cities. But with rapid urbanisation, local governments face increasingly complex and fast-changing urban landscapes that need to be effectively managed and to serve their residents.
Marcelle Hattingh, Director of Corporate Geo-Informatics for the City of Johannesburg explains: “Street addresses specify points of service delivery. They are essential for electricity, water, refuse, sewage, emergency services, land ownership, parcel deliveries, safety and security, being able to vote and countless other critical services and functions.”
Prof Barry Dwolatzky, Director of JCSE at Wits University says: “As the world becomes more digitised, more real-time data about cities is becoming available. This data can help to manage cities better and make them smarter. A street address informs us of location, and that is where Geographic Information System (GIS) comes in. It’s all about a specific position or the coordinates on earth.”
Dwolatzky says that this creates exciting opportunities for creating smart cities, modern urban development and 21st century city management. The GeoJozi Challenge will be hosted in Wits University’s Tshimologong Digital Innovation Precinct in Braamfontein, the City’s newest high-tech address.
“We are calling on young Johannesburg-based software developers to work with the City to help improve the accuracy and visibility of street names and numbers of all properties, stands and informal dwellings throughout the City.”
The winning solution will earn its creator R150 000. Second and third places are worth R100 000 and R50 000 respectively. The winning ideas may also be implemented by the City of Johannesburg.
“Addresses and location are essential for the efficiency of a high functioning city. The City is calling for innovative solutions that will help the citizens realise the vital importance of street addresses and optimise the power of location,” says Hattingh.
Patrick McKivergan, managing director of Esri South Africa, says: “This initiative will encourage young developers to develop their skills in location technology. As the technology partner of the GeoJozi Challenge, Esri will be providing the location platform on which the GeoJozi contestants will develop their solutions. It will consist of toolkits for the development and data on which the contestants can base their solutions for the street addresses and location issues. We are right behind the City’s efforts to create location awareness. Entrants will also receive free training and great learning opportunities.”
Last year, the United Nations estimated that 71.3% of South Africa’s population will live in urban areas by 2030, nearly 80% by 2050. “This puts the need for innovative street address and location solutions into the spotlight,” says Hattingh.
Wits to lead national e-science consortium
- Department of Science and Technology
DST awards University a project to develop teaching and training platform for postgraduates.
Wits will lead a consortium to establish a national e-science teaching and training platform.
The platform is intended to develop suitable curricula and pedagogic interventions to advance the training of postgraduate students in the rapidly developing cross-discipline of e-science.
The Department of Science and Technology (DST) made the announcement this week, saying it has awarded Wits with one of two projects as part of the department and its entity, the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), continued investment in growing the country's cyberinfrastructure by furthering the implementation of the National Integrated Cyberinfrastructure System (NICIS).
According to the DST statement, the department will invest approximately R60 million over three years to establish the two projects: the national e-science teaching and training platform; and the regional data centre.
Regional data centre
The other consortium, led by the University of Cape Town, involves the establishment of an initial regional data centre (or node) – others could follow – that will eventually form a national network, supporting a wide range of data-intensive scientific activities as part of NICIS.
This data centre will be a shared resource, focused initially on astronomy and bioinformatics, supporting major initiatives such as the MeerKAT/Square Kilometre Array (SKA) and the DST's Bio-economy Strategy.
Close cooperation
With the vast Northern Cape being home to mega astronomy initiatives like the MeerKAT/SKA and the Southern African Large Telescope, it is important to note that the province's new Sol Plaatje University will be involved in both consortia.
The university's strategic focus is on information technology skills development, and the province will benefit from these projects. The DST is keen to see the province's young people skilled as a result of such initiatives so that they can take up opportunities offered by the astronomy projects in the area.
“The DST believes cooperation of South African universities and research councils on such strategic matters is important for the country's future. The big data revolution involves a transition in which data becomes a new resource for economic development, and success or failure depends on the capacity to manage and manipulate massive volumes of data in order to extract information,” the DST statement reads.
Wits and Academic Partnerships agree to educate online
- Wits University
Wits signs a MOU with Academic Partnerships to increase access to education through online learning.
The demand for quality education and access to education in Africa is increasing, with few resources and infrastructure to accommodate qualifying students.
Online learning is important to South Africa because the demand for tertiary education in emerging economies is insatiable but access is a problem.
The University of the Witwatersrand and Academic Partnerships (AP) in the USA, which partners with universities to increase access and revenue through online courses, signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) signaling their intention of participating actively in building online programmes.
The MOU was signed at Wits on 8 August 2016.
The introduction of online programmes at Wits aims to address some of the challenges of access to higher education in South Africa.
In June, the University launched its first three massive open online courses (Moocs) on the EdX platform, the first African university to do so.
Professor Andrew Crouch, Deputy Vice Chancellor: Academic who signed the agreement with AP on behalf of Wits says that the agreement to launch online programmes, rather than online courses is an exciting development for the University.
“Academic Partnerships is very reputable. There are partnerships in many parts of the world, and AP has experience in launching and sustaining online programmes,”says Crouch.
The introduction of online programmes at Wits will enable the University to serve students across the globe through a highly efficient delivery system.
Randy Best, Chairman and Founder of AP says the partnership will benefit students, professors and the economy whilst making knowledge more accessible.
“The online programmes are going to play a critical role in the students’ life and enhance education. The programmes are also economical; there is no need to deal with infrastructure to support it. It makes the great knowledge of your professors far more available for more people,” says Best.
According to Crouch, the launch of the online programmes at Wits is awaiting final approval from a number of bodies, including the Department of Higher Education and Training, the Council for Higher Education as well as the South African Qualifications Authority.
It will take almost a year before the first online programme can be launched, as the programmes also need to be accredited.
The first online programmes will be in business and administration and these will be postgraduate programmes.
Other programmes which are currently being explored are in the education area and the health sciences. Only a few programmes will be online.
The introduction of online programmes will not replace current contact programmes. Rather, online programmes will increase access to courses where there are too many students and too few lecture halls and lecturers to accommodate all those students, says Crouch.
The quality of education for online students will also be important and has to meet Wits’ standards.
“The same entry requirements for our full- time students will be prescribed for our online students, so that we are ultimately assured of a proud Wits ‘product’.”
Innovation ecosystem opens door
- Wits University
New #IBMResearchWITS partnership to focus on big data, cloud computing and mobile tech.
Wits University and IBM Research today opened the IBM Research lab - the second in Africa, at the University's new technology innovation hub in the Tshimologong Precinct in Braamfontein.
Wits' Deputy Vice-Chancellor: Research, Professor Zeblon Vilakazi, says the Wits-IBM partnership will focus on big data, cloud computing and mobile technology to support South African development priorities.
As part of a 10-year investment program through South Africa’s Department of Trade and Industry and working closely with the Department of Science and Technology, the new research lab is based at the University of the Witwatersrand (Wits).
The University was recently ranked amongst the top 10 in emerging economies by the Times Higher Education World University Rankings.
“The launch of the IBM Research laboratory is an exciting milestone in the move towards a new era of globally competitive research, innovation and entrepreneurship that will be emerging out of the Tshimologong Precinct in Braamfontein. Wits is delighted to be collaborating with IBM. We look forward to seeing top talent congregate to address the continent’s most intractable problems and work on the world’s next game changing technologies,” said Professor Adam Habib, Vice-Chancellor and Principal of the University of the Witwatersrand.
The lab is located in the Tshimologong Precinct in Braamfontein – an inner-city area which is today re-emerging as a vibrant Johannesburg district. The two-level, 900 square meter lab has a DIY maker space with electronic design equipment and a 3D printer.
In support of the World Health Organization’s End TB (Tuberculosis) Strategy, IBM scientists are designing wearable sensor technology connected to the Watson Internet of Things to trace the spread of highly infectious, communicable diseases. This innovation will help healthcare organizations and health officials develop prevention strategies and respond effectively.
IBM scientists are developing cognitive learning approaches to transform cancer reporting, prevention and precision medicine in Africa. In a proof of concept study, IBM scientists have discovered a basic molecular link between cancer causing genes and those associated with metastasis, the cause of 90% of cancer related deaths*. Preliminary results from this work have been presented recently. Using anonymous, unstructured data provided by the National Cancer Registry in South Africa and in collaboration with the University of Witwatersrand Medical School, the team is developing cognitive algorithms to automate the inference of national cancer statistics in South Africa. This technology is expected to reduce a five-year time lag in cancer statistics reporting to real-time.
With the support of the City of Johannesburg, IBM scientists have collected 65 samples of microbes and bacteria from 19 bus stations across the city as part of the global Metagenomics and Metadesign of the Subways and Urban Biomes (MetaSUB) international consortium. Once the samples are processed the results will be available to city planners, public health officials and scientists who will use the data to help officials predict and prepare for future disease outbreaks and discover new species and biological systems.
In early September, scientists from IBM, H3ABioNet and the University of Notre Dame will host a hackathon on anti-malarial drug resistance and drug combination prediction.
Digital Urban Ecosystems
Building on IBM’s global Green Horizons initiative, researchers at the new lab are working closely with experts from South Africa’s Council for Scientific and Industrial Research to analyze historical and real-time data from environmental monitoring stations. Using machine learning and cognitive models, the data collected in the City of Johannesburg, the City of Tshwane and the Vaal Industrial Triangle will help provide more insight about air pollution and model the effectiveness of intervention strategies. The project has recently been extended to predict ground level ozone and air quality forecasting.
Commuters in the City of Johannesburg currently spend 35 minutes extra travel time per day due to traffic congestion, according to the TomTom Traffic Index. Unreliable traffic light infrastructure provides challenges to traffic light management in the city. Using real time anonymized traffic data from TomTom combined with Twitter, IBM scientists have developed a traffic optimization recommendation tool which can help city officials dispatch traffic volunteers, known locally as pointsmen, to the intersections where they are most urgently needed.
The City of Cape Town often battles with devastating wild fires, due to its unique topography and vegetation. Using data from The Weather Company, an IBM business, and the City of Cape Town's Open Data portal, IBM scientists have developed a cognitive dashboard. This can assess fire incidence risk and severity to help officials raise public awareness and prepare for emergency response.
The number of people living off-the-grid in Africa has grown by 114 million since 2000**. To help meet the energy needs of communities who are living remotely or would like to make use of renewable energy, IBM scientists have developed a mobile app which uses analytics to determine the solar requirements of users based on their energy needs and location.
Exploring the Universe
In 2018 the, Square Kilometer Array (SKA), the world’s largest radio telescope, will be built in South Africa and Australia. IBM scientists are collaborating with SKA South Africa (SKA-SA) on the development of unsupervised algorithms which can make groundbreaking astronomical discoveries. Scientists expect to eventually apply the cognitive technology to other applications, including the development of new pharmaceuticals and genomics. IBM and SKA-SA have signed an agreement to explore the advancement of this technology and to lead some major developments in data science over the next decade.
IBM scientists in South Africa are joining NASA, the SETI Institute and Swinburne University to develop an Apache Spark application to analyze the 168 million radio events detected over the past 10 years by the Allen Telescope Array (ATA). The volume and complexity of the data requires advanced machine learning algorithms to separate noise from true signals of interest. These requirements are well suited to the scalable in-memory capabilities offered by Apache Spark when combined with the big data capabilities of the IBM Cloud and IBM Bluemix Spark.
Open Infrastructure, Sustainable Design
The new lab features an Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) platform based on OpenStack connected to IBM Storwize for efficiently provisioning 80TB of storage for research projects.
The lab is located in the Tshimologong Precinct in Braamfontein – an inner-city area which is today re-emerging as a vibrant Johannesburg district. The two-level, 900 square meter lab has a DIY maker space with electronic design equipment and a 3D printer.
Agile work spaces provide a collaborative environment for IBM scientists to train and mentor Wits students and local start-ups. Developer communities across Africa will also have access, at no charge, to a LinuxONE Community Cloud located in Johannesburg, which acts as a virtual R&D engine for creating, testing and piloting emerging applications via the cloud.
Wits researchers find techniques to improve carbon superlattices for quantum electronic devices
- Wits University
In a paradigm shift from conventional electronic devices, exploiting the quantum properties of superlattices holds the promise of developing new technologies.
Researchers at the Nanoscale Transport Physics Laboratory from the School of Physics at the University of the Witwatersrand have found a technique to improve carbon superlattices for quantum electronic device applications. Superlattices are made up of alternating layers of very thin semiconductors, just a few nanometers thick. These layers are so thin that the physics of these devices is governed by quantum mechanics, where electrons behave like waves. In a paradigm shift from conventional electronic devices, exploiting the quantum properties of superlattices holds the promise of developing new technologies.
The group, headed by Professor Somnath Bhattacharyya has been working for the past 10 years on developing carbon-based nano-electronic devices.
“Carbon is the future in the electronics field and it soon will be challenging many other semiconductors, including silicon,” says Bhattacharyya.
The physics of carbon superlattices is more complex than that of crystalline superlattices (such as gallium arsenide) since the material is amorphous and carbon atoms tend to form chains and networks. The Wits group, in association with researchers at the University of Surrey in the UK, has developed a detailed theoretical approach to understand the experimental data obtained from carbon devices. The paper has been published in Scientific Reports (Nature Publishing Group) on 19 October.
“This work provides an understanding of the fundamental quantum properties of carbon superlattices, which we can now use to design quantum devices for specific applications,” says lead author, Wits PhD student, Ross McIntosh. “Our work provides strong impetus for future studies of the high-frequency electronic and optoelectronic properties of carbon superlattices”.
Through their work, the group reported one of the first theoretical models that can explain the fundamental electronic transport properties in disordered carbon superlattices.
Bhattacharyya started looking at the use of carbon for semiconductor applications almost 10 years ago, before he joined Wits University, when he and co-authors from the University of Surrey developed and demonstrated negative differential resistance and excellent high-frequency properties of a quantum device made up of amorphous carbon layers. This work was published in Nature Materials in 2006.
McIntosh undertook the opportunity at honours level to measure the electrical properties of carbon superlattice devices. Now, as a PhD student and having worked extensively with theoretician Dr. Mikhail V. Katkov, he has extended the theoretical framework and developed a technique to calculate the transport properties of these devices.
Bhattacharyya believes this work will have immense importance in developing Carbon-based high-frequency devices.
“It will open not only fundamental studies in Carbon materials, but it will also have industrial applications in the electronic and optoelectronic device sector,” he says.
Superlattices are currently used as state of the art high-frequency oscillators and amplifiers and are beginning to find use in optoelectronics as detectors and emitters in the terahertz regime. While the high frequency electrical and optoelectronic properties of conventional semiconductors are limited by the dopants used to modify their electronic properties, the properties of superlattices can be tuned over a much wider range to create devices which operate in regimes where conventional devices cannot.
Superlattice electronic devices can operate at higher frequencies and optoelectronic devices can operate at lower frequencies than their conventional counterparts. The lack of terahertz emitters and detectors has resulted in a gap in that region of the electromagnetic spectrum (known as the “terahertz gap”), which is a significant limitation, as many biological molecules are active in this regime. This also limits terahertz radio astronomy.
Amorphous Carbon devices are extremely strong, can operate at high voltages and can be developed in most laboratories in the world, without sophisticated nanofabrication facilities. New Carbon-based devices could find application in biology, space technology, science infrastructure such as the Square Kilometre Array (SKA) telescope in South Africa, and new microwave detectors.
“What was lacking earlier was an understanding of device modelling. If we have a model, we can improve the device quality, and that is what we now have,” says Bhattacharyya.
About the Wits Nanoscale Transport Physics Laboratory
The Wits Nanoscale Transport Physics Laboratory (NSTPL) was established in 2009 under the leadership of Bhattacharyya when Professor João Rodrigues was the Head of the School of Physics at the University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa. The department is known as a leading Physics school in the African continent, having one of the largest academic staff complements on a single campus. Since the opening of the laboratory, the NSTPL has gone from strength to strength in establishing a facility that houses world-class fabrication and measurement equipment, an initiative strongly supported by research entities such as the NRF, CSIR, Wits Research Office and DST/NRF Centre of Excellence in Strong Materials.
The NSTPL is well equipped with various sophisticated synthesis facilities, as well as a cryogenic micro-manipulated probe station to conduct sensitive quantum transport measurements at temperatures near absolute zero. The NSTPL also houses a fully operational electron beam lithography scanning electron microscope, used to fabricate nanoscale devices based on these carbon materials.
Some noteworthy current projects include the fabrication of spintronic devices using supramolecular Gd-functionalized carbon nanotubes, the fabrication of graphene field effect transistors and most recently the study of the unconventional superconductivity observed in boron-doped diamond. The NSTPL group has also published a number of papers on theoretical investigations, led by Dr Mikhail Katkov and Dr Dmitry Churochkin, on the role of disorder on the quantum transport in carbon systems. These various topics form part of the broader direction the group has taken, that being, investigating the physics of carbon materials in the hopes of finding application in quantum information systems as well as detector devices valuable for space exploration.
Light packing more data has potential to increase bandwidth by 100 times
- Wits University
African researchers demonstrate a 100x increase in the amount of information that can be 'packed into light'.
The rise of big data and advances in information technology has serious implications for our ability to deliver sufficient bandwidth to meet the growing demand.
Researchers at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa, and the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) are looking at alternative sources that will be able to take over where traditional optical communications systems are likely to fail in future.
In their latest research, published online today (10 June 2016) in the scientific journal, Nature, the team from South Africa and Tunisia demonstrate over 100 patterns of light used in an optical communication link, potentially increasing the bandwidth of communication systems by 100 times.
Traditional optical communication systems modulate the amplitude, phase, polarisation, colour and frequency of the light that is transmitted. Yet despite these technologies, we are predicted to reach a bandwidth ceiling in the near future.
But light also has a “pattern” – the intensity distribution of the light, that is, how it looks on a camera or a screen.
Since these patterns are unique, they can be used to encode information:
pattern 1 = channel 1 or the letter A,
pattern 2 = channel 2 or the letter B, and so on.
What does this mean?
That future bandwidth can be increased by precisely the number of patterns of light we are able to use.
Ten patterns mean a 10x increase in existing bandwidth, as 10 new channels would emerge for data transfer.
At the moment modern optical communication systems only use one pattern. This is due to technical hurdles in how to pack information into these patterns of light, and how to get the information back out again.
How the research was done
In this latest work, the team showed data transmission with over 100 patterns of light, exploiting three degrees of freedom in the process.
They used digital holograms written to a small liquid crystal display (LCD) and showed that it is possible to have a hologram encoded with over 100 patterns in multiple colours.
“This is the highest number of patterns created and detected on such a device to date, far exceeding the previous state-of-the-art,” says Forbes.
One of the novel steps was to make the device ‘colour blind’, so the same holograms can be used to encode many wavelengths.
According to Rosales-Guzman to make this work “100 holograms were combined into a single, complex hologram. Moreover, each sub-hologram was individually tailored to correct for any optical aberrations due to the colour difference, angular offset and so on”.
What’s next?
The next stage is to move out of the laboratory and demonstrate the technology in a real-world system.
“We are presently working with a commercial entity to test in just such an environment,” says Forbes. The approach of the team could be used in both free-space and optical fibre networks.
About the project
The first experiments on the topic were carried out by Abderrahmen Trichili of Sup’Com (Tunisia) as a visiting student to South Africa as part of an African Laser Centre funded research project. The other team members included Bienvenu Ndagano (Wits), Dr Amine Ben Salem (Sup’Com) and Professor Mourad Zghal (Sup’Com), all of who contributed significantly to the work.
This project was supported by the African Laser Centre, a virtual centre funded by the South African Department of Science and Technology (DST) to support research collaborations between African countries in the field of photonics.
Paper abstract
Title: Optical communication beyond orbital angular momentum
Abderrahmen Trichili, Carmelo Rosales-Guzmán, Angela Dudley, Bienvenu Ndagano, Amine Ben Salem, Mourad Zghal and Andrew Forbes
Mode division multiplexing (MDM) is mooted as a technology to address future bandwidth issues, and has been successfully demonstrated in free space using spatial modes with orbital angular momentum (OAM). To further increase the data transmission rate, more degrees of freedom are required to form a densely packed mode space. Here we move beyond OAM and demonstrate multiplexing and demultiplexing of over 100 modes using the radial and azimuthal degrees of freedom. By creating wavelength independent holograms we are able to demonstrate this technique on a spatial light modulator. Our results offer a route to higher bit rates for next generation optical networks.
Let maths solve the problem
- Wits University
The DST/NRF Centre of Excellence in Mathematical and Statistical Sciences is leading the charge.
South Africa is not in a strong position when it comes to mathematical expertise.
The Centre, inaugurated in 2014 under the directorship of Professor Fazal Mahomed, was established to bring together Mathematical and Statistical Sciences researchers from institutions across South Africa in order to focus on advancing disciplinary and cross-disciplinary research as well as to develop national capacity in these scarce fields.
The Centre currently involves 14 institutions from across the country.
“We can hopefully advance research in the areas that we represent in the country and acquire more PhDs, thereby obtaining a critical mass of researchers in the Mathematical and Statistical Sciences,” says Mahomed.
The average number of PhDs in Statistics departments at institutions in the country currently lies at a dangerous level.
“We need to drastically develop more statisticians as well as more mathematical scientists in general,” adds Mahomed.
Since its inception, the Centre has launched various programmes and workshops to attract more academics and postgraduate students to the mathematical sciences, while also being concerned with increasing the skills of mathematics educators.
“Mathematics education is fundamental. If our kids in school do not have a good basis in mathematics, we are in serious trouble. We need to interrogate how mathematics is taught or else our children will always have to play catch-up,” he explains.
The Centre specialises in pure and applied mathematics as well as statistics and computer science.
The Centre also looks for opportunities to network with experts across the globe to work on real world challenges that the country and local industry face - such as rhino poaching, climate change and dealing with the expected big data of the Square Kilometre Array (SKA)- with the added aim of inspiring younger mathematical scientists to become actively involved in these projects.
“It is very exciting to work as a mathematical scientist at the moment, especially in South Africa,” says Mahomed.
“However, we need many more mathematical scientists to become involved in climate change issues and to focus on working on the mathematical models that arise nationally to help solve our problems.”
Inspired in his mathematical thinking by his grandfather and father at a pre-school age, Mahomed himself has built a distinguished career as a mathematician, publishing widely and serving as a supervisor to a number of postgraduate students.
“Mathematics is the backbone of science and therefore development and the future of the country relies heavily on increasing the mathematical ability of our people,” he says.
“Mathematics is becoming increasingly important in the world, especially for a developing country such as South Africa and the Centre will play a very important role in developing our country in the next few years.”
Optimisation production through process engineering
- Wits University
Researchers say there are still large gaps in our understanding of the associated utility systems in batch chemical processes.
Professor Thokozani Majozi holds the DST-NRF Chair in Sustainable Process Engineering at Wits.
“Our main research area is sustainable process engineering, within which we are addressing two broad areas - batch chemical processes and continuous processes,” explains Majozi, who’s PhD from the University of Manchester’s Institute of Science and Technology focused on the optimisation of multipurpose batch chemical processes.
More than 50% of South African chemical processes fall within the batch processing type. Ironically, none of the engineering undergraduate programmes in the country focus on this category of chemical processes.
In addition to handling time effectively, which is fundamental in the design and synthesis of batch plants, Majozi realised that there are still large gaps in our understanding of the associated utility systems in batch chemical processes.
These include water and energy.
“In general, batch processes use and generate smaller amounts of water and wastewater, respectively,” he explains.
“However, the nature of industries in which they are generally encountered, like pharmaceuticals and agrochemicals, suggest that they have higher toxic levels in comparison to their continuous counterparts. Consequently, there is a need to develop dedicated techniques to optimise water use.”
On continuous processes, Majozi’s group has been focusing on debottlenecking utility systems, with emphasis on steam system networks and cooling water systems.
“Our approach is to look at the cooling tower and heat exchanger network as one unit because they work together and cannot be improved in isolation.”
“If you look at them together, all the evidence suggests you will ultimately get a better system,” he says. “We are also looking at power stations because one of the key units of operation is the cooling tower.
After you have produced superheated steam to run your turbines, the steam is condensed back into water that is then recycled back into the boiler and supplemented by the makeup stream.”
The condensation step is extremely important for the efficiency of the system and the design of the cooling tower is fundamental. Majozi and his team are also exploring the overall efficiency of power generation facilities, including renewable energy options.
His team also focuses on Clean Coal Technology and how to optimise complex power generation systems to achieve maximum efficiencies. On the batch processes side, Majozi is addressing industry production efficiencies.
“The challenge is to help industry use their available capital optimally to meet their production targets for a range of products with different equipment requirements. This requires careful scheduling to meet the prescribed targets within prescribed time horizons,” he concludes.
Using gene therapy to combat HBV infection
- Wits University
Hepatitis B Virus causes between 600 000 and one million deaths per year, predominantly in sub-Saharan Africa and Asia.
Dr Buhle Moyo, a postdoctoral research fellow in the Department of Molecular Haematology at Wits, is working towards the development of safe and effective gene therapeutics against the Hepatitis B Virus (HBV).
Moyo joined the Antiviral Gene Therapy Research Unit (AGTRU) in 2013 and her research focuses on using a re-engineered virus to deliver a therapeutic gene to the liver, the site of HBV infection.
HBV causes liver cancer and cirrhosis and causes between 600 000 and one million deaths per year, predominantly in sub-Saharan Africa and Asia.
Gene therapy technologies offer potential solutions for the effective management of intractable diseases and intensive research activities are underway to apply these technologies to HBV infection.
The AGTRU has developed a number of highly efficacious gene therapeutics capable of interfering with the life cycle of HBV. However, the biggest hurdle facing implementation of gene therapeutics in a clinical setting is the lack of an effective means of delivering the therapy to the target organ.”
The problem was that we needed to find a system to deliver the gene therapy safely and efficiently,” says Moyo.
“We’ve been working with using Adeno-Associated Viruses (AAVs) as a vector and we were able to re-engineer it successfully.”
AAVs are small viruses that infect humans. They are not known to cause disease and they are able to efficiently deliver their cargo and are easy to re-engineer. As a consequence, AAVs are commonly used in the field of gene therapy.
The AGTRU recently described the successful adaptation of a novel technology, Transcription Activator-Like Effector Nucleases (TALENs), to disable HBV.
The work was published in Molecular Therapy, the official journal of the American Society of Gene and Cell Therapy, in 2013. These TALENs were engineered to bind and cut HBV DNA. Subsequent introduction of mutations at the cut site effectively disables the virus.
Moyo and the AGTRU team found AAVs are efficient vectors to carry the TALE-based therapies to the livers of mice.
The team is currently engaged in pre-clinical studies in mice to assess the efficacy of the delivery system and the gene therapeutics.
“We were able to show very effective delivery of the TALENs and have very promising results. We are hoping to publish the results in a high-impact journal before the end of the year,” says Moyo.
Fibre has its limits too
- Wits University
Wits researchers in optical communications explore ways to drastically increase the optical fibre bandwidth.
Over the past five years, there has been a fivefold increase in internet traffic and this trend is expected to continue steadily, globally. Thus far, the demand for high bandwidth has been met by implementing optical fibre communication.
But soon the limit in the amount of data that can be communicated through fibres with current technologies will be reached. Research in the Structured Light group (School of Physics) at Wits, headed by Distinguished Professor Andrew Forbes, aims to explore ways to drastically increase the optical fibre bandwidth by utilising patterns of light.
Patterns have the ability to carry an infinite amount of information and presently represent a resource not used in optical communication
Bienvenu Ndagano is a Masters student trying to find novel ways to encode and transmit information through free space and optical fibres using patterns of light.
“I am looking at a property of light called orbital angular momentum, which causes light to twist. The number of twists present in a beam of light can be counted and used to encode information in the same way a computer would count zeros and ones and translate them into bits of information,” explains Ndagano.
Together with his colleagues, he generates light with a twist by shaping a laser beam to give it a finite number of twists.
“We can either give it a single number of twists or multiple numbers of twists simultaneously. We send the shaped laser beam through an optical fibre and we analyse the output by counting the number of measured twists and comparing it to the number of twists generated at the input.”
Thus far Ndagano can measure the number of twists at the output with high fidelity when compared to the input.
“We applied our technique to send pictures through an optical fibre. By associating the colour of each pixel on a picture to a twist number, we were able to transform a picture into sequences of twisted light beams that were sent through the fibre and transformed back to pixels to recreate the picture.
Recently the group have demonstrated a free space, fibre, free space link using this twisted light. The work, done in the Wits laboratory in collaboration with researchers from the University of Jena (Germany), was selected as a highlighted paper by the Journal of Optics (UK). The work also won numerous student awards for Ndagano, most recently at the international conference of SPIE, Photonics West, in San Francisco (USA).
Gleeble to the rescue
- Wits University
Now Dr Lesley Chown can test new metals cost-effectively in her lab.
A Senior Lecturer in the Wits School of Chemical and Metallurgical Engineering, Chown received the R13.5-million-Gleeble thanks to funding from the National Research Foundation and the University.
A Gleeble is a computerised simulator in which various performance parameters – such as strength, breaking point and heat qualities – of a specific material are measured.
Chown has a special interest in the structure and property relationships in metallic alloys and the continuous casting processes of metals.
The production testing and development of new metals and alloys are usually highly complex and expensive processes but a system like the Gleeble allows these processes to be tested in a cost-effective way in the laboratory.
A sample of material is heated and mechanically worked while various performance parameters of interest are measured and recorded for later analysis. After the simulation is done, the microstructure of the material may also be examined.
“You can realistically simulate large- scale industrial changes and you can use combinations of different heating and cooling cycles to simulate processes like the hot-rolling of steel,” explains Chown.
She works with Professor Lesley Cornish, Director of the DST-NRF Centre in Strong Materials at Wits, and Professor Tony Paterson, the Chair of Welding funded by the South African Institute of Welding.
Chown and her team will be using the Gleeble in collaboration with other academic institutions like the CSIR, industry partners and will develop human capital by training new students.
“We will also be supporting industry in process optimisation in thermo-mechanical processes and we will be roping in more postgraduate students. This will be a win-win situation for us and for the industry,” she adds.
Chown also has her heart set on blue sky research, where she will be experimenting with various titanium alloys to produce cheaper titanium alloys for land-based use.
She started her career at Iscor before moving to Mintek and then Wits. She has more than 15 years of experience working on an older version of the Gleeble.
Cooling high-speed computers
- Wits University
The School of Mechanical, Industrial and Aeronautical Engineering is about to make headlines for the development of new technology to cool high-speed computers.
Under the leadership of Professor Ionel Botef, who recently set up Africa’s first Supersonic Spray Technology laboratory at Wits, the team has devised a micro heat sink for computers that could operate above 3GHz by using a process called cold spray technology.
The result is a porous copper micro heat sink that is 50 times smaller than those currently used and which could cool computers much more effectively. The research paper on the development of this technology by PhD student Agripa Hamweendo and Botef has led them to apply for a patent licence on the manufacturing process.
“We are currently busy with a paper for an ISI accredited journal but we are going to apply for a patent for the micro heat sink as a product itself too, before we submit the paper,” says Hamweendo.
“Postgraduate students have three other patents in the pipeline.”
The manufacturing process of the heat sink involves the cold spray technology, in which various powder materials are applied by bombarding the substrates at a high velocity of between 300 and 1 200 meters per second. The micro heat sink was created by spraying multiple layers of copper onto each other thereby creating multiple micro channels that serve as small ventilation shafts.
“The process can fabricate micro heat sinks with improved flow characteristics within micro channels, improved channel aspect ratios and multiple flow arrangements at the inlet and outlets,” explains Botef.
The cold spray process is highly versatile and can be used from the manufacturing of micro systems for electronics to the repair of large equipment such as the turbines in power stations.
Botef, who initially qualified as a mechanical engineer, is passionate about multidisciplinary studies and holds his PhD in Electrical and Information Engineering.
“That was the best decision that I have ever made as it gave me an opening into another world.”
When Botef first started out with the cold spray at Wits, he had to knock on the doors of his colleagues across campus to persuade them of the importance of the technology.
“Since then we have built an integrated Cold Spray and 3D Printing Laboratory and an academic team from various disciplines, including 37 postgraduate students from countries such as the Congo, Nigeria, Zambia, Zimbabwe and South Africa,” he adds.
Botef has worked in the aerospace industry with the likes of Rolls-Royce.
He is widely published in accredited journals and is internationally sought after for his specialist expertise. “Our mission is to build capable people who can act at the right time and who make critical decisions timeously to make a real difference in the world,” he concludes.
3D technology brings a lost mammalian ancestor back to life
- Julien Benoit and Sandra Jasinoski
At the very beginning of the 1960s, a South African palaeontologist embarked on a series of ambitious works.
Dr A.S. Brink wanted to better understand the anatomy and evolution of humans’ pre-mammalian ancestors, the therapsids.
Brink worked with therapsid skulls found in South Africa’s Karoo region. He ground the skulls at thin and regular intervals to assess their internal cranial anatomy. The technique, known as serial grinding, was commonly used at the time.
As he neared the end of the process on one of the skulls Brink realised that he had uncovered a unique specimen. The skull represented a holotype, which is the single specimen used in the definition of any new species. But by then it was too late.
More than 50 years later, we were among a group of scientists who followed in Brink’s footsteps. Our task was to recreate this unique specimen. Technology has moved on enormously in the last half century, so we were able to use 3D renderings and 3D printing – and one of our mammalian ancestors was reborn.
Historical techniques
South Africa was a good place for Brink’s work. The country’s Karoo region is home to a wealth of therapsid fossils, making it an important place to study the ancestry of mammals.
Brink was not the first palaeontologist to use serial grinding. The technique emerged at the beginning of the 20th century. Before then scholars had to wait for the discovery of naturally preserved casts of internal structures, like the mold of the “fossil brain” of the Taung Child, Australopithecus africanus. Or they had to break fossils open.
With its introduction, serial grinding became the only fully controlled way to access the “interior” of fossils. Because of their abundance, South African therapsids were among the first fossils to be studied using this new, revolutionary approach. Sadly, their abundance turned out to be a curse.
Accidental destruction
In 1961, Dr Brink started the serial grinding study of a well preserved skull. At this stage, he thought the specimen belonged to a common form of therapsid.
But during the process, the sections revealed anatomical structures that suggested the specimen may actually represent a new species of fossil therapsid previously unknown to science. By then it was too late to save the fossil: it had already been mostly ground down. Brink tried to compensate by making a very thorough and accurate description and drawings of the specimen. He named it Scalopocynodon gracilis.
As in zoology, the designation of type specimens is the most critical step when naming a new species in palaeontology. This type specimen, called a holotype, is meant to serve as an anatomical reference for future comparative works. A new species can’t be recorded without a holotype. So this ground specimen was particularly important: it constituted the holotype of Scalopocynodon gracilis.
Sadly this valuable and irreplaceable piece of South Africa’s heritage and evidence of the evolution of pre-mammalian therapsids was lost. The irony is that it was destroyed by the very author of the species.
Scalopocynodon was considered dead and forgotten – until 2016.
Recreating our ancestor in 3D
Evolutionary Studies Institute, Wits University
It’s then that a team from the Evolutionary Studies Institute at Johannesburg’s University of the Witwatersrand retrieved some of Dr Brink’s drawings of the Scalopocynodon gracilis from 1961. These drawings represent each thin section ground by Brink. Their detail presented us with an unprecedented opportunity to virtually reconstruct the long lost specimen of Scalopocynodon gracilis.
The drawings were digitised. Then, using cutting edge software and innovative computer-based technology, every slice was digitally reassembled in a single stack. This allowed us to reconstruct a 3D model of the original skull. Afterwards a physical model of Scalopocynodon was printed in 3D so we could recreate a life-sized reconstruction of this specimen.
To our knowledge, this is the first time 3D technology has been used to recreate and print in 3D a serially ground fossil vertebrate (though it is quite often used in invertebrates palaeontology).
This is a great initiative for South African heritage conservation. These techniques can be used on other fossils lost through serial grinding.
Breathing new life
Recreating a fossil using 3D technology is painstaking work.
The 3D printed skull, serving as a holotype, could also help to breathe new life into this mysterious specimen. Taxonomists can now study it and one day might be able to say definitively that Brink was right: Scalopocynodon gracilis was indeed different from any other therapsid.
Internet freedom: why access is becoming a human right
- Indra de Lanerolle
How "free" is the internet in South Africa and the question of cost.
When most people think or speak about internet freedom, they are often concerned with the right, for example, to say what you want online without censorship and without being subject to the chilling effects of surveillance.
These kind of freedoms are sometimes called “negative freedoms” or “freedoms from…”. They address the right not to be interfered with or obstructed in living your life. But there are also “positive freedoms” — “freedoms to…”
Some constitutions – notably the US Constitution – only protect negative rights. But South Africa’s includes both negative and positive rights. Positive rights include, for example, the socio-economic rights to food and shelter.
In its Internet Freedom Index Freedom House ranks South Africa as “free” alongside the UK, Argentina and Kenya. The ranking is largely because Freedom House weighs negative freedoms above positive ones. But how “free” is the internet in South Africa? For most, it is positive internet freedoms that may be more urgent.
Freedom is access
The South African Constitution in the Bill of Rights does not explicitly protect internet freedom but section 16(1) states that everyone has the right to “freedom to receive or impart information or ideas”. This is a right for everyone and it is not just a freedom from interference – a “freedom from” – but also a “freedom to”: a right to be able to reach others and be reached by others. In this it follows Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
In his book Development as Freedom, Amartya Sen describes freedom as “our capability to lead the kind of lives we have reason to value”. In many ways, the internet is extending such capabilities.
More people now go online daily than read a newspaper. They are able to read a much greater variety of voices than are seen in print or on television. And public services are offering improved responsiveness on social media.
But we are also seeing a new development – instances where internet access is now a requirement. Examples include:
The Gauteng Education Department now requires parents with children entering primary or high school to apply online. Previously they could apply at the local school, and
The South African Broadcasting Corporation has announced that it will no longer advertise its jobs in newspapers, directing job seekers to its own website.
Indications from government are that we are likely to see more such initiatives. The result will be that South Africans' ability to lead the kind of lives they value will become increasingly dependent on the physical, procedural, economic and social networks that we call “the internet”.
The question of cost
According to the All Media Products Survey (AMPS) of June 2015 fewer than half of South African adults had used the internet in the previous four weeks. More than half did not.
When we asked a representative sample of non-users in South Africa in 2012 why they hadn’t gone online, the main reason was that they had no device to connect with (87%). The second reason was that they didn’t know how to use it (76%) and the third was that it was too expensive (60%).
According to the survey, nine out of ten South Africans now use a mobile phone but only half of those now have access to smartphones. The most popular phone brand in South Africa is still Nokia. Most of the models in use have limited or no ability to connect to the net. And because only the better off have access to fixed lines at home or at work, the majority of South Africans, when they do get online, are dependent on mobile networks.
Mobile data is costly.
The International Telecommunications Union and the UN’s Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation have set a goal for affordable broadband internet access. It is that entry level broadband should not cost more than 5% of average monthly income. Because of a flawed methodology they state in a 2015 annual report that South Africa falls well within that target. But digging into the figures shows how unaffordable the internet is for most South Africans.
Statistics SA sets an upper bound poverty line of R779 per month per person (in 2011 prices). Most – about 53% – of the South African population live on income below this, according to the last census. So this poverty line is more or less the average income in the country. The poverty line adjusted for inflation to 2016 would be R1 031.
Taking the international 5% of income goal gives a maximum budget of about R52 per month. On three major networks (which account for more than 95% of all mobile customers) 500MB – the amount of data they set as a minimum – of data costs between R85 and R105. So for the average South African 500MB per month is unaffordable. In fact mobile data prices would have to fall by about half to be affordable.
And is 500MB per month enough? It is enough for a lot of instant messaging, or say about half an hour a day of browsing the web or using Facebook. But it is not enough to participate in otherwise free online courses such as Kahn Academy that often rely heavily on video.
This is affecting usage. The most popular online activity is instant messaging using applications like whatsapp. But only one in five people download music online.
Could mobile data be much cheaper in South Africa? Evidence suggests that the answer is yes. Research ICT Africa’s price index shows that South Africa’s data prices are over 20% more expensive than Nigeria, Uganda and Mozambique and three times as expensive as Kenya.
It is also worth noting that the poor in South Africa pay much more for data than the better-off. If you have a fixed line in your home you can buy pre-paid data bundles for R7 per GB or even less, a small fraction of what mobile network users pay.
Free internet?
We could go further and ask if the internet could and should not only be cheaper but free? In some places and for some people it already is. That includes university students thanks to a network for tertiary institutions funded by the government. It also includes many residents in the metropole of Tshwane – including townships – where there are over 600 wifi hotspots offering 500MB of data per day at fast speeds for free.
Just as South African municipalities give poor households a minimum amount of 600 litres of water and 50kwh of electricity for free, they could extend this model to the internet.
As lawyers sometimes say, the right to freedom of expression is an ‘enabling right’ —- a right that enables people to access or defend other rights. In the same way the internet itself is now an enabling technology that is increasingly required to participate in social, political and economic life.
For many or most South Africans whether or not the Films and Publications Board interferes with their right to view video material online does not affect ‘their capability to lead the lives they value’ because they cannot afford to access video or audio content online. At present, defending ‘negative’ internet rights is protecting the rights of the few. We need to move to demanding the ‘positive right’ of affordable access if we want internet freedom for all.
WitsX launches new online course: Digital Transformation and the IT team
- Wits University
Wits University’s has released a new online course aimed specifically at IT and business professionals.
Digital technologies are no longer the exclusive domain of the IT department, and IT can no longer be viewed simply as a support function within organisations.
Wits University’s free, online learning platform, WitsX (on the edX platform), has released a new course aimed specifically at professionals in the information technology field.
The Digital Transformation and the IT team course will help IT professionals understand what digital transformation truly means, how it impacts organisations, how it changes the role of the IT team, and reorient their thinking to a digital business approach.
This course explores the movement from an IT paradigm to a digital business technology (BT) paradigm. It also provides a deep view of the environment of simultaneous chaos and order in organisations that are rapidly digitising. Finally, learners will learn about the impact that digital transformation has on the role of IT and CIO teams. This information is critically needed by both IT and business professionals who are reorienting themselves towards a digital business approach.
In 2014 Wits University became the first African University to partner with edX, the online learning destination founded by MIT and Harvard to offer massive open online courses (MOOCs) to a global learning audience.
The first three MOOCs on the WitsX platform was launched in 2016 and to date close to 48 000 students have enrolled for eight courses on the platform. Three more will be added to WitsX and will start running in the first half of 2019.
Africa is changing, radically, and digitisation is playing a pivotal role
- Wits Communications
The outcomes from the 2018 Fak’ugesi Festival and collaboration with the Wits Art Museum will be shown on Digital Imaginaries: Africas in Production in Germany.
The exibition will take place a the ZKM (Centre for Media Arts) in Karlsruhe, Germany opening from 16 November 2018 to 31 March 2019.
Most exciting is the announcement that both 2018 Fak’ugesi Digital Africa Resident Joshua Chiundiza and 2017 Fak’ugesi Digital Africa Resident Kombo Chapfika – both from Zimbabwe – have been chosen to present work as artists.
Says Dr Tegan Bristow, Fak’ugesi African Digital Innovation Festivaldirector, "We are very grateful to Pro Helvetia and the ANT Fund who annually support the residency in the development of young digital artists from the SADC Region. There is clearly alot of incredible talent in the region that we hope to continue growing."
Outside of the residency artists, contributions from the 2018 Fak’ugesi Festival program include:
Outcomes from the Digital Spirit: Johannesburg augmented reality workshop led by Kim Arnaud Mukendi with participants Laura Seal, Antonio Marin-Pacheco, Arty Musoke, Chesway Theway, Mohau Moloke and Gerald Khumalo.
African Fractals at the Wits Art Museumcontributors from Wits School of Arts, Digital Arts, Laura Seal and Nhlanhla Lucky Nkosi.
Presentation of Towards a Vocabulary for Vernacular Algorithmsfrom the Wits Art Museum exhibition Digital Imaginaries: Premonition with Alex Coelho, João Roxo, Russel Hlongwane and Dr.Tegan Bristow.
The ‘Phinda Pattern Code’ workshop that will be presented at the ZKM by Dr. Tegan Bristow.
About Fak'ugesi
Fak'ugesi - Joburg's one and only African Digital Innovation Festival will take place in September 2018, with the theme ‘Tap your Africa Source Code'. The 2018 festival will focus on bringing to the table important African visions and futures, by tapping into the sources of African tradition and culture alongside technology, creativity and innovation. Explore how local culture can move and change the future of technology. What would you call a vernacular algorithm? What is algorithm in IsiZulu? In 2018 Fak'ugesi Festival calls on you to explore the algorithms, patterns and fractals of Africa! In digital art, music, games, VR, digital makers or the way you braid your hair.
Fak'ugesi, which means “Switch it on” or “add power” in urban Zulu, is focused on making young adults aware of digital innovation. It is an opportunity for young adults, with or without formal education, to learn or engage with tomorrow's technology.
According to an Impact Report commissioned by the British Council ConnectZA- Fak'ugesi is believed to be the most important digital creativity festival in Africa.
Why we should stop chasing the Silicon Valley dream and rethink what Africa needs, especially in the incubator space.
The technology startup ecosystem in South Africa is changing rapidly.
More young entrepreneurs, corporates and the incubators such as Wits University’s Tshimologong Digital Innovation Precinct, which helps propel entrepreneurs and grows the skills pipeline for the digital economy, have realised that accelerators and enterprise development programmes need to be more focused.
“Companies and corporates have to spend their enterprise development funding but they genuinely do not know what the intersection of software, hardware or content look like. At Tshimologong we have realised that too many incubators are trying to be too many things to too many people,” says Shaun David Randles, Enterprise Development Manager, Wits Tshimologong Precinct.
“That is why we design programmes such as the IBM Startup Bootcamp, that can quickly calibrate these young entrepreneurs into the tune of the demand of the market,” Randles adds.
Seven local and aspiring technology startups have been participating in the IBM Startup Bootcamp, a four-week programme designed to enable the development of Growth Stage Tech and Digital Startups.
The bootcamp also culminated in an investment proposal and pitch whereby the winning participants competed to win up to R800k in required products and services. The overall winning team was FIXXR – an online platform that connects car owners to mechanics through GPS to have their car serviced at client's preferred address.
And the winner is FIXXR!!! An online platform that removes the pain of going through time consuming & often expensive exercise of servicing one's car. The platform connects car owners to mechanics through GPS to have their car serviced at client's preffered address. #GEW2018pic.twitter.com/rdxgTQj98G
Randles has been very meticulous about the bootcamp’s design. He analysed some of the most successful incubators internationally, and then curated content and sessions to resonate with local startups and their needs.
“With this bootcamp, our aim is to help technology entrepreneurs accelerate their businesses quickly. The programme starts off by introducing the startups to their business model, and from the first day we pair each startup with a business coach and a technology coach. These two coaches then independently unpack, diagnose, evaluate, pick holes and hack the startups assumptions, their biggest constraints and risks,” Randles explains.
Adding public masterclasses facilitated by IBM staff, the startups are also being exposed to the latest technologies available by learning from experts in Blockchain, Cybersecurity, Internet of Things, Automotive Cognitive Processes and many more.
Creating the right technology ecosystem for South African startups and techtrepreneurs is also vital if the country wants to compete with other African tech giants such as Kenya.
Speaking during a panel discussion presented at the bootcamp recently on the challenges facing South African digital and technology entrepreneurs, Nokwazi Mzobe – author, consultant, adjunct lecturer, facilitator and founder of Motoyana, a boutique consulting and media agency – said budding entrepreneurs do not understand and are not being exposed to the different technologies available out there.
“When we talk about the Internet of Things, Artificial Intelligence or Virtual Reality; the knowledge of what technologies are available is out there but people are not sure where they can access this knowledge,” she adds.
Dr Jabulile Msimango-Galawe, lecturer in the Wits Business School who teaches Entrepreneurship and Decision Science cautions though, that too many young entrepreneurs think only about the app they want to design and not if this is of any value add to their proposed market.
“Young entrepreneurs need to be taught not to think about the product or app first but what problem they want to solve in their community. They need to be guided to first find the problem and then come up with a solution that would best serve the community - a product or service (whether an app or other technology) that can be provided to the community, that you can put a value to and that people will be willing to pay for,” said Msimango-Galawe.
Randles agrees, “Our biggest focus in the programme is our entrepreneurs’ productivity in their progress on validating their customer. We help them pinpoint who their real customer is and help them understand what the costumers pain point is, otherwise they are just building tech that nobody wants to buy. It is about validating whether the customer really exists, because many young entrepreneurs today are building solutions that nobody actually wants to pay money for”.
About the programme
The Startup Bootcamp is an initiative of the Enterprise Development Programme (EDP), one of 3 streams of IBM SA Equity Equivalence Investment Programme (EEIP). The EDP is focused on the enablement of entrepreneurs and businesses with a highly specialised ICT focus in globally relevant areas of technology such as Artificial Intelligence, Cloud Computing, Internet of Things and Cybersecurity, amongst other things.
Siemens launches Digital Mining Incubator
- Wits University
Digital technologies to boost skills and transform South Africa’s mining processes.
The Digital Mining Incubator (DMI), a partnership between global technology powerhouse Siemens and Wits University was launched on Monday, 19 November 2018. The DMI will serve as a hub that enables development of SA’s next generation of digital mining experts contributing to the University’s mission to develop relevant skills for our changing economy and mining industry.
Sabine Dall’Omo, Siemens CEO for Southern and Eastern Africa says, “Our partnership with Wits and Tshimologong is about advancing the digital opportunities that mining offers our youth. Failing to position the mining sector in South Africa within discussions about the fourth industrial revolution means remaining stagnant on the path towards industrialization. It’s like being back in the 80’s watching black and white television and constantly trying to reposition the bunny aerial to get rid of those blurry lines, all while living in the year 2018. This is not where you want to be.
The DMI is located at the Tshimologong Precinct, an innovation hub on the University’s Braamfontein campus.
Professor Barry Dwolatzky, Director of Wits University’s JCSE (Joburg Centre for Software Engineering) and Founder of the Tshimologong Precinct, says, “Having Siemens open a digital incubator dedicated to promoting innovation in mining is a very significant landmark in bringing the benefits of 21st Century digitalisation to one of the most critical sectors in the South African economy. The DMI will provide a dedicated platform for developing innovative solutions to some of our Mining Industry’s greatest challenges including health and safety, environmental protection and improved productivity.”
“At Siemens we believe that there needs to be genuine investment towards the localization of technology and the development of digital talent to enable a strong, future-oriented workforce. The integration of digitally adept youth into the world of work will not only inspire new ideas, it will also transform and advance industries” concludes Sabine.
First round table set the stage for South Africa to formulate a collective response to the Fourth Industrial Revolution.
How can South Africans create the future that we want to create within our means?
This is the question at the heart of #4IRSA, a partnership between Telkom and the Universities of the Witwatersrand (Wits University), Johannesburg (UJ) and Fort Hare.
Launched in September, #4IRSA is a vehicle to “stimulate and shape an inclusive and diverse fact-base dialogue on the impact of the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR) on South Africa and our response therein,” said Professor Zeblon Vilakazi, Deputy Vice-Chancellor: Research at Wits University.
He was opening the #4IRSA partnership’s first round table discussion on Friday, 16 November 2018, at BCX Technology Park in Centurion, Pretoria. This round table was a frank and open discussion between the #4IRSA partners and government departments, research entities, corporates, and other stakeholders.
“There are many unconnected, divergent conversations about the Fourth Industrial Revolution and the impact thereof happening at different levels in South Africa but it has to reach a point of convergence,” Vilakazi added.
“Today we cannot prevent the advances of technology but 4IR is no longer just about ICT or technology,” added Siyabonga Mhlangu, Managing Executive for Regulatory Affairs and Government Relations at Telkom. “We have to bring in universities that have the research tools and networks, and the credibility and stability to form some permanence in our collective response. We need to understand where we are today; and share the data that sits in different sectors and the different action plans. This will inform our priorities: Is our urgency health care? Or mining and manufacturing? How do we make sure that in future we become better than we are today?”
How do we develop a coherent response from all the critical conversations taking place in SA?
“Many conversations are somewhat emotional and not fact-based (such as the threat of machines to jobs),” says Professor Brian Armstrong, Chair in Digital Business in the Wits Business School and Secretary of the #4IRSA partnership.
This research has culminated into five themes that #4IRSA will focus on in future discussions, collaborations and research:
Employment and Jobs
Inequality and Concentration
Society, State and Citizen
Opportunities
Critical Success Factors
“Now we are in the broadening participation phase: getting government involved. Going forward we are planning of a series of rolling workshops and individual engagements across our industry sectors – as well as with labour, academia, civil society, and global organisations – to get as broad a participation as we can over the next few months,” he added.
Drawing from the 4IR research expertise in the partner universities – Wits, UJ and Fort Hare – the partnership will also be reaching out to other partners in the Higher Education and research space.
“We will be producing a number of collaborative research and position papers encouraging everybody to contribute to the narratives and positions on the Fourth Industrial Revolution. The research will be curated and archived on a digital platform,” Armstrong elaborated.
After these discussions #4IRSA will focus on its core ideal: a two-summit approach that will set the country onto its future course.
Moving forward, a “Summit of Principles” is envisioned to formulate the national agenda and understand what are the big issues that should be embed in the national discourse and kick off the elaboration phase where the collaborators will start to develop the researched-based responses.
And ultimately, the “Summit of Declaration” will be the convergence of all the various responses into a common understanding between different sectors and the government to show what are the important issues South Africa should focus on; how the country can take advantage of what is needed to be done; and how South Africans can harness all our energies into achieving these goals.
“This wave of change is coming and we cannot control it. But what is important is how we respond to it,” said Armstrong.
10 years of SA-CERN
- National Research Foundation
Collaboration on Fundamental Physics celebrates a decade, of among others, Wits’ involvement in accelerated technology development.
The 10-year celebration of the partnership between the South African physics community and CERN, the European Organisation for Nuclear Research, is being celebrated at the iThemba Laboratory for Accelerator-Based Sciences (iThemba LABS) in Cape Town, from 19 to 21 November 2018.
The event attracted a full house on its first day, with the French and Swiss Ambassadors to South Africa, the Vice-Chancellors of the Universities of Cape Town and the Witwatersrand, and a number of internationally renowned physicists attending.
IThemba LABS, a research facility funded by the Department of Science and Technology through the National Research Foundation, employs senior scientists dedicated to the SA-CERN programme and offers world-class infrastructure and administrative support.
The research programme in fundamental physics at CERN's Large Hadron Collider (LHC) has brought many opportunities for South Africa's science community.
Founder of the SA-CERN Programme, Prof. Zeblon Vilakazi, said the partnership received support at the highest levels, with a recent visit from the Minister of Science and Technology, Mmamoloko Kubayi-Ngubane.
Professor Vilakazi said that, since the launch of the programme, South Africa had established a solid presence at CERN. Over the past decade, SA researchers have contributed to major breakthroughs at the global facility, including the historical discovery of the Higgs boson particle in 2012.
Dr Zinhle Buthelezi, a Senior Researcher at iThemba LABS, who benefited from the collaboration at postgraduate level, said that the experience had been life-changing, and praised the Department of Science and Technology for funding the SA-CERN initiative. She also welcomed the Department's expansion of the initiative to include software and hardware engineering, which holds huge benefits for local students.
The Department's Deputy Director-General: Research Development and Support, Dr Thomas Auf der Heyde, said that the initiative has contributed significantly to the growth of the physics community in South Africa. South African papers in the sub-fields of nuclear, particle and field physics increased to between 2,5 and 3 times the global average, while the overall standing of work in applied, fluid, plasma, atomic and mathematical physics remained unchanged. Racial demographics have also improved, although gender representivity remains skewed in favour of men, with only 12% of publications attributed to women.
Dr Auf der Heyde said that the partnership between CERN and South Africa, as well as between South Africa and the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research in Russia, had contributed to strengthening nuclear-related physics in South Africa.
The partnership with CERN has also accelerated technology development, enhancing both technological and social innovation, and providing advanced scientific training for new generations of scientists and science managers. Partnerships around global infrastructures such as CERN allow South African research to benchmark itself against its global partners and rivals, thereby establishing an objective perspective on its standing in the global world of science.
The human capital development aspect of the collaboration has also been significant. Currently, about 29 senior researchers, 13 postdoctoral fellows and 50 master's and doctoral students from South Africa participate in two LHC experiments, namely, on ALICE (A Large Ion Collider Experiment) and ATLAS (A Toroidal LHC Apparatus). Several participate in the research activities at the radioactive ion beam facility ISOLDE (Isotope Separator On-Line Device). South Africa also has seven senior researchers, two postdoctoral fellows, and 12 MSc and PhD students that collaborate with the LHC Theory Group.
Over the past three years, the total number of postgraduate students has increased from about 30 to over 50, and is expected to grow to more than 80 in the next few years. The master's and doctoral degrees are of the highest international standing and all students who have graduated so far have been able to find employment in South African universities and research councils, as well as various private sector institutions (including some in the financial services sector). Owing to the CERN collaboration, there have been instances where South Africa has retained skilled scientists that might otherwise have been lost to the African Science Diaspora.
Black student representation is expected to increase from 35% in 2014 to 65% in 2019, and women representation is expected to increase from 30% in 2013 to 50% in 2019. These targets are further supported by an aggressive science awareness campaign that will showcase the SA-CERN programme at previously disadvantaged universities.
Dr Auf der Heyde said that there were ongoing discussions with the National Research Foundation about bursaries dedicated to the SA-CERN programme.
The number of visits for students (including postdoctoral fellows) is expected to treble from 2013 to 2019. Being part of a large collaboration exposes students and researchers to an international group sharing a very high standard of science, and the most advanced techniques and latest advances in software.
The growth experienced in academic, technical, and scientific staff and postdoctoral fellows who have been through the SA-CERN programme over the past few years of this partnership bodes well for growing South Africa's national competence to manage and promote a wide range of computationally and theoretically intense domains and projects, such as the Square Kilometre Array project, the Centre for High Performance Computing (and the SA-GRID initiative), the Radioactive Ion Beam project at iThemba, and the High Throughput Electronics Facility project at the University of the Witwatersrand.
These projects and others have benefited from an infusion of skills from students trained at CERN and researchers participating in CERN experiments, it is expected that this valuable cross-over of skills will continue.
Shedding a new light on optical trapping and tweezing
- Wits University
Wits physicists demonstrate a new device for manipulating and moving tiny objects with light.
When you shine a beam of light on your hand, you don’t feel much, except for a little bit of heat generated by the beam. When you shine that same light into a world that is measured on the nano- or micro scale, the light becomes a powerful manipulating tool that you can use to move objects around – trapped securely in the light.
Researchersfrom the Structured Light group from the School of Physicsat the University of the Witwatersrandin Johannesburg, South Africa, have found a way to use the full beam of a laser light, to control and manipulate minute objects such as single cells in a human body, tiny particles in small volume chemistry, or working on future on-chip devices.
While the specific technique, called holographic optical trapping and tweezing, is not new, the Wits Researchers found a way to optimally use the full force of the light – including vector light that was previously unavailable for this application. This forms the first vector holographic trap.
“Previously holographic traps were limited to particular classes of light (scalar light), so it is very exciting that we can reveal a holistic device that covers all classes of light, including replicating all previous trapping devices,” Professor Andrew Forbes, team leader of the collaboration and Distinguished Professor in the School of Physics where he heads up the Wits Structured Light Laboratory.
“What we have done is that we have demonstrated the first vector holographic optical trapping and tweezing system. The device allows micrometer sized particles, such as biological cells, to be captured and manipulated only with light.”
The final device could trap multiple particles at once and move them around just with vector states of light. The experiments for this study were performed by Nkosi Bhebhe as part of his doctoral studies. The work is published in Nature’s on-line journal, Scientific Reports.
In conventional optical trapping and tweezing systems, light is focused very tightly into a small volume that contains small particles, such as biological cells. At this small scale (typically micro- or nanometres) the forces that the light can exert are significant, so particles can be trapped by the light and then controlled. As the light is moved, the particles will move with it. This idea won American scientist Arthur Ashkin the 2018 Nobel prize in Physics. Originally the light was controlled mechanically with stages and mirrors, but the idea was later improved on by moving the light around holographically, that is, by using computer generated holograms to control the light without moving parts, thereby controlling the particles. Until now only special classes of laser beams, called scalar beams, could be used in such holographic traps.
In their paper titled: A vector holographic optical trapthe Wits researchers showed how to create and control any pattern of light holographically, and then used this to form a new optical trapping and tweezing device.
“In particular the device could work with both the traditional laser beams (scalar beams) as well as more complex vector beams. Vector beams are highly topical and have found many applications, but no vector holographic trap was possible until now,” says Forbes.
The Wits researchers demonstrate their new trap by holographically controlling both scalar and vector beams in the same device, advancing the state-of-the-art and introducing a new device to the community. The group expects the new device to be useful in controlled experiments in the micro- and nano-worlds, including single cell studies in biology and medicine, small volume chemical reactions, fundamental physics and for future on-chip devices.
Having previously shown that it is possible to create hundreds of custom light patterns from one hologram, the research brings together their prior work on holographic control of light with the application of optical trapping and tweezing.
We are facing our biggest leadership challenge yet
- Wits University
It is not the robots that will take our jobs but a crisis of imagination and leadership, says futurist Valter Adão.
While the odds are stacked against South Africa to successfully navigate the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR) – such as the current unemployment rate of 27.7%, low productivity and inequality – our biggest challenge is not the impact of exponential technological advances but rather a crisis in leadership.
“It is not the technology that is creating our job losses but our inability to make the shift, for a variety of reasons, into this new automated economy and be globally competitive. There is nothing preventing us from this shift but a crisis of imagination and leadership,” he said.
The future of work was a key theme during this one-day workshop, facilitated by the #4IRSA Operational Committee and Deloitte South Africa, for representatives of the ICT sector: from fixed and wireless telecommunications operators; IT systems integrators and service providers; industry associations; OEMs; global digital companies and OTTs; local entrepreneurs; the regulator, and the Department of Communications, Telecommunications and Postal Services.
Adão said all sectors are in the path of change brought about by the 4IR, especially the ICT sector where some the biggest and fastest changes are happening.
However, the Digital Age is not about technology alone. While technology might be ‘the enabler’ of the 4IR, Adão said our focus has been on ‘predicting’ what these changes will be even though we can now only predict about 18 months into the future (then things change again). “To steer technological change, we have to move away from ‘predicting’ what will come to ‘navigating’ what is happening,” he said.
This is where the ICT sector plays crucial role as contributors and enablers to navigate the Digital Age.
“Job losses and shifting jobs are inevitable and part of the natural progression of economies,” Adão said, “However, with the 4IR we need jobs to enable the exponential technologies created today. These new jobs that will be created are going to be jobs that leverage new technologies, such as jobs in machine learning, robotics and so on.
“But these new jobs that will be created are jobs that will benefit the privilege few; those with skills, the means and access to continued education. And this is where the opportunity lies. These new technologies (and access to it) are now moving away from the domain of the rich and large organisations and can be in the hands of very, very basic entrepreneurs; like someone sitting in a shack or in a rural area who now access exponential technologies,” he said, giving examples of the impact disruptive technologies like Uber have had on local economies.
These skills are not present in the South African economy at the moment and that is where our biggest challenge lies: to develop the skills required to compete in this digital economy.
Professor Adam Habib, Vice-Chancellor and Principal of Wits University, echoed this: “We cannot stop the advances in innovation and technology but it should not be an exclusive space for the elite. We must develop these high level skills in great numbers”.
Coherent, collective response
Framing the workshop group discussions, Professor Brian Armstrong, Chair in Digital Business in the Wits Business School and Secretary of the #4IRSA Partnership, introduced the three themes that all sector workshops, including the ICT workshop, will discuss:
Its purpose is to stimulate and facilitate an inclusive national dialogue to shape a coherent national response to the 4th Industrial Revolution in South Africa. It aims to complement and support other national activities relating to the 4IR, most notably the Presidential Commission on the 4IR.
The 4IRSA Partnership recognises that there are several 4IR-related processes and dialogues underway in South Africa: in government, industry, academia and society at large.
However, these are, in the main, fragmented, eclectic and divergent, and indeed there is a high level of unawareness of each other between these processes. The 4IRSA Partnership aims to provide a platform for all these processes and stimulate shared conversation, so that they become mutually visible, thereby facilitating progressive coherence between them, moving from fragmented divergence towards complementarity.
A Summit of Principles (SOP) is scheduled for end of March 2019. This will include representatives of all of the above industries, related government departments, labour and other stakeholders. The objectives of the Summit of Principles are: to build alignment, participation and momentum for the 4IRSA process; share sector workshop outputs; agree on key areas for further research and deliberation; and agree on a framework for further action and the roadmap towards the Summit of Declarations.
The Summit of Declarations is anticipated to be held in the 4th quarter of 2019. The objective of the Summit of Declarations are: to consolidate all workstream reports into a comprehensive national response; for all stakeholders of each sector represented to table and commit to a short, medium and long term response by that sector to the 4th IR, in the form of a declaration for that sector; to agree monitoring and evaluation mechanisms; to agree further areas of dialogue and research.
South African-Scottish research team demonstrate fractal light from lasers
- Wits University
Team confirms a 20-year-old prediction that “nature’s geometry” could be recreated by the use of laser technology.
We’ve all seen it before. The beautifully painted butterfly that appears when you spread open two sheets of paper, after covering them with paint and pushing them together. The geometrically shaped patterns of a shell of a tortoise, or the construction of the shell of a snail; the leaves of a succulent plant that repeat themselves over and over again, to create an intricate pattern; or the frost pattern on the windshield of a car after standing outside in winter.
These patterns are all examples of fractals, the geometry of nature. Fractals are the complex shapes that we see every day in nature. They have the distinctive feature of a repeating geometry with a structure at multiple scales and are found everywhere – from Romanesco broccoli to ferns, and even at larger scales such as salt flats, mountains, coastlines, and clouds. The shape of trees and mountains is self-similar, so a branch looks like a small tree and a rocky outcrop like a small mountain.
For the past two decades, scientists have predicted that you could also create fractal light from a laser. With its highly polished spherical mirrors, a laser is almost the precise opposite of nature, and so it came as a surprise when, in 1998, light beams emitted from a class of lasers were predicted to be fractals. Now a team from South Africa and Scotland have demonstrated that fractal light can be created from a laser, verifying the prediction of two decades.
Reporting this month in the Physics Review, the team provide the first experimental evidence for fractal light from simple lasers and add a new prediction, that the fractal light should exist in 3D and not just 2D as previously thought.
Fractals are complex objects with a “pattern within a pattern” so that the structure appears to repeat as you zoom in or out of it. Nature creates such “patterns within patterns” by many recursions of a simple rule, for example, to produce a snowflake. Computer programmes have also been used to do so by looping through the rule over and over, famously producing the abstract Mandelbrot Set.
The light inside lasers also does this: it cycles back and forth, bouncing between the mirrors on each pass, which can be set to image the light into itself on each round trip. This looks just like a recursive loop, repeating a simple rule over and over. The imaging means that each time the light returns to the image plane it is a smaller (or bigger) version of what it was: a pattern within a pattern within a pattern.
Fractals have found applications in imaging, networks, antennas and even medicine. The team expects that the discovery of fractal forms of light that can be engineered directly from a laser should open new applications and technologies based on these exotic states of structured light.
“Fractals is a truly fascinating phenomenon, and is linked to what is known as “Chaos”,” says Professor Andrew Forbes, from the University of the Witwatersrand, who led the project together with Professor Johannes Courtial of the University of Glasgow. “In the popular science world, Chaos is called the “butterfly effect”, where a small change in one place makes a big change somewhere else, for example, a butterfly beating its wings in Asia causes a hurricane in the USA. This has been proven to be true.”
In explaining the fractal light discovery, Forbes explains that his team realised the importance of where to look for fractals in a laser. “Look at the wrong place inside the laser and you see just a smeared-out blob of light. Look in the right place, where the imaging happens, and you see fractals.”
The project combined theoretical expertise from the Glasgow team with experimental validation in South Africa by Wits and CSIR (Council for Scientific and Industrial Research) researchers. The initial version of the experiment was built by Dr Darryl Naidoo (of the CSIR and Wits) and completed by Hend Sroor (Wits) as part of her PhD.
“What is amazing is that, as predicted, the only requirement to demonstrate the effect is a simple laser with two polished spherical mirrors. It was there all the time, just hard to see if you were not looking at the right place,” says Courtial.
Why screen time needs to be limited
- John J Reilly, Anthony (Tony) Okely, Catherine Draper and Mark S. Tremblay
High levels of screen time, among babies, children and adolescents, are associated with potential harm.
There is increasing concern about the amount of time children and adolescents are spending in recreational screen time. There’s also increasing controversy over whether or not screen time is actually harmful.
Since 2016, we (researchers who’ve contributed to the development of the 24-hour movement guidelines for children and adolescents) have led a number of wide-ranging reviews of the scientific evidence on the impact of screen time from infancy to early adulthood. We examined whether or not the amount of recreational (spare time, non-educational) digital screen use influences health. These included risks such as obesity, reduced sleep, low physical fitness, anxiety and depression. We also looked at the impact of recreational screen time on social and emotional as well as cognitive and language development, well-being and educational attainment.
These reviews demonstrated that high levels of screen time, now typical among children, are associated with potential harm. And they showed clearly that less recreational screen time is better for avoiding obesity, and for promoting sleep, physical fitness, and cognitive, social and emotional development.
Over the past three years the evidence reviews generated authoritative guidelines nationally in Australia, Canada, South Africa, the UK and internationally.
We were all involved in the development of global guidelines for zero to four year-olds for the World Health Organisation (WHO). These guidelines all recommended that recreational screen time should be limited in infancy, childhood and adolescence.
Limiting screen time
Guidelines from Canada, Australia, and South Africa recommend that recreational screen time should be avoided in the under two’s, limited to one hour per day in two to four year-olds, and to two hours per day in five to 17 year-olds.
Based on our collective experience in developing these guidelines it’s clear that these limits on recreational screen time are needed for a number of reasons.
First, the evidence suggests strongly that limits are required. The recommendations to limit screen time were based on a rigorous, widely-accepted, and evidence-based approach. This included systematic reviews, critical appraisals of the evidence, national and international consultation and review, and transparent reporting.
Second, less recreational screen time is clearly better. There is evidence in support of the specific time limits recommended and our wide consultation with stakeholder individuals and organisations – including parents and families – suggests that they find time limits helpful.
Third, our recommendations that recreational screen time should be limited are consistent with other recent and thorough reviews of the evidence conducted by authoritative bodies such as the WHO and the World Cancer Research Fund. These reviews highlighted the important role of recreational screen time in the development of obesity, many cancers and myopia.
Taking a laissez-faire approach to screen time would be to ignore the wider context. This is that modern childhoods are characterised by low physical activity, excessive sitting and time indoors. Children and adolescents also suffer from poor motor skills, high levels of myopia, increased risk of type 2 diabetes and hypertension.
And as new forms of screen time emerge, a precautionary approach is required – some limits on recreational screen time would be prudent until it is clear that there are negligible harms.
Still time to act
Some argue that the “genie is out of the bottle” in relation to screen time. But this is defeatist. The same arguments could have been made in relation to control of tobacco and alcohol and sugar. But it is now accepted that unlimited exposure to these substances isn’t compatible with public health. And constraints are accepted as essential.
In addition, in many parts of the world the genie may not yet be out of the bottle. In many low- and middle-income countries exposure to recreational screen time may still be relatively low among children.
There is also scope to prevent excessive screen time in babies and young children, acting before adverse, or at least sub-optimal, lifestyle habits become established later in childhood or adolescence.
Screen time harms can be indirect as well as direct – recreational screen time increases with age and as it does it displaces more beneficial forms of sedentary behaviours such as reading. Screen time also displaces physically active play, and sleep.
Recreational screen time may seem to be an inevitable part of modern life. But even from infancy and early childhood, we should all be concerned about the potential for harms – at least until new, robust evidence demonstrates no harm. The most prudent approach would be cautious, attempting to follow recent evidence-based guidance that recreational screen time should be restricted.
Wits researchers prove the long-held theory by making the first direct observation of fractal light from lasers.
We all appreciate the beauty of Nature, whether it be cloud patterns, mountain ranges or coastlines. These structures have complex shapes that at first appearance are hard to quantify: how could we describe them in a “scientific manner”?
Some decades ago the idea arose that very complex structures could be produced by very simple iterative rules: that is, a simple rule repeated over and over may explain much of Nature’s complexity, revealing its hidden symmetries in the process.
Computers are ideal for simulating such tasks – repetition is their forte. Using computers, mathematicians began to produce beautiful abstract creations. Today we know these as fractals.
Nature uses this iterative process – a simple starting shape and a simple repeating rule – to create many of the complex structures we see around us, from ferns to sea shells.
A zoomed in version of a famous computer-generated fractal, the Mandelbrot Set.Andrew Forbes
So, nature can produce fractals; computers can, too. Could light be a fractal? The answer was known to be yes. If light was passed through a fractal-like object then it too became fractal. Then, about two decades ago, scientists predicted that simple lasers may also be able to produce fractals.
Now that prediction has been fulfilled. I lead a group at the University of the Witwatersrand in South Africa that works on structured light, including lasers. Working with colleagues at the country’s Council for Scientific and Industrial Research and in Scotland, we have made the first direct observation of fractal light from lasers.
This is exciting for two reasons. First, there’s a certain satisfaction in unravelling mysteries in science, advancing our knowledge. Second, such discoveries often lead to new technologies. Our group’s research aim is to create custom lasers with the ability to output any desired pattern. Doing so will see lasers find even more applications than they do today. Fractals have already been used in digital processing, imaging and even medicine. So we are excited about the possibility to offer a laser to deliver such exotically structured light.
Making laser fractals
A laser can be considered as nothing more than a box made of two mirrors so that light bounces back and forth between the two mirrors, leaking a little out from one end – the laser light. The iterative rule here is simple: the light goes back and forth between the mirrors over and over again.
But mirrors are highly polished surfaces with no evident structure, suggesting a rather bland output. Indeed, this is what we mostly see: blobs of light from our laser pointers, for example. So it was somewhat perplexing to think that this “box” could produce a complex light field that is fractal.
We looked carefully at the prediction from 20 years ago and released that to see the fractal you would have to actually look inside the box. That’s because paradoxically, the light that comes out of the box would not be fractal. The trick was to design the optical system to see inside the laser – and in particular to see a very specific place, the common imaging plane.
The mirrors have such a plane because they are curved, like parabolic satellite dishes, and as with those dishes which focus to the detector, so the curved mirrors focus to a plane. Since the two mirrors face each other it is possible to adjust their separation so that where they focus coincides: the common imaging plane.
To understand why, imagine that the light begins at this plane and travels from left to right, bounces off the mirror, goes all the way back to the other mirror, bounces off, and then returns to the starting plane. At the imaging plane the returning light is a magnified version of the initial light. This keeps happening, and the light becomes either smaller or bigger after each return trip.
This repetition results in patterns within patterns within patterns: fractal light from lasers.
One of the tests for a fractal structure is to zoom in: if you see complexity and repeating images at various magnifications you have a fractal structure. It is as if the pattern keeps repeating no matter how far in you go.
Next steps
All the images we have seen so far are 2D: they are images on a screen rather than 3D objects that would look like a hologram.
This means that while the mystery of 2D fractals in lasers is now resolved, there is a new prediction to test. In our simulations of the laser we found that there might be fractal structure along the axis of the box, in the direction that the light is travelling in. This would imply that 3D fractals are possible in lasers.
To verify this would require a far more precise experiment, the subject of ongoing research in our group.
This is the nature of science: answering old questions inevitably results in new, more complex questions to be answered. So, although one chapter is closed, another remains completely unwritten.
The competitions were held during the Centre for High Performance Computing (CHPC)’s 12th National Conference hosted in Cape Town in December where undergraduate student teams from participating universities across the country battled it out to build the small High Performance Computer (HPC) clusters on the exhibition floor from hardware provided by the CHPC and industrial partners. The teams also had to run various performance benchmarks on the clusters as well as an actual simulation and machine learning workload. Essentially, the students vied to build the fastest computer and secure their spot in the 2019 International Supercomputing Conference to be held in Germany.
Hassaan Hameed, Basheq Tarifi, Nathan Jones (second-year biomedical engineering students) and Sansha Gupta (second-year electrical engineering students) won the team award for the most innovative team.
Third-year information engineering students Anita de Mello Koch, Kaamilah Desai, Brendon Swanepoel and Nicholas Kastanos won the best teamwork award.
Third-year information engineering students Anita de Mello Koch and Kaamilah Desai were also selected as two of the six-member team to participate in the 2019 International Supercomputing Conference to be held in Germany later this year.
Third-year information engineering student Rashaad Cassim was named one of the winners of the social engineering competition in the South African National Research Network Cyber Security Challenge that ran concurrently with the CHPC’s Student Cluster Competition.
The team consisting of Jamie Burns, Thato Moeng, Kilolo Muaku and Meghan Sinclair-Black too third place in the CHPC’s Student Cluster Competition.
Mathematical Sciences Support is the Wits coordinator for the CHPC HPC Ecosystems Project, a training initiative for High Performance Computing (HPC) skills in the SADC region. The HPC Ecosystems Project feeds into the CHPC's training program for Square Kilometer Array (SKA) readiness.
Many of the participants entering the competition prepared for the competition on old decommissioned HPC equipment donated to Wits by the HPC Ecosystems Project and Innovent for the purpose of student training. A team of previous worldwide champions lead by Avraham Bank provided hands-on training and teaching, while Brian Maistry, Scientific & Research Systems Manager in Mathematical Sciences, provided coordination and infrastructure support. The training venue was provided by TW Kambule Mathematical Sciences Laboratories, which supports HPC training and course activities.
Wits is the hub of a unique cross-disciplinary postgraduate e-Science training platform.
In 2016, the Department of Science and Technology (DST) identified the need to establish a multi-institutional National e-Science Postgraduate Teaching and Training Platform (NEPTTP). This platform exists to develop human capital with the knowledge and skills to conduct cutting-edge research in the field of e-Science – in line with the South African Research Infrastructure Roadmap (SARIR), the Square Kilometre Array (SKA) and others.
The DST, through the Council for Industrial and Scientific Research (CSIR) funds the platform, comprised of six universities. Wits University is the administrative hub of a consortium that includes the Universities of Limpopo, North-West, Pretoria, Sol Plaatje, and Venda.
Launched in 2017, the first cohort of around 30 students enrolled for the Master of Science in e-Science and the Master of Arts in e-Science degrees in 2018. These programmes are unique because they traverse faculties – students come from disciplines including Computer Science, Mathematics, Applied Mathematics, Actuarial Sciences, Physics, Social Sciences, and Public Health.
The 2019 cohort includes 30 students from Wits and the Universities of Limpopo, Pretoria and Venda. The first year of the degree consists of coursework, offered at Wits, and in the second year requires a research report (completed at students’ home institution).
NEPTTP is currently in discussions with various public and private partners including the Gauteng Department of e-Government, the Gauteng Department of Health, as well as financial institutions, and international partners, in order to facilitate an internship programme for graduating students.
“We foresee the demand for such degrees increasing exponentially over the next few years,” says Turgay Celik, NEPTTP Director and Professor in the School of Computer Science and Applied Mathematics at Wits.
#4IRSA Digital Economy Summit 2019 dates announced
-
The Fourth Industrial Revolution Partnership for South Africa (#4IRSA) hosts a Digital Economy Summit in Johannesburg in June 2019.
The Fourth Industrial Revolution Partnership for South Africa (#4IRSA) is pleased to announce the dates for the Digital Economy Summit 2019, following a directive of the national Cabinet on Friday, 15 February 2019.
#4IRSA is a partnership of some of South Africa’s premier public and private institutions. Its founding partners are the Department of Telecommunications and Postal Service (DTPS), Telkom SA SOC Ltd, and the Universities of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, and Fort Hare.
The sole aim of #4IRSA is to stimulate dialogue and to serve as a catalyst to develop a coherent national response to the ongoing changes happening in our country and around the world, due to new technologies, business processes and production methods. These changes are often referred to as the fourth industrial revolution, industry 4.0, and the new digital economy.
In pursuit of this goal, #4IRSA will host a Digital Economy Summit in Johannesburg to take place on Friday, 5 July, and Saturday, 6 July 2019. The summit will bring together representatives from industry, government, academia, labour, the research sector, the investor community, international experts and other critical stakeholders.
The objective of the summit is to create a platform through which to craft the strategies, investments, policy directions and other interventions necessary for South Africa to exploit the opportunities presented by Industry 4.0.
In its statement, the Cabinet affirmed the primacy of this goal for South Africa to meet its economic and developmental ambitions:
“The global move towards technology inspired by the 4IR brings with it new opportunities to build our society and economy. To remain at the forefront of new technological trends, the country will host the Digital Economy Summit in June 2019. The summit is convened under the banner of the #4IRSA Partnership.
The #4IRSA Partnership aims to address the challenges facing South Africa in the Digital Age, to find a coherent and collective response for the country.”
The #4IRSA Partnership is pleased to have its work and efforts recognised and by endorsed by the national government at such a high level. This gives encouragement and affirmation that the efforts of our founding partners, though still at a nascent stage, have provided the necessary ignition to ensure success of the #4IRSA initiative. The government’s support will also give the process the boost needed for it to become a truly national collaborative effort.
NEXT STEPS
A series of sector-specific workshops are being held in the lead up to the summit. Workshops for the ICT and public sector have already taken place, and three more are planned. All entities that wish to be part of this process, should contact #4IRSA via the contact details provided below.
Invitations for attendance and participation in the Digital Economy Summit will be extended to all relevant stakeholders. Further communication regarding the conference programme and list of speakers will be shared in the coming weeks.
The #4IRSA Partnership looks forward to welcoming all stakeholders to the country’s first ever Digital Economy Summit to take place on Friday, 5 July, and Saturday, 6 July 2019.
The brain as a network device
- Wits University
Research by Wits biomedical engineers that incorporates the human brain as part of a computer network is believed to be a world-first.
Researchers in the School of Electrical and Information Engineering at Wits have connected two computers through the human brain and successfully transmitted words like ‘hello’ and ‘apple’, passively, without the user being aware that a message is present.
This research of incorporating the human brain as part of a computer network is believed to be a world-first. Dubbed ‘BrainConnect’, the proof-of-concept innovation is under review for publication in the journal Communications in Information Systems.
“We don’t know of anywhere else where the brain has been used to connect two disconnected computers,” says Adam Pantanowitz, lecturer in the School of Electrical and Information Engineering at Wits and co-author of the paper with Wits alumni Rushil N. Daya and Michael N. Dukes.
This presents an interesting theoretical system with a human literally being “in the loop”.
Morse code via light signals
BrainConnect links light, signal transmission, the visual cortex of the human brain, and two computers. It works by attaching a device to a person’s head, which links the two computers. The person passively stares at a flashing light whilst a word, for example, ‘apple’, is encoded in the light signal.
The flashing light stimulates the visual cortex in the brain and an electroencephalogram [EEG – a test that detects electrical activity in the brain] wirelessly transmits information to a second computer, which decodes the signals to appear on the second computer.
“You can think of it like Morse code via light signals,” says Pantanowitz.
BrainConnect can decipher up to 17 symbols at a rate of four seconds per symbol. The more relaxed the person is, the greater the potential to invoke a response through this ‘steady state visually evoked potential’ (SSVEP).
Pantanowitz and Dukes demonstrated BrainConnect live on MNet’s Carte Blanche on Sunday, 24 February. They wired-up presenter, Claire Mawisa, and showed how BrainConnect transmitted words through the brain, while using the brain to connect to the internet in real time (Brainternet).
Although BrainConnect is fledgling research, Pantanowitz says this brain-computer interface [BCI] may have applications in eye-gaze devices.
“BrainConnect works simply through a light stimulus of the visual cortex. Similar eye-gaze devices serve as assistive tech to empower motor-impaired people or paraplegics. This opens up research questions about the uniqueness of brain signatures," he says.
“Indistinguishable from magic”
Pantanowitz cites futurists who predict greater human-tech integration by 2030. The Fourth Industrial Revolution [4IR] is already a feature of 21st Century society – human beings are already deeply connected to tech through smart phones and other close-contact devices. Research in South Africa and Africa similar to this engineering innovation at Wits University has the potential to advance 4IR.
“Africa’s challenges need unique solutions. The brain research is being conducted under what’s known as a ‘frugal innovation’, where low-cost equipment and innovative approaches keep costs down,” says Pantanowitz.
Another of his similarly frugal innovations was a basic robotic hand, the prototype of which cost just R1 800 in South Africa, compared to a budget of close to a million Euros for a similarly functioning device in Europe.
Pantanowitz says, “There is potential for us in Africa to advance brain-computer interfaces and other assistive technologies. As science-fiction writer Arthur C Clark observed, ‘any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic’.”
Wits students create genetics app
- Wits University
Wits science students have created an app to teach people the basics about genetics.
The SCOP Genetics app was launched at the African Society of Human Genetics meeting in Kigali, Rwanda in September 2018.
Click here to download the free SCOP Genetics app for Android developed by Mahtaab Hayat, Jorge da Rocha, Heather Seymour, and Natalie Smyth.
Part of this student-developed and student-run initiative is to visit local schools and deliver presentations about how genetics works, how it is studied, how genetics can treat disease, identify individuals, and develop precision medicine.
“We visit schools and give presentations educating learners on the basics of genetics and genetics research in action. We found that the learners were intrigued. They asked many questions and definitely showed an interest in learning more. We thought [an app] would be a great interactive way that schoolchildren can learn in their own time and in a way that’s easily accessible,” says Hayat, also a PhD candidate in Human Genetics.
Extract your own DNA at home
The app is designed as a library containing simple explanations of genetic concepts. It is a beginner’s guide to the science of genetic concepts and provides information via SCOP video presentations. Concepts are described mainly with pictures and the language is simplified to enhance accessibility. The app is divided into Basics, Advanced, and Real World Examples:
Basics explains the concepts of inheritance (getting DNA from our parents), what cells are and where the DNA is within them, and how genes work.
Advanced provides more information about chromosome structure in humans, how differences in genes lead to different features, how we can design medicine to fit our genes, and a safe experiment to show you how to extract your own DNA at home.
Real World Examples highlights major studies that form the foundation of genetics studies (including exciting African projects) to inspire learners by showing that they could do this incredible work too.
Coding 101 to teach Genetics 101
The SCOP team designed and wrote the content for the app themselves after teaching themselves to code in HTML5 with some basic CSS.
“These languages are great to code cross-platform apps, so we hope to have our app available on iOS devices soon. We even have plans to get our app translated into other South African languages,” says Da Rocha, also a PhD candidate in Human Genetics.
Genetics is what makes individuals unique and knowing what you inherited from your parents, which traits you share with your siblings, and the diseases you are susceptible to is increasingly compelling to people.
“There are so many new ways in which people are learning more about these sorts of concepts. We hope the app will help high school learners better understand the topic of genetics in the Life Science syllabus and help the public understand the implications of inheritance of traits and disorders and thus help inform decision-making that involves genetics,” says Hayat.
Academics and business must partner to help government understand what skills pupils and workers require for 4IR.
Data on information and communication technology (ICT) is sorely lacking in South Africa, even though it is generally recognised that the sector is instrumental in helping build a sustainable economy and social cohesion.
According to a report, this continues to result in fragmented policy because it is based on flimsy and obsolete information, and therefore, its effectiveness cannot be properly measured.
To exacerbate matters, the country’s schooling system continues to produce poor math and science results, and exposure to the ICT sector is minimal.
The report is compiled by the Joburg Centre for Software Engineering (JCSE), which is a University of Witwatersrand partnership with government and industry, and the Institute of Information Technology Professionals South Africa (IITPSA).
The document, which is the JCSE’s ninth edition of its survey of skills trends in the ICT sector, says the state of the South African economy continues to restrict growth in the demand for ICT skills as the sector’s clients limit their budgets.
The sector contributes more than R250bn (approximately 6%) to the country’s GDP. Good growth in the agriculture sector in the second quarter of 2017 reversed the recession of the previous two quarters, but this was short lived as the country again retreated into recession in 2018.
John-David Lovelock, who is from international information technology research and advisory company, Gartner, forecasted that South Africa’s IT spend would reach R276bn in 2018, up 4,3% from 2017.
While the report acknowledges President Cyril Ramaphosa’s commitment to speed up processes to develop the sector, it says that until there are concrete developments, South Africa will continue to lag its peers in Africa – notably Kenya, Nigeria, Rwanda and Egypt – who continue to derive the benefits that technology adoption adds to economic growth and social development.
“Unacceptable delays in implementing policies, such as the migration from analogue television signals and the rollout of broadband networks, continue to frustrate the potential contribution of the ICT sector to the overall economy,” the report reads.
“We emphasise again our concern at the slow pace of improvement in South Africa’s basic education for the majority of pupils. Exposure to and familiarity with ICTs for all learners is essential, in order to equip them to adapt the modern tools to their daily lives.”
It says that while there have been some laudable initiatives such as the use of tablets in Gauteng schools, they are yet to reach a sustained, critical mass for all grades of school-goers. Also, of over one million pupils entering the schooling system each year, only half will write matric and less than 20% will be able to enrol for tertiary studies.
The lack of overall market growth is also being aggravated by a continuing restriction of the skills pipeline due to pupils performing poorly in maths and science.
The JCSE says it is concerned that a prolonged failure to improve the science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) output will have a dire impact on the country’s ability to counter the growing risk of cybercrime attacks, which is estimated as costing R1bn each year, as well as its capacity to maintain a competitive and innovative ICT industry.
The report says one of the chief concerns is that too many state entities have disparate views on their roles in regulating, acquiring, implementing, promoting and utilising the broad range of elements that come under the ICT umbrella. This has resulted in resources being wasted and no holistic view.
“…we continue to suffer from a lack of current, coordinated data about the so-called ICT sector in South Africa. “So-called” because it is almost impossible to define where the creation and implementation ends and the embedded use and further development of ICTs begins,” the document reads.
It says there is a critical need for academia and business to partner in influencing the government’s understanding of future skills, so that all three spheres can invest in the development of people, to prepare them for the changed roles that will come from the Fourth Industrial Revolution.
Closing the skills gap
Despite the failure of the schooling system, the JCSE says it is pleased to observe many private sector initiatives to address the skills gap.
“Although one could argue that this is self-interest, most of the programmes reach beyond the needs of a vendor to support its products and offer genuine skills upliftment and employment opportunities.
Also, the JCSE has continued its partnership with BankSETA, which has funded 50 students through the Digital Skills Pipeline Programme, a two-year initiative to improve employability of matriculants and graduates. They are being taught scarce IT skills and exposed to realistic project experience.
Three universities have partnered with Amazon Web Services to offer a specialised cloud-computing focused curriculum. Others may join the programme later.
The government has committed to train one million young people between 2019 and 2030 to become data scientists.
“On the face of it, this is a very welcome initiative, but examination of the numbers causes some doubts about the feasibility of the programme. As Moira de Roche (a director of IITPSA) commented, ‘One can’t just churn out data scientists; instead they need some specialist skills which are only built by experience of about five to eight years’.”
Telkom-owned IT services company BCX’s Explore Data Science Academy (EDSA) is teaching students how to solve real world problems during a one-year engagement, using the latest data science tools and methodologies. But the report says the initiative is nowhere near the scale the government envisages.
The JCSE says it agrees with the prevailing opinion that reaching even a tenth of this ambitious goal will be very tough. The EDSA is offering 300 or 400 internships over 2018/2019.
It says that hopefully there will be more realistic results from the launch of Microsoft Azure data centres, which intend to add 53,000 new jobs by 2022, with an additional 112,000 generated through other cloud services.
Practitioners to fill these jobs must be appropriately skilled. Microsoft claims its programmes can train school leavers to the level of software engineer or data scientist.
According to a master plan developed by the ICT sector, it wants to work with the government to introduce new legislation and policies for ICT to become a formal part of the school curriculum to support the digital economy.
Its measures for success in this regard are the inclusion of an ICT relevant curriculum by next year, STEM subjects digitised by 2020, and a common platform for learning by the same year.
This article was first published on https://4irsa.org/ - the official website of the 4IRSA alliance between the Universities of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg and Fort Hare, Telkom and the Department Of Telecommunications & Postal Services (DTPS) that aims to stimulate dialogue, understanding and action to shape a coherent 4IR plan for South Africa.
Africa cannot afford to take the back seat in one of the most important pursuits of modern science
- Benjamin Rosman
The continent needs its own experts to harness Artificial Intelligence towards our local challenges and priorities in Africa.
Behind buzzwords such as “data science” or “fourth industrial revolution” that we are constantly being bombarded with, is the promise of major disruption to every aspect of our lives, powered by the engine of Artificial Intelligence (AI).
The technology underlying AI is the field of machine learning, which lies at the intersection of computer science and statistics, and is concerned with the question of how computers can learn to improve their own performance over time, by being exposed to an increasing amount of data.
This stands in stark contrast to former generations of software, which relied on humans to programme every fine detail of how they should operate, by hand. Several breakthroughs in this field in recent years have led to a plethora of exciting applications, including real-time translation between languages, automatic captioning and tagging of images, diagnosing cancers from medical tests, and autonomous driving.
Access to all
The potential benefits of this technology are numerous, and look to drive change at every level of society. Among the most important is the democratisation of critical services such as healthcare and education, with the ultimate aim of providing personalised interventions to every individual. This includes tools to treat or even eradicate a far greater number of diseases than ever before, at affordable rates. The same innovations are poised to offer greater transparency of governance, improve corporate and political decision-making, and enable more efficient logistics.
With these great opportunities comes the need for South Africa and Africa to play a part in developing and customising these tools, shaping them to deal with our realities, and not just reusing them off-the-shelf as developed in other parts of the world.
AI hints at the possibility of solving some of the greatest challenges we face as a species, if we get it right, and one of the greatest threats to our existence, if we fail to preempt the ramifications.
We need our own experts to harness these technologies towards our local challenges and priorities in Africa. We cannot afford to take a back seat in one of the most important pursuits of modern science. If the aim is to target a number of flaws in society, then we should be at the helm.
Young African scientists and technologists leading the way
Fortunately, we already have a number of highly skilled teams of researchers within our borders. The School of Computer Science and Applied Mathematics at the University of the Witwatersrand has specifically been piloting the growth of our local research agenda.
Our researchers have already received much international recognition from the likes of Google and Huawei, and are the only team of African researchers to be publishing regularly at all major international machine learning, AI, and robotics conferences.
Under the RAIL lab (Robotics, Autonomous Intelligence, and Learning lab), our researchers are making an impact in areas ranging from fundamental questions around how robots can organise their knowledge of the world to modelling the interaction between humans and machines, and applications of these ideas to the education and healthcare spaces.
Looking slightly further afield, the Deep Learning Indaba movement is a recent example of the talent that is already being cultivated on the continent. Founded by several Africans, based locally and abroad, this is already the largest week-long machine learning summer school in the world.
Over the last two years, this meeting has brought together almost 1,000 of the most ambitious and skilled machine learning practitioners and researchers from across the continent, to learn from each other and high-profile international speakers. This expanded to encompass 13 satellite events in countries across the continent with our IndabaX programme, reaching over 1,000 more attendees in 2018, with events due to be held in 27 African countries, half of the continent, in 2019. The aim of these events is to not only train, but to celebrate the inspiring range of research projects, community and industry developments, and startup companies harnessing these cutting-edge technologies in Africa.
It is clear that we are approaching a watershed moment in our technological development, with the potential to benefit millions across society. It is important that we move forward with our collective eyes open, and are training enough smart young people to guide us in the right direction. It is a really exciting time, and when I see the calibre of young scientists and technologists, I am very optimistic about our future.
Benjamin Rosman is a Senior Lecturer and researcher in robotics, artificial intelligence, decision theory and machine learning in the School of Computer Science and Applied Mathematics at Wits University.He also runs the Robotics, Autonomous Intelligence and Learning Laboratory at Wits University and was a co-organiser of the first Deep Learning Indaba in Africa held in 2017. The same year he received Africa’s only Google Faculty Research grant for his research focusing on decision making in autonomous systems. A Wits alumnus with a BSc (Honours) in Computer Science and a BSc (Honours) in Computational and Applied Mathematics, Rosman also holds a MSc in Artificial Intelligence and a PhD in Informatics from the University of Edinburgh.
Make apprenticeships sexy again
- Wits University
South Africa 4IR-readiness and the case for tech-savvy artisans.
The future of work for South Africa and Africa in the Fourth Industrial Revolution raises pressing questions about the skills gap that is already noticeable in many sectors and industries: Are we educating and training enough artisans, crafts and technical people to address our 4IRSA-needs, or are we just only churning out degree-qualifying people that South African cannot afford?
This was a central theme during the breakaway session of the 4IRSA Partnership’s workshop with representatives from the Mining and Manufacturing sector – two sectors that are being heavily transformed in the digital age.
The mining and manufacturing sectors are entering the 4IR-phase of heavy disruption over the next few years that will dramatically change the nature of how these industries work, do business and the skills they required to be competitive.
With mobility, automation, digitisation, artificial intelligence, big data and many other new technologies both creating and decreasing opportunities in the mining and manufacturing sector, we “urgently need to rethink our skills training and education,” said Andrew Lane, Deloitte Africa’s Energy & Resources Leader, who facilitated the breakaway session.
Kavitha Prag, Associate Director, Capital Projects, Deloitte SA, echoing the contributions from those in the mining and manufacturing sectors, said that vocational skills will be highly sought-after skills in future: “We need to make artisan careers sexy again, and create tech-savvy artisans, traders, craftspeople that can add value to our industries”.
To do this, focus now has to move to South Africa’s Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) colleges that need to be properly skilled with quality educators who can provide excellent training. Companies and industries also need to be roped in again to offer apprenticeships to young women and men who can qualify as artisans (welders, toolmakers, plumbers, electricians, among others) or technicians in various sectors.
According to the World Economic Forum’s Readiness for the Future of Production Report 2018 (PDF) while “the ability to innovate is one of South Africa’s greatest strengths (as the country it has a strong innovation culture and entrepreneurial activity is supported by a sophisticated financial sector), human capital remains the most pressing challenge in preparing for the future of production”.
Coherent, collective response
Framing the workshop group discussions,Professor Brian Armstrong, Chair in Digital Business in the Wits Business School and Secretary of the #4IRSA Partnership, introduced the three themes that all sector workshops, including the Mining & Manufacturing workshop, will discuss:
Itspurpose is to stimulate and facilitate an inclusive national dialogueto shape a coherent national response to the 4thIndustrial Revolution in South Africa. It aims to complement and support other national activities relating to the 4IR, most notably the Presidential Commission on the 4IR.
The 4IRSA Partnership recognises that there are several 4IR-related processes and dialogues underway in South Africa: in government, industry, academia and society at large.
However, these are, in the main, fragmented, eclectic and divergent, and indeed there is a high level of unawareness of each other between these processes. The 4IRSA Partnershipaims to provide a platform for all these processes and stimulate shared conversation, so that they become mutually visible, thereby facilitating progressive coherence between them, moving from fragmented divergence towards complementarity.
ASummit of Principles (SOP)is scheduled for later this year. This will include representatives of all of the above industries, related government departments, labour and other stakeholders. The objectives of the Summit of Principles are: to build alignment, participation and momentum for the 4IRSA process; share sector workshop outputs; agree on key areas for further research and deliberation; and agree on a framework for further action and the roadmap towards the Summit of Declarations.
TheSummit of Declarationsis anticipated to be held in the 4th quarter of 2019. The objective of the Summit of Declarations are: to consolidate all workstream reports into a comprehensive national response; for all stakeholders of each sector represented to table and commit to a short, medium and long term response by that sector to the 4th IR, in the form of a declaration for that sector; to agree monitoring and evaluation mechanisms; to agree further areas of dialogue and research.
The year ahead: From legal rights for robots to a Cyber 9/11
- Wits University
Artificial Intelligence will be maturing over the next 18 months with Africa becoming ground zero for 4IR disruption.
Now, with the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR) we are seeing Africa as ideally placed to be the ‘Cradle of Disruption’ in digital innovation, says Philip Kiracofe, adventurist and CEO/co-founder of Startupbootcamp Africa.
He was speaking at the 5th 4IRSA Partnership workshop for representatives from the financial services and business sectors held in Sandton on 2 April 2019.
In his keynote address, Kiracofe shared predictions around the 4IR and how South Africans can respond, relying on the State of Tech 2019 – an annual report compiled by Startupbootcamp, the world’s largest network of multi-corporate backed accelerators, predicting the top strategic technology trends for the coming year.
“Artificial Intelligence will fully mature in 2019 and hit critical mass,” Kiracofe said. There is already heavy corporate research and development (R&D) spending globally on AI technologies, automation and robotics.
“The industrial robotics industry market will this year reach $135 billion globally; and there are already 25 000 collaborative robots, or cobots, working side-by-side with humans in factories around the world. By 2021 the virtual assistant market will be worth $16 billion.”
Kiracofe said robots are now such an integral part of our lives that the International Federation of Robotics has developed a new Key Performance Indicator (KPI) for “robot density”, measuring: the number of robots per 10 000 workers in a country or ecosystem:
The global average for “robot density” in 2018 were 74 robots per 10 000 workers;
In Europe, the average is about 99 robots per 10 000 workers;
In South Korea, that average is staggeringly 631 robots per 10 000 people.
“As AI gets more intelligent it is learning faster than we can anticipate and learning in ways we do not necessarily understand. The problem is that this can lead to AI making decisions that we no longer understand. One of the trends we are seeing is efforts now to design “explainable AI” into AI, asking: ‘Please help me understand how you came to that decision’.”
“We are now at that precedent where the AI is far beyond where we can anticipate and we are seeing that AI is making ethical decisions, therefor, our prediction for 2019 is that AI and robots will gain legal rights.”
Kiracofe said the European Parliament is already debating rules and regulations that relate to legal rights for AI and robots. One of the concerns, for example, is a Tesla self-driving car finding itself in a situation where it has to make an ethical choice between ‘do I protect the driver or do I protect a pedestrian’?
These kinds of decisions and the ethical and legal implications are being debated currently from a regulatory perspective and “we believe that by the end of this year we will begin to see those rights being formalized”, said Kiracofe.
A Cyber 9/11
From satellites to smart cities to smartphones, massive troves of data will be generated at a scale that has never dealt with. This will lead to new business models across sectors but worrying it also increases concerns around cybersecurity.
“Roughly one percent of the entire world’s GDP is being lost to cybercrime. In 2017 the damages from cybercrime was about $600 billion, and this is going to increase to close to $6 trillion by 2021,” the data in the report predicts.
Long gone are hackers in T-shirts in dark rooms. “We are now seeing cyber mercenaries and data mafias banding together in organised crime, as well as state actors employing cyberattacks that are much more professional and institutional,” said Kiracofe. “We are seeing cyber-units from state actors infiltrating into factories. In the hardware that is used by Amazon and Apple, and other large corporations, we are finding embedded chips that are smaller than a size of a pencil tip that are doing things that we do not yet know.”
He added that event the press release has become a weapon in our #FAKENEWS world. “Last year there was over a $100 million made in cyberattacks by individuals who benefitted through stock price movement as a result of fake press releases that were distributed through major news networks and PR wire services.”
“Our prediction is the likelihood of Cyber 9/11 in the next 12 to 18 months. This cyberattack(s) on the scale of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, can lead to catastrophic failure in either infrastructure, or the banking sector, or national communications networks, or even crippling a region’s electricity grid,” he said.
Optimising real-time
Other predictions include moving to a sensor-based economy where not just the devices themselves become ambiguous but the data becomes so massive that and overwhelming that protecting everyone’s data now becomes an existential necessity.
“Where going to see that these sensors embedded in really in every aspect of our cities and our communities; and that these sensors are recording every element of life across the board. And that data-driven algorithms that make those decisions and determination are going to be far beyond what we as humans or at lease individuals can decide. There is going to have to be a collaborative relationship with AI that is helping us to do this,” Kiracofe said.
Itspurpose is to stimulate and facilitate an inclusive national dialogueto shape a coherent national response to the 4thIndustrial Revolution in South Africa. It aims to complement and support other national activities relating to the 4IR, most notably the Presidential Commission on the 4IR.
The 4IRSA Partnership recognises that there are several 4IR-related processes and dialogues underway in South Africa: in government, industry, academia and society at large.
However, these are, in the main, fragmented, eclectic and divergent, and indeed there is a high level of unawareness of each other between these processes. The 4IRSA Partnershipaims to provide a platform for all these processes and stimulate shared conversation, so that they become mutually visible, thereby facilitating progressive coherence between them, moving from fragmented divergence towards complementarity.
ASummit of Principles (SOP)is scheduled for later this year. This will include representatives of all of the above industries, related government departments, labour and other stakeholders. The objectives of the Summit of Principles are: to build alignment, participation and momentum for the 4IRSA process; share sector workshop outputs; agree on key areas for further research and deliberation; and agree on a framework for further action and the roadmap towards the Summit of Declarations.
TheSummit of Declarationsis anticipated to be held in the 4th quarter of 2019. The objective of the Summit of Declarations are: to consolidate all workstream reports into a comprehensive national response; for all stakeholders of each sector represented to table and commit to a short, medium and long term response by that sector to the 4th IR, in the form of a declaration for that sector; to agree monitoring and evaluation mechanisms; to agree further areas of dialogue and research.
4IRSA announces 1st Digital Economic Summit for SA
- Wits Unversity
"We are the pioneers who can reimagine how digital innovation can transform our world.”
"We need to reimagine human life and what it means to be human in the 21st Century,” Professor Adam Habib, Vice-Chancellor of Wits University said in welcoming delegates to the launch of the @4IRSA Partnership’s first #DigitalEconomicSummit to take place on Friday, 5 July 2019.
Wits University is a founding partner of 4IRSA, a partnership that aims to stimulate and facilitate an inclusive national dialogue to shape a coherent national response to the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR) in South Africa.
“We need to work across sectors to develop the technology required for us to leapfrog across eons of poverty, unemployment and inequality, and in so doing create a new world order that prioritises humanity before profits and power,” Habib said. “Whilst it is important to address the challenges of our past, it is equally important that we prepare for a collective and common digital and technological future so that we can determine how it will impact on us as a society.”
Taking place at the Wits Tshimologong Digital Innovation Hub in Braamfontein, the launch was also an opportunity for the 4IRSA Secretary General Brian Armstrong, who is also a Professor of Digital Business at the Wits Business School, to update government, partners and the broader society about the work that the 4IRSA partners have done the past few months.
“The 4IRSA partnership is really important because it is a spontaneous and growing alliance between enthusiastic and concerned partners in industry, academia and government, together with social actors and citizens, who are committed to working together to develop a coherent, inclusive national response to the Fourth Industrial Revolution in South Africa,” Armstrong said.
The 4IRSA partnership was founded by the Universities of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, and Fort Hare, with Deloitte Africa joining as a facilitation and knowledge partner and the Department of Telecommunications and Postal Services as the public sector partner.
As the initiative grows, it will include more participation from government, labour, business, civil society and researchers. It aims to complement and support other national activities relating to the 4IR, most notably the Presidential Commission on the 4IR.
Communications Minister Stella Ndabeni-Abrahams, who is currently overseeing the merger of the Departments of Telecommunications and Postal Services with the Department of Communications, delivered the keynote address and introduced the newly appointed Commissioners on the #4IRCommission who also attended the launch.
“As we unpack the critical components of 4IR, it is important that people are placed at the centre of the conversation. As government, this is woven into all our 4IR interventions, and as such, we have been deliberate in seeking collaborative efforts that build a capable 4IR army. In the same breadth, we must ensure that we create and own solutions that respond to our unique requirements as a country. Lastly, it is imperative that all sectors find expression in the 4IR conversation,” says Ndabeni-Abrahams.
On show at the launch were 4IR technologies being developed at Tshimologong: a 3D printer printing the 4IRSA logo; a robot crane made from drone recycled material; and a hydroponic garden. Run by Wits University, Tshimologong, which means “new beginnings” in Setswana, is an incubation hub for digital entrepreneurs, the commercialisation of research, and the development of high-level digital skills for students, working professionals and unemployed youth.
Telkom Group CEO Sipho Maseko hailed 4IRSA as a potential economic and developmental game-changer for the country. “The 4IRSA Partnership may be the most important collaboration between the government, public institutions and the private sector in South Africa right now. Its potential impacts are transformative both economically and politically. As a leading ICT player with significant public ownership, and as a committed corporate citizen, Telkom is passionate about addressing today's challenges to ensure tomorrow's prosperity. We therefore have to be a participant and a full partner in 4IRSA. We encourage everyone else to do the same,” he said.
The universities of Johannesburg and Fort Hare re also focusing research attention on 4IR, with a number of different projects and courses. ‘’Industry 4.0, as the 4IR is also known, is changing the world of work, because artificially intelligent machines now perform tasks that were traditionally performed by human beings. The consequence of this change is that the world of work is shrinking. Economic inequality will also increase, which will result in social instability. This will in turn undermine democracy,” said the Vice-Chancellor and Principal, of the University of Johannesburg, Professor Tshilidzi Marwala.
UFH believes that the 4IRSA collaboration is central to the way we reimagine higher education and its purpose. “Our staff and our students have a critical role to play in shaping as well as in responding to the significant and sweeping changes to the current order and the way we work. Our research-based engagement with our partners on the possibilities and implications of 4IR, therefore, is at the core of realising our vision to be a vibrant, equitable and sustainable African university, committed to teaching and research excellence at the service of its students, scholars and the wider community,” says UFH Vice-Chancellor Professor Sakhela Buhlungu.
Deloitte, which has played a pivotal role in workshops with different sectors of the economy in the lead up to the summit, says it is proud to be a part of the initiative. “One of the shared goals of building a trustworthy and sustainable society is about making business work for people and, therefore, we must appreciate the mutual value we realise in our collective success. First and foremost, we are citizens of South Africa Inc and when SA grows, we grow. So as a stakeholder in this dialogue we want to ensure that we have evidence-based conversations that lead to meaningful outcomes in our communities,” said Deloitte Southern Africa Managing Director Thiru Pillay.
Itspurpose is to stimulate and facilitate an inclusive national dialogueto shape a coherent national response to the 4thIndustrial Revolution in South Africa. It aims to complement and support other national activities relating to the 4IR, most notably the Presidential Commission on the 4IR.
The 4IRSA Partnership recognises that there are several 4IR-related processes and dialogues underway in South Africa: in government, industry, academia and society at large.
However, these are, in the main, fragmented, eclectic and divergent, and indeed there is a high level of unawareness of each other between these processes. The 4IRSA Partnershipaims to provide a platform for all these processes and stimulate shared conversation, so that they become mutually visible, thereby facilitating progressive coherence between them, moving from fragmented divergence towards complementarity.
ASummit of Principles (SOP)is scheduled for later this year. This will include representatives of all of the above industries, related government departments, labour and other stakeholders. The objectives of the Summit of Principles are: to build alignment, participation and momentum for the 4IRSA process; share sector workshop outputs; agree on key areas for further research and deliberation; and agree on a framework for further action and the roadmap towards the Summit of Declarations.
TheSummit of Declarationsis anticipated to be held in the 4th quarter of 2019. The objective of the Summit of Declarations are: to consolidate all workstream reports into a comprehensive national response; for all stakeholders of each sector represented to table and commit to a short, medium and long term response by that sector to the 4th IR, in the form of a declaration for that sector; to agree monitoring and evaluation mechanisms; to agree further areas of dialogue and research.
DigiMine strikes gold
- Wits University
Sibanye-Stillwater commits additional R30 million to further mining 4.0 research and development.
Announced by Alex Fenn, Sibanye-Stillwater’s technology and innovation unit manager, at the second two-day DigiMine Seminar, the funding is in recognition for the research and development output already shown by DigiMine.
“Sibanye-Stillwater extends its commitment by an additional R10 million per year over three years towards technology research and innovation at DigiMine,” Fenn said.
The funding will be directed towards five core focus areas:
Enhancing the sustainability of the WMI and DigiMine.
Enhancing the delivery structure of the research and development agenda.
The creation of the Sibanye-Stillwater Health and Safety DNA project.
Fenn also read a comment from Neal Froneman, Sibany-Stillwater CEO: “This commitment represents Sibanye’s recognition of the criticality of fundamental and applied research, bridging the gap between research and commercialisation, as well as talent and educational development to its technology and innovation strategy. We look forward to the outcomes of the programme as key enablers of our vision of superior value creation for all of our stakeholders through responsible mining and beneficiation of our mineral resources.”
Professor Fred Cawood, Director of the WMI, said the Digital Mining Incubator at Tshimologong helps startup businesses in the digital mining space. “Innovators come to the incubator and if their idea makes sense, we link them up with research and development corridors in the University, such as DigiMine, to develop and roll out their idea for industry.”
Together with DigiMine, the Incubator’s aim is to develop mining-related skills and tools to effectively transform and develop South Africa’s 21st Century mining sector.
The DigiMine Seminar focused on DigiMine and Partner Technologies for 21st Century mining, and attracted mining houses’ and sector representatives who are interested in digital mining as applied to the underground environment. They gained first-hand insight into DigiMine's research agenda, research outcomes and state-of-the-art technological systems for the mining industry. The Seminar is also part of the DigiMine Short Course programme during which participants could qualify for a Wits Attendance or Competence Certification at NQF Level 7.
Presentations by postgraduate research students, as well as DigiMine past and current research and partner presentations and demonstrations of their system solutions gave attendees an in-depth view of how Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR) technologies are disrupting and transforming the mining industry.
Cawood said due to South Africa’s extremely deep underground mining practices, the focus at DigiMine is to make mining safer and sustainable using digital technologies.
This second DigiMine Seminar focused on the enablers for digital mining in South Africa:
Developing wireless communications systems to communicate in near real-time;
Improving surveying, mapping and navigation to know where who and what is in the mine, and to plot it in real-time on the mine map;
Create understanding and knowledge of how sensors can help to understand and detect risks for health, safety and security in mines;
Develop system and data integration for smart mining and decision-making.
“The Fourth Industrial Revolution has a significant impact on the way mines are financed, designed, operated and maintained. I often hear mining is slow to take up technologies but in the past mines have been fast to take up new technologies and were some of the first industries to adopt digital technologies,” Cawood said.
“What makes it difficult in the South African mining environment is our harsh conditions underground; our unique ore bodies; the depth of our working; and the skills set of the people that are working with these systems.”
He said digital is “the ‘e-language’ to support profitable, safe and intelligent mining. We have been developing technologies that work well above ground but we need to focus on what is required to extend these digital systems into our deep underground mining environment to enable real-time decision making.”
About the Wits Mining Institute
The Wits Mining Institute (WMI) in the Faculty of Engineering and the Build Environment is a platform of long-established expertise in mining-related fields of study, dedicated to expedite the emergence of a 21st Century model of mining that is both sustainable and competitive. The future role of mining in the social economy depends heavily on innovation in every associated dimension. This includes extractive technologies, the full range of up-side and down-stream economic linkages, the distribution of socio-economic benefits, health and safety, environmental externalities and post-mining economic sustainability, while also establishing an enabling environment for the industry’s future. The primary focus of WMI is applicable research of the highest quality addressing multi-disciplinary and complex questions. The WMI seeks to influence the world through generating new knowledge, influencing policy, building strategic partnerships and leading society.
About the Sibanye-Stillwater Digital Mining Laboratory (DigiMine)
DigiMine is a one-of-a-kind facility in which the Chamber of Mines Building on the Braamfontein Campus West has been converted into a simulated mining operation, complete with a mine surface (using the flat roof of the building), a vertical shaft (using a stairwell in the fourth quadrant of the building) and a mock underground mine with control room in the basement.
DigiMine is equipped with digital systems to enable research for the mine of the future; our research agenda is to transfer surface digital technologies into the underground environment, enabling a mine to automatically observe, evaluate and take action. The ultimate objective is to use technology to put distance between mine workers and the typical risks they are exposed to on a daily basis.
Software licence donation advances Geosciences
- Wits University
Petroleum Experts Ltd has donated an academic software licence worth R25m to the School of Geosciences.
The School of Geosciences has acquired MOVE software, the global standard in the minerals exploration, mining, and environmental geosciences for analysis of structural geological data collection, analysis, 3D visualisation and modelling.
The donation by Petroleum Experts Ltd of 10 academic licences for use in research and student training has been made on a renewable licence agreement and is valued at approximately R25m.
Dr Matthew Brayshaw joined the School recently from the mining industry where he used the software in mine exploration.
“I found the MOVE software to be incredibly useful in stress mapping related to targeting mineralization prospectivity in hydrothermal gold deposits. The ability to integrate my structural observations with other geological and geophysical datasets on a single platform and at varying scales was particularly beneficial and is something that I am continuing into my research,” he said.
Brayshaw has secured funding for several ruggedized tablets that can withstand the rigours of geological fieldwork. These tablets will be used for data collection and then linked to the campus-based MOVE software suite.
Dr Asinne Tshibubudze, senior lecturer in the School, co-leads the West Africa Craton Exploration Initiative (WAXI). WAXI creates integrated digital geological and geophysical datasets across multiple countries in West Africa that can then be interrogated by mineral exploration teams. Tshibubudze said he was looking forward to using the MOVE software to train students.
“Having personally experienced the benefits of digital mapping technologies within the project [WAXI], I am excited to have the opportunity to train our local and international students in modern mapping techniques that can be applied in the African context.”
Professor Roger Gibson, Head of the School of Geosciences, expressed his gratitude to Petroleum Experts Ltd for the generous donation, which comes at a time when the School is completing a significant overhaul of its undergraduate curriculum which, inter alia, aims to develop stronger data management and interpretation skills in students.
“This donation comes at an opportune time when we are strategizing about how to accommodate the accelerating technological innovation within our discipline. Our teaching team is already hard at work looking at ways to incorporate the MOVE software into our senior undergraduate and postgraduate courses so that our graduates can take their places with confidence in the modern workplace that is experiencing massive technological disruption,” he said.
The "big data mess" and how to clean it up
- Wits University
A rethink of operational processes as a complex system, and the application of machine learning as an adaptive analytical framework.
A new research and design laboratory at Wits University with a unique commercialisation component to develop bespoke business solutions is rethinking how big data and advanced analytics impact on operational processes in organisations.
The Scilinx-approach: Advancing Operational Frontier is to give businesses and organisations direct access through its commercial arm, the Scilinx Studio, to a dedicated research team with the relevant expertise who can develop tailored cutting-edge and cross-disciplinary business solutions in the Scilinx Research laboratory.
Through custom-built machine learning enabled tools, its work is a revival of operations research – the application of advanced analytical methods to solve organisational problems. Using this approach, there is a direct connection with the nuts-and-bolts of organisational processes.
“Big data mess”
The brainchild of Phumlani Nhlanganiso Khoza, 3rd year PhD student and Associate Lecturer in the School of Computer Science and Applied Mathematics, Scilinx was conceptualised out of a growing need that businesses and industries require high level specialised expertise to develop solutions for their agile, freely evolving operational systems and processes.
“There is a need to design tools that can extract insights while a system is naturally evolving and use these insights to improve performance, productivity and give the business a competitive edge,” says Khoza.
While this sounds easy and self-evident in principle, the emergence of big data has resulted in complex data sets or “big data mess”: large collections of data from varied sources with no prescribed structure.
“This is making it difficult for organisations to create a holistic view of all of its data. Incomplete data leads to inaccurate analysis and very few organisations know the extent to which their analysis and projections are based on incomplete data,” Khoza explains.
Big data sets and unstructured data have completely disrupted how we deal with more complex organisational processes in dynamic environments. “That is why we need cutting-edge research that advances operational frontiers in organisations, primarily by improving information flows,” says Khoza.
In the Scilinx Research laboratory, an interdisciplinary research team conducts fundamental research in operational complexity by using design thinking to solve business problems and propose innovative solutions.
Traditionally, operations research is conducted to improve performance of organisations and businesses by using an engineering approach to problem-solving. The basic assumption in an engineered system is that its behaviour can be fully specified, and thus controlled as a result of this type understanding. In reality, rarely do decision-makers fully know what the system can do, and what a new element or interaction pattern will lead to. Fundamentally, as interconnectedness is strengthening, knowledge of what the predictive outcome will be is increasingly losing efficacy.
“This is not the reality in solving real business problems today,” says Khoza. “Operational systems are constantly subjected to evolution and change due to human factors such as the behaviour of business operators and clients. When dealing with people and business processes you do not really know what is going to happen when you change an element in the process,” says Khoza. All of this is motivating for new ways to process design, and risk management.
Homegrown technologies
“Therefore, Scilinx is using the iterative bottom-up approach from design thinking, where the basic question is how to experiment and learn. You allow the system to operate as a natural system, and let it evolve. As the data gets messy and tangled, you grow technologies that are able to keep up with the messiness of the data.”
“For instance”, Khoza continues, “there is a saying that data scientists spend about 80% of their time cleaning up data, which is not really what they should be doing. We should be asking how to efficiently handle these types of problems”. To extract operational insights from unstructured data can be a time consuming and costly endeavour.
“One of the big problems with data is that you need to source data from people, so there’s still a considerable amount of data engineering work to be done in organisations. In a company, the data that is needed to perform analytics can sit in emails, spreadsheets, someone’s folders, it could be news feeds or social media feeds, and in many more platforms. Thus, one of our core research pillars is the development of machine learning tools that are coupled with well-defined data pipelines. The objective is to quickly and effectively extract the relevant insights and express them in formats that make it possible for various stakeholders, especially executives, to understand the behaviour and structure of their organisations. Our approach to this is the development of semantic networks, and we currently have research projects related to financial markets and Twitter information flows that are based on the construction of these semantic networks.”
The end of the age of silo organisations
The Scilinx Studio is an example of an organisational network where academic researchers and industry partners can come together to form collaborative links to accelerate experimentation in process and technological innovations.
“Firstly, there is an emerging approach to collaborate with domain-expert teams in academic institutions as a means to build organisational capacity and deepen specialisation. Scilinx Studio is drawing on expertise from various disciplines and Faculties at Wits University and beyond, in undergraduate and postgraduate studies. The fluid nature of these relationships makes it possible to not only de-risk experimentation for industry partners, but also enhances their agility while also maintaining attractive operational costs.”
“Secondly, organsational competitive advantage should be a top priority in interconnected markets, and this cannot be achieved through the adoption of non-differentiating best practice methods. Scilinx Studio offers bespoke research solutions, and research insights that enjoy limited circulation. These informational offerings are a basis for proprietary strategies.”
“And thirdly, on the research front, our efforts at Scilinx Research are ongoing as we try to understand new problems and develop viable solutions that can be prototyped as well. Our objective is not just to discuss ideas, but to develop functional technologies,” explains Khoza.
Call for collaboration
Going forward Khoza says through the Scilinx Studio, his team is currently reaching out to organisations across all sectors to offer its services to advance operational capabilities through cutting-edge research and bespoke business solutions.
The areas of focus are risk management, computational finance, and operational complexity as a general framework to enhance operational effectiveness. Current research initiatives cover the mining sector, financial markets, and the development of advanced insight-generating operational technologies.
Later this year, Scilinx Research and Scilinx Studio will be organising a closed event to showcase its innovation, research and prototypes to company, corporate and industry representatives.
Visit the Scilinx website: http://scilinx.wits.ac.za/[Please note this website is currently only accessible from outside the Wits University network]
Huawei South Africa has launched free 5G training for ICT postgraduates at Wits University.
The inaugural event kicked off at Wits University in Johannesburg and at the University of Pretoria (UP) this week. The course is part of Huawei’s ICT Talent Ecosystem programme, which aims to grow and support ICT skills training and skills transfer in South Africa, especially in the latest technologies of 5G, artificial intelligence, cloud and data services. There are also plans to expand the programme across the country.
5G is seen as the key technology of the fourth industrial revolution (4IR), which is changing the way we live, work, play and consume services. The 4IR is a key focus for the future growth and development of South Africa’s economy. (See Wits’ 4IR-related research by visiting www.wits.ac.za/future/.)
Professor Zeblon Vilakazi, Deputy Vice-Chancellor: Research at Wits, said at the launch that “skills, knowledge, innovation and creativity would be the cornerstones for development in the 4IR. Wits encourages industry and stakeholder partnerships that invest in our students and our future. I would like to acknowledge the leadership of Huawei South Africa for their vision in planning, not just for the balance sheet and the bottom line, but also for the development and growth of human capital.”
Huawei is widely acknowledged as the global leader in 5G technologies, and is the only equipment provider with end-to-end 5G products and solutions, including 5G CPEs for commercial use and 5G smartphone devices.
Huawei Deputy CEO Kian Chen said research shows that 70% of all jobs are forecast to have an ICT component by 2020.
“As South Africa moves into the 4IR, no one must be left behind. Most future applications in the 4IR era will run in a 5G network and environment. That is why it is our privilege to start this 5G skills transfer in South Africa, and we are glad to partner with Wits and UP to offer South Africa’s first 5G training for ICT students,” said Chen.
“We believe that South Africa’s talented young people have the potential to mature into world-class experts. By enhancing industry-academic cooperation, we, as an international ICT company, hope to make our contribution to achieving the country’s development goals,” concluded Chen.
Equipping Wits’ ICT students for future jobs
- Wits University
Leading Chinese telecommunications company injects more than R1 million towards student funding at Wits.
The scholarship boost to Information Science students will allow them to pursue their dreams with this donation of R1 150 000 by ZTE South Africa, a multinational telecommunications equipment and solution company with headquarters in Shenzhen, China.
Speaking at the handover ceremony on 31 May 2019, Professor Adam Habib, Wits Vice-Chancellor and Principal, thanked ZTE South Africa saying the funding cements a strategic partnership with the University.
“Your contribution of scholarships to our students in the ICT and telecommunications field is at one level a scholarship, and at another level it is developing a whole series of students who would not have been able to have the resources to get the human resource skills. It is the building of transnational partnerships,” he said.
Habib added that both China and Africa needed to come together to collectively address the multinational and transnational challenges we face through strategic partnerships.
“Every single one of our challenges, is multinational, it is transnational. It is not necessarily national itself. If we are going to address these challenges, we need multinational teams of researchers, business people, academics, activists and communities that begin to address the challenges of our times. If we do not cohere as a collective human, if we do not come together as a human community, we will never be able to address the challenges that we confront. This is why this partnership with China is so important.”
Jerry Zhou, CEO of ZTE South Africa said they are proud to collaborate with Wits to unlock opportunities for talented students.
“We are very excited to have this opportunity to make a contribution to education, which is fundamentally one of the key factors for the growth of South Africa in the future,” said Zhou.
The scholarship donation is part of ZTE’s obligation to fulfil its corporate social responsibilities. The company has offered support to various sectors such as education, health care, technology and skills development. Speaking ahead of Youth Month celebrated in South Africa in June, Zhou said empowering young people by investing in them is a key focus for ZTE.
“Today South Africa is going through an important era and stage of transformation and we strongly believe that our future lies with the youth of our generation and we need to empower them with training, skills development and technology transfer. A high-skilled workforce such as IT and telecommunication professionals are extremely scarce, and as part of our corporate responsibility, we wish to participate in the vision of South Africa’s youth, which is ‘preparing the youth for future jobs.”
ZTE has been sponsoring Wits students since 2017. Over 15 students are now beneficiaries of the funding from ZTE. One of the beneficiaries of the scholarship, Nontsikelelo Harmse, said she is honoured to be awarded the scholarship and recognised among several other ICT students in the country. An honours student in Information Sciences, Harmse says she enjoys the constant innovation and creativity in the field because the world is going digital.
Chinese Ambassador to South Africa, Lin Songtian, who was at the ceremony, said “to invest in education and human resource development is to invest in the future.”
Songtian added that the Chinese came to invest in Africa’s infrastructure to prepare it for the Fourth Industrial Revolution.
Wits enters the quantum computing universe with IBM Q
- Wits University
IBM expands its quantum computing program with Wits as its first partner in Africa on the IBM Q Network.
IBM (NYSE: IBM) has announced the expansion of its quantum computing efforts to Africa in a new collaboration with the University of the Witwatersrand (Wits University) in South Africa. Wits University is the first African partner on the IBM Q Network and will be the gateway for academics across South Africa and to the 15 universities who are part of the African Research Universities Alliance (ARUA).
“This is the latest outcome of the joint partnership between IBM Research and Wits, which started in 2016 when IBM opened its second lab in Africa at the Wits University’s Tshimologong Digital Innovation Precinct in Johannesburg. To expand the IBM Q Network to include Wits will drive innovation in frontier-technologies and benefit African-based researchers, academics and students who now have access to decades of quantum computing capabilities at the click of a button,” said Professor Zeblon Vilakazi, Wits Deputy Vice-Chancellor: Research and Postgraduate Affairs.
Quantum computing promises to be able to solve certain problems – such as chemical simulations and types of optimization – that will be beyond the practical reach of classical machines. IBM first made quantum computers available to the public in May 2016 through its IBM Q Experience quantum cloud service and has doubled the power of its quantum computers annually since 2017.
IBM also established the IBM Q Network™, a community of Fortune 500 companies, startups, academic institutions and research labs working with IBM to advance quantum computing and explore practical applications for business and science.
Researchers at Wits will investigate the use of quantum computing and machine learning in the fields of cosmology and molecular biology with a specific focus on HIV drug discovery. The teams will also jointly study quantum teleportation, a field pioneered by IBM Fellow Charles Bennett.
“For Africa to remain competitive for the coming decades we must get the next generation of students quantum ready,” said Dr. Solomon Assefa, Vice President, Emerging Market Solutions and Director, IBM Research - Africa.
As part of the partnership between IBM and Wits, scholars from 15 universities ARUA universities including: Addis Ababa University; University of Ghana; University of Nairobi; University of Lagos; University of Ibadan; Obafemi Awolowo University lle-Ife; University of Rwanda; University Cheikh Anta Diop; University of Cape Town; University of Kwa-Zulu Natal; University of Pretoria; Rhodes University; University of Stellenbosch; University of Dar es Salaam and Makerere University, will have the opportunity to apply for access to IBM Q's most-advanced quantum computing systems and software for teaching quantum information science and exploring early applications. To gain access to the IBM Q quantum cloud service, ARUA scholars will be required to submit quality research proposals to a scientific committee of Wits and IBM experts for approval.
“Having access to IBM Q is pivotal for Wits University’s cross-disciplinary research program and allows our researchers in quantum computing, artificial intelligence, and in the broad natural sciences, including in laser technology, quantum optics and molecular design, to leverage the next level of discovery research. It’s envisioned that the first results from this collaboration will be forthcoming in the next two years,” said Vilakazi.
Qiskit Camp
IBM's recently unveiled IBM Q System One, is the world's first integrated universal approximate quantum computing system designed for scientific and commercial use.
IBM's most advanced universal quantum computing systems available through the IBM Q Experience platform. More than 10 million experiments have run on the IBM Q Experience and users have published over 160 third-party research papers. Also, developers can work with Qiskit, a full-stack, open-source quantum software development kit, to create and run quantum computing programs.
To further increase skills development, IBM Q is hosting an invite-only Qiskit Camp in South Africa this December for 200 quantum researchers and computer scientists where they will learn in an immersive environment and receive hands-on training.
IBM Q is an industry-first initiative to build commercial universal quantum systems for business and science applications. For more information about IBM's quantum computing efforts, please visit www.ibm.com/ibmq. IBM Q Network™ and IBM Q™ are trademarks of International Business Machines Corporation.
Wits University is as a leading university, ranking first or second in Africa in all major global rankings, is transforming society and impacting positively on humanity through its commitment to academic and research excellence, and social justice. Whilst training scholars to explore frontier discovery research and innovation in science, technologies such as artificial intelligence, deep learning and machine learning, Wits is always mindful of how it will impact humanity, the future of our work and how we live, and our morals, ethics and values.
The African Research Universities Alliance, inaugurated in Dakar in March 2015, brings together 16 of the region’s leading universities from different countries and different historical backgrounds, in a network with a common vision: to expand and enhance significantly the quality of research done in Africa by African researchers. This new network, from inception, was intended to be different from any other regional university networks. The difference was to come largely from the approach to be employed, namely bringing together a number of peer African institutions that were willing to work together by pooling their own limited resources, with a view to generating a critical mass that could more effectively support their limited, but growing numbers of researchers. Underlying this was the conviction that they could thereby leverage this effectively for additional resources from outside.
With rapid progress over the last couple of decades we are entering a new era of computing and Africa needs to act now.
Classical computing has served society incredibly well. It gave us the Internet and cashless commerce. It sent humans to the moon, put robots on Mars and smartphones in our pockets. But many of the world’s biggest mysteries and potentially greatest opportunities remain beyond the grasp of classical computers forever.
To continue the pace of progress, we need to augment the classical approach with a completely new paradigm, one that follows its own set of rules. It’s called quantum computing.
Quantum Computing is a radically new way of performing computer calculations. For certain problems, it is exponentially faster than classical computers. To understand what exponentially faster means it helps to bear in mind that even a classical computer made up of all the electrons in the universe could not match a Quantum computer.
This is made possible by controlling and manipulating the electrons under very specialised conditions (including under extremely cold conditions, close to absolute zero, -273.15 C). This quantum mechanical control includes three essential concepts: superposition, exponential combinations and measurement.
Quantum computers are built on the principles of quantum mechanics, the complex and fascinating laws of nature at the microscopic level. These laws have always been there but their weirdness can only be harnessed under extremely delicate conditions outside of which the strange effects remain mostly hidden from view.
By harnessing such natural behaviour, quantum computers can run new types of algorithms to potentially solve previously “unsolvable” problems in optimisation, chemistry and machine learning.
With rapid progress over the last couple of decades we are entering a new era of computing and Africa needs to act now. We need to educate, we need to skill up and we need to brainstorm around the most pressing African use-cases.
Why quantum computing is important for Africa
It is widely believed amongst scientists that Africa is the cradle of humankind. Humans first appeared between around 300,000 and 200,000 years ago, but only left Africa around 70,000 years ago (to select the largest of multiple waves of migrations).
During these periods and up to the present day, genetic diversity has been increasing, with the net result that Africans still have more diversity than the rest of the world combined. Such diversity is a treasure chest of genetic information. This includes the ability to more easily infer the role of different genes (by averaging over more varieties) and also discovering natural immunities to diseases.
Furthermore, in the age of personalised genetic medicine, solutions for one population group don't necessarily help another. This all points to the need for us Africans to mine the jewels of our own genetic heritage using the latest techniques for genetics and drug discovery. Quantum computing promises to open exciting new avenues of research in this area.
Our genetic heritage is only one surprising natural resource that Africa has -- another is the clarity of our night skies at high altitudes. This won Southern African countries the prestige of being selected to host the future world’s largest radio telescope, the Square Kilometre Array (SKA).
African and global scientists who come to Africa to use the SKA should participate in the processing and interpretation of SKA data on African soil, with all the local spin-off benefits coming to Africa. Indeed, this is part of the reason for having local supercomputing facilities on the continent. Quantum computing also promises to solve physics simulation and pattern discovery problems relevant to the SKA that complement the power of the classical supercomputers. The quantum computing expertise that must be fostered to fulfill the goal of beneficiating the raw data would also have local spin-off benefits for Africa.
The last African-specific reason justifying investment in quantum computing is the future security implications. Quantum computers have the long-time horizon potential to crack certain types of encryption we use to safeguard transactions. There are classical solutions to being Quantum-safe and it would be prudent if Africa had local expertise. Such advice would steer the middle path between complacency and unwarranted hype and alarm.
Africa’s Got Talent
Sometimes the question is posed, that while the vision to diversify and nurture local expertise may be well founded, do we have the raw talent? Fortunately, in South Africa we have a history of innovation in quantum physics to draw upon (for example, the Nobel prize for the invention of the CAT scan) and even recent surprising successes in the already mentioned supercomputing field, which is strongly intertwined with quantum computing. Over a recent four-year period, the South African Supercomputing teams were three-time world champions in the International Supercomputing Competition.
One of the most promising indicators that Africans should move quickly and invest in nurturing the skills around the burgeoning field of quantum computing is that there is already a long history of academic activity in South Africa. For example, the Chris Engelbrecht Summer School in Theoretical Physics has had as its main theme, Quantum related fields, since the 1980's and there are well established research groups, including those led by: Professor Andrew Forbes, Wits University; Professor Francesco Petruccione, University of KwaZulu-Natal and Professor Hermann Uys, Stellenbosch University.
This is what gave IBM and Wits the confidence to bring quantum computing to Africa, to enable African researchers to keep abreast with cutting edge developments in this extremely promising technological field. And by leveraging the African Research Universities Alliance and its additional 15 university members we can be bold and optimistic.
To jumpstart the learning and community building process IBM Q is hosting an invite-only Qiskit Camp in South Africa this December for 200 quantum researchers and computer scientists where they will learn in an immersive environment and receive hands-on training.
In summary, my fellow Africans, let's get quantum ready.
Wits University recently became the first African partner on the IBM Q Network and will be the gateway for academics across South Africa and to the 15 universities who are part of the African Research Universities Alliance (ARUA).
Dr Ismail Akhalwaya is a Research Scientist at IBM Research, Quantum
Dr Solomon Assefa is the Vice President | IBM Research: Africa & Emerging Market Solutions encompassing the South African and Kenyan labs
Professor Zeblon Vilakazi is Deputy Vice-Chancellor: Research and Postgraduate Affairs at the University of the Witwatersrand
Structuring SA’s digital government: the road not traveled?
- Lucienne Abrahams and Mark Burke
The potential capabilities afforded by digital technologies should not be ignored in the current stage of design of the future government administration.
Speculation about the future composition and organisation of the government in SA as a crucial state capability to shift the development path of society towards a more equal, inclusive and sustainable one, is rife at the moment. With about a week to go before President Cyril Ramaphosa announces his Cabinet, which will give an indication of his thinking on the reconfiguration of the state, various ideas have been put forward.
There is some speculation that the configuration of the government will merely revert to the composition before the process of unbundling and fragmentation that took place in the past 10 years. It is understandable that political motivations will dominate the decision on the composition of the Cabinet and government departments. Tough political bargaining, aimed at bringing on board the most important constituencies of the governing party, while also providing a level of legitimacy and stability for anchoring the new administration, will leave an indelible mark on the choices made.
However, the composition of the government cannot be left to only politics if there is to be a developmental commitment to building a capable state. It must also take account of the changing conditions under which this administration will come into being and must, by design, be congruent and responsive to major developments impacting the ability of the government to perform.
One of the most dramatic influencing factors to emerge since the turn of the 21st century is the extent to which digital technologies now shape our lives. Increasingly, they are impacting the very notions of identity, the relationship that citizens have with the state, the nature of policy-making, and the opportunities and constraints for delivery of services. Digital technologies now afford governments the opportunity to develop new, and strengthen existing, capabilities necessary to address some of the most intractable challenges in our society.
For instance, big data has the potential to better target distinct packages of social insurance to the most marginalised in society, with predictive analytics capable of modeling cause and effect to channel support to the most effective forms of social insurance. In healthcare, artificial intelligence (AI) can assist in diagnostics, estimating the probability of disease outbreaks, and monitoring specific illnesses, for example.
The value of these kinds of digital technologies can only be harvested optimally for policy-making and service delivery when large scale data sets are established in ways that enable databases to interface with each other to form cross-departmental digital platforms. Such digital platforms provide the foundation for sharing data and services across previously independent (but now inter-dependent) government departments and entities. These ideas have found traction over the past few years in terms of thinking about government-as-a-platform (GaaP).
Our purpose here is not to promote specific paradigms of technology use in government, or advance some form of technological determinism; rather, it is to suggest that the potential capabilities afforded by digital technologies should not be ignored in the current stage of design of the future government administration.
Digitisation must lead to digitalisation
Historically, SA’s dominant focus for digital government formation has been on automation. This is a necessary process by which analogue and paper-based processes in government are digitised. Once digitised, such information and processes have the potential to contribute to the digital transformation (digitalisation) of government.
In addition to the focus on automation in government, there have also been a few large-scale investments in systems aimed at the consolidation of databases into standardised single platforms such as the automated biometric identification system (Abis) and the home affairs national identification system (Hanis). The integrated justice system (IJS) brings together eight departments, agencies and authorities in the criminal justice value chain to produce an integrated digital platform to manage the information exchanges across the criminal justice system.
The effective formation of such digital platforms requires, among other things, integration across individual departmental boundaries, which represents a significant challenge to organisational autonomy, accountability and inter-operability. While the technical infrastructure is available to link systems across organisational boundaries through networks, the institutional infrastructure — including incentives, procedures, and cultures that underpin the required inter-operabilit — needs much greater attention.
The barriers to integration exist mainly because the design of government is based largely on the outdated Weberian model of state organisation developed in the 18th century, not allowing for the greater flexibility needed today. In this model, governments are arranged as organisational units concerned with the provision of services to meet specific needs, such as education, healthcare and welfare, or support for economic sectors, such as agriculture, mining and various branches of industry.
This organisation is framed by a reductionist and rationalist worldview, in which problems can only be understood by reducing them into elementary building blocks that can be addressed independently. Sectoral interests and practices thus dominate government programmes, trapping them in modes of operation that are confined to narrow, sectorally focused approaches to problem-solving. This limits the flexibility necessary to respond to continuously changing ways of living and doing business.
In this next period, the major challenge for the government is not the technical infrastructure, but instead, the re-organisation of the institutional arrangements that make possible a citizen-centric approach to policy-making and service delivery. Yet, it is the re-organisation, interconnection and integration made possible by networked digital infrastructure that policy makers least consider in the organisation of the state.
The path to a digital government is not without risk. Privacy, data integrity and cyber-security are some of the key risks on this path. These risks need to be weighed up against the capabilities afforded by new and, at times, disruptive, digital technologies. But can SA afford not to take advantage of the capabilities afforded by digital technologies in the re-organisation of government? Rehashing a mode of organisation fit for the 20th century is unlikely to enable government to cope with the complex governance and service challenges of this century.
The composition of the Cabinet and the next administration provides a first opportunity for considering how to embed new modes of organisation in the form of post-Weberian networks, ecosystems and platforms, to inform the future organisation of government. Not taking this opportunity will, in future, come to represent the road not traveled towards effective structuring of government administration and service delivery, for addressing inequality, poverty, sustained low economic growth and unemployment.
Dr Lucienne Abrahams is director at the LINK Centre, Wits University; and Mark Burke is a visiting researcher and convenor of the Frontiers of Digital Government Programme: LINK Centre, Wits University. This article was first published in Business Day.
SA students win world supercomputing competition once again
- Wits University
Wits students are part of South African team to take first prize at the International Supercomputing Conference.
Third-year information engineering students, Anita de Mello Koch and Kaamilah Desai from the Wits School of Electrical and Information Engineering, are part of the six-member team that participated in the 2019 International Supercomputing Conference (ISC) in Frankfurt, Germany, last week.
This is the fourth time a South African team has won the International Student Cluster Competition at the ISC High Performance conference. The undergraduate team also included four students from the University of Cape Town – Stephan Schröder, Dillon Heald, Jehan Singh and Clara Stassen.
The SA team, made up of 50% men and 50% women, walked away with the highest overall score against teams, among others, from the USA, UK, China, Taiwan, Spain, Switzerland, Estonia and Singapore.
The ISC’ International Student Cluster Competition is regarded as the premier international high-performance computing student competition. South Africa won the competition on debut in 2013 and repeated the feat in 2014 and 2016, coming second in 2015 and 2017. The South African team is one of few that consist entirely of undergraduate students, and of different students each year.
“It is great that South Africa do so well in this competition and that we can show we are at the forefront of this technology. You are not necessarily exposed to supercomputing in your studies and this is a great way to get introduced to the field. It was also amazing to attend the conference where we learnt a lot from the greatest minds in supercomputing,” says De Mello Koch.
"I am tremendously proud of Anita and Kaamilah. Their achievement shows that our students are able to compete with the best in the world at the cutting edge of information technology," says Professor Estelle Trengove, Head of School: School of Electrical and Information Engineering at Wits University.
Supervised by team advisors and computer engineers David Macleod and Matthew Cawood of the Centre for High Performance Computing (CHPC), the SA team took first place with the highest overall score for all the benchmarks they were given. Macleod, CHPC’s Advanced Computer Engineering Lab, said in a statement the team’s winning formula is to have dedicated students and sponsors. “Our sponsors are excellent and allowed the team to choose equipment without restriction or compromise. In turn the students put in a lot of time and effort before the competition and arrived at the competition well prepared.”
The Department of Science and Technology said in a statement that this “competition is one way that proves that South Africa will be able to fully participate in this new technological era and assist citizens to live better”.
“The skills that South Africa is building in supercomputing will help the country deal with the disruptive technologies that the fourth industrial revolution is promising,” said Dr Daniel Adams, Acting Deputy Director-General for Research Development and Support at the DST.
South Africa takes a quantum leap and joins the race
- Zeblon Vilakazi
Quantum technologies are exploding and no longer the purview of laboratory experiments only.
The race is on for governments and private industries to adopt its most promising and robust ideas into applications. Already a billion-pound (R18-billion) industry in the UK, most developed countries and a few BRICS states have already invested millions of euros in quantum technologies. Should South Africa follow suit?
Co-ordinated and competing international efforts to develop quantum technologies are systematically leading the birth of a new high-tech industry. Early estimates show the current market value for components supplied to primary researchers in quantum technologies is around £100-million (R1.8-billion).
In May, aleading scientific journal, Nature, reportedthat the European Commission has quietly announced plans to launch a billion euro (R16.2-billion) research project to boost a raft of quantum technologies on the continent – from secure communication networks to ultra-precise gravity sensors and clocks. In Asia, Chinese scientists are nearing completion of a 2 000 kilometre-long quantum-communication link – the longest in the world – to send information securely between Beijing and Shanghai. US technology giants such as IBM, Google, Microsoft and Lockheed Martin are leading the quantum computing field with huge investments in related hardware and software development.
These advancements are further making the case for South Africa to become an active participant and not just passive recipient in shaping and driving some of the cutting-edge knowledge and technological quantum developments that have largely been concentrated in Europe, North America and North Eastern Asia.
Last weekWits University and IBM announceda new collaboration that makes Wits the first African partner on the IBM Q Network. Wits will act as the gateway through which its own researchers, as well as scholars from South Africa and the 15 universities in the African Research Universities Alliance (ARUA), can gain access to the 20 qubit-IBM Q quantum computer with its advanced quantum computing systems and software for teaching quantum information science and exploring early applications. This is no mean feat indeed, as it positions South Africa at the cutting edge of developments in this frontier field of computing.
Advances in the engineering of quantum states have given rise to the “second quantum revolution” with the arrival of new technologies, such as enhanced medical imaging, efficient light harvesting materials (clean energy) and secure optical communication networks (cybersecurity). These advances also led to the development ofexponentially faster computers (quantum computers)that are closely integrated with diverse technologies such as Artificial Intelligence (AI) and machine learning and considered a core security component of devices that will fuel the fourth industrial revolution.
Quantum research in South Africa over the past decade has produced significant results and, in some cases, has been world leading. The benefits offered by the leap in quantum computing technology advances are critical if the country is to continue to be part of this new wave of research.
In announcing the IBMQ/Wits partnership last week, Dr Solomon Assefa, Vice President for IBM Research: Africa & Emerging Market Solutions encompassing theSouth Africanand Kenyan labs and recipient of aMIT Technology Reviewaward for “Top Young Innovator under 35”, said: “To remain competitive for the coming decades we must get the next generation of students and researchers quantum ready.”
One of the most promising applications of quantum computing will be in thearea of chemistry. In the South African context, early interest in this field is inHIV drug delivery research. Researchers in molecular and cellular biology at Wits are specifically focusing on understanding the virus’s C-subtype, the most prevalent and frequently transmitted HIV subtype in sub-Saharan Africa that has been suggested to account for greater than 95% of infections in South Africa. Molecules obey the rules of quantum physics, and in order to model a molecule in nature you need instrumentation that behaves and follows the rules of that particular molecule. Researchers are exploring how to use quantum computing to do just that.
Far from being a leap of faith, investment in quantum technologies in South Africa is crucial if we want to leverage the next level of discovery research that can help us to address the country’s most intractable problems. Just as crucial is thedigital economicpotential that quantum computing holds fortechnology start-upsin the hardware and software development fields.
Embrace 4IR to address poverty, inequality and unemployment - Ramaphosa
- Wits University
President Cyril Ramaphosa delivered the keynote address at South Africa’s first #4IRSA Digital Economy Summit.
Our nation is forging a digital compact that is a critical contributor to our development as a nation – a digital compact with economic, justice and social benefit and innovation at its heart,” said President Cyril Ramaphosa at the first Digital Economy Summit (4IRSA) hosted by the 4IRSA Partnership in Johannesburg.
“The digital compact is an important component of the new social compact to which I referred during my recent State of the Nation address,” he added.
Wits University is one of the founding members of the 4IRSA - an alliance with the Universities of the Johannesburg and Fort Hare, Telkom, private sector partners Deloitte, Huawei and Vodacom, and the Department of Communications and Digital Technologies – that aims to accelerate the development of an inclusive, coherent, national response to the 4IR for South Africa, based on research.
Addressing the gathering of key constituencies from the public and private sectors, academia and civil society, Professor Adam Habib, Vice-Chancellor and Principal of Wits University, said South Africa needs to ‘reimagine human life and what it means to be human in the 21st Century’.
“We need to train scholars to deal with the challenges of the 21st Century, some which we may not yet have encountered and work across sectors to develop the technology required for us to leapfrog across eons of poverty, unemployment and inequality, and in so doing to create a new world order that prioritises humanity before profits and power. We are the pioneers who can reimagine how digital innovation can transform our world,” Habib said.
Developing a unique Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR) blueprint for South Africa
“The Summit was convened to stimulate and facilitate an inclusive national dialogue on the 4IR in South Africa. While there are several 4IR-related processes and dialogues underway in South Africa in government, industry, academia and society at large, these are, in the main, fragmented, eclectic and divergent. The Summit provides a platform for all these conversations so that they can become mutually visible, thereby facilitating progressive coherence between them,” said Professor Brian Armstrong, Chair of Digital Business at Wits University and Secretary of 4IRSA.
Opening the event, Gauteng Premier David Makhura said: “The Fourth Industrial Revolution is upon us and we must take action to prepare our nation fully for the new economy and new society. We need a national strategy and South Africa must take a lead in order to ensure that we collectively harness the opportunities and navigate the challenges brought about by the Fourth Industrial Revolution.”
His talk was followed by internationally renowned geopolitical forecaster, international affairs strategist and best-selling author, Dr George Friedman, who provided a global view on 4IR, saying that, in South Africa, he foresees this period of instability and tension evolving into new growth in two directions - 4IR and upward mobility for South Africans.
While unpacking what 4IRSA is and the objectives of the Digital Economy Summit, Wits Vice-Chancellor and Principal, Professor Adam Habib, said: “We need to train scholars to deal with the challenges of the 21st century, some which we may not yet have encountered. We need to work across sectors to develop the technology required for us to leapfrog across eons of poverty, unemployment and inequality, and in so doing, create a new world order that prioritises humanity before profits and power.”
Minister of Communications and Digital Technologies, Stella Ndabeni-Abrahams said: “The Ministry of Communications and Digital Technologies has taken a conscious decision that at the heart of the 4IR conversation, is a people-centred response that speaks to jobs, skills and broad economic participation. As such, we have endeavoured to ensure that skills development is an important pillar to position the nation for the 4IR. To this end, we recently commissioned a digital skills study that revealed that skills in areas such as Artificial Intelligence, Big Data, Cybersecurity, Digital Communications, Digital Modelling, Machine Learning, Mechatronics and Cloud Computing will equip South Africans for future occupations. That is why we have developed initiatives such as the ‘Building a capable 4IR Army’ programme to ensure that our communities, especially the youth, are equipped to take advantage of new digital technologies, unlock future jobs and drive competitiveness.”
She added: “The impending 5G world and the reality of the Fourth Industrial Revolution requires us to ensure that the digital divide does not expand; that there is real transformation in terms of access to affordable ICT infrastructure and services; and that there is a clear long-term and sustainable programme to promote the 4IR.”
The President concluded the morning’s talks by saying: “Given what we know today about the potential benefits of what the Fourth Industrial Revolution can yield, we must embrace this historic conference of human insights and engagements, artificial intelligence, and technology, to rise to the challenges and enable us to address poverty, inequality as well as unemployment, which is the biggest triple problem that we face in our country. With the Fourth Industrial Revolution, we are going to be early adopters and we are going to be ahead.”
In a first for South Africa, Ramaphosa’s address was broadcast live via a hologram to an audience in the Rustenburg Civic Centre. This was the first ever live holographic broadcast of a Head of State and a sign of South Africa’s readiness to be a leader in the Fourth Industrial Revolution.
“The Digital Economy Summit brought the Fourth Industrial Revolution to the national highlight – unique to this event was the holographic approach of projecting our beloved President in two places at the same time! This demonstrates the advancing nature of 4IR and associated jobs – jobs redefined. Through artificial intelligence, a broader approach for spectrum allocation, a people-centred approach, there is real prospect of engaging with data differently, for new economic stimulus, and for productivity enhancement. The approach must however ensure that 4IR serves people broadly that inequality is reduced through this industrial revolution,” said Professor Saurabh Sinha, Deputy Vice-Chancellor: Research and Internationalisation at the University of Johannesburg.
Telkom Group CEO, Sipho Maseko shared: “Our dialogue today is laying a firm foundation for action that will uplift South Africa, therefore decisions that we make now will shape our social and economic landscape for decades to come. The digital economy requires us to challenge our preconceived beliefs and the way we have done things for generations. But the potential payoff, of an economy that is more inclusive, that lifts people out of poverty, that connects communities and builds a stronger society, is well worth the challenge.”
About 4IRSA
The Fourth Industrial Revolution South Africa partnership (4IRSA) is an alliance between partners from the public and private sectors, academia and civil society. The 4IRSA partnership seeks to develop an inclusive, coherent, national response to the Fourth Industrial Revolution for South Africa, based on research. It is a platform that creates space for stimulating dialogue, understanding and action to shape a coherent 4IR plan for South Africa.
For information, images, videos and speeches, visit https://4irsa.org.
Building real world solutions in Minecraft
- Wits University
Students in the School of Therapeutic Sciences and the School of Education at Wits competed to build a world in online game, Minecraft.
Competitors had to create a world in Minecraft Education edition that depicted their field. See competition and prize giving photos here.
Minecraft is a “sandbox” game, which refers to a video system with defined rules that the players can interact with but with which they have complete freedom to create unique online worlds.
“Wits University is the first and currently the only higher education institution in South Africa actively using MineCraft Education Edition for teaching and learning. While there is a nursing programme in Singapore using MineCraft Education Edition, we believe we are the only other health sciences environment worldwide using MineCraft for education purposes,” says Dr Paula Barnard-Ashton, eFundanathi manager.
Wits was the only higher education institution to participate in Microsoft’s worldwide MineCraft May Challenge. Three Wits staff teams – WitsBITS, Tshimologong, and eFundnathi – and 15 individual Wits students competed in the #MineCraftEEMay Challenge on 29 May 2019, which took place in the eFundanathi eZone on Wits Education Campus.
Education student Yadir Purmasir won first prize in the Individual Challenge. His world, “The Order of the Stone Academy” was a school that teaches students in various subjects for them to excel in the world of Minecraft. Click here for a Microsoft Sway of Purmasir’s winning entry.
Nursing Education postgraduate, Zelda Laurie took second place for her creation of the world of a stomach. This anatomical game requires players to build a stomach and then stomach and respond to challenges such as ulcers, inflammation. Click here for a Microsoft Sway of Laurie’s Minecraft for Anatomy entry.
Education student, Brogan Fiddes placed third for his School of Minecraft. Fiddes aimed to create a school that had a small carbon footprint, while still being appealing to all who enter. The School of Minecraft combines traditional real world schooling with schooling specifically for the Minecraft players. Click here for a Microsoft Sway of Fiddes’ Minecraft for Education.
Mathematics and Computer Science student Nqobile Mhlanga won the Audience Vote for creating a maze as a mathematical challenge. Pharmacy student Previn Ramiah in the Wits Advanced Drug Delivery Platform (WADDP) won the Social Media Challenge for his adaptation of a chemistry lab, which linked concepts and chemical reactions in a virtual world cost-effectively and with decreased environmental impact.
Nursing Education lecturer Lizelle Crous, MasterSkill representative Roelof De Bruyn, and Xoliswa Mahlangu of Future Nations School were judges. Microsoft SA donated an Xbox to eFundanathi, which awarded it as the first-place prize. Acer sponsored an i5 laptop for second-place prize and Masterskill sponsored a number of R1000 vouchers for the Microsoft Technical Associate Exams. Glenda Miles and Samantha Morris from Microsoft attended the prize giving, as did Lindani Mngomezulu from Acer, and Roelof De Bruyn from Masterskill.
Wits will continue to leverage creative technologies to advance blended teaching and learning. “We are using Mineraft Education Edition in the Master’s in Nursing Education programme and building a scenario world for second-year undergraduate students in Occupational Therapy to understand ‘fetching water’ in rural South Africa as an occupational performance action,” says Barnard-Ashton
Neglected challenge of the 4IR debate
- Eleanor Fox and Imraan Valodia
The roles and practices of companies like Google and Facebook must be investigated.
There has been a lot of talk among policymakers and within society about the so-called Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR) — the rapid growth in digital and artificial intelligence technologies that are fundamentally changing our lives.
Most recently, President Cyril Ramaphosa launched the 4IRSA initiative to focus attention on adapting our economy to these technological changes. Much of the discussion on this has focused on two issues: how technological change can boost economic growth; and what the likely impacts of the new technologies may be on employment. These are, of course, very important issues for SA.
There is, however, a third issue in this debate, related to issues of competition and economic power, that is equally important for SA, and this issue has, to date, received very little, if any, consideration. The issues we need to start thinking about include:
New technologies make it possible for some companies to gain dominance in some markets because more and more people use the product of one platform, to link up with their friends, customers and supplies. We all use Google for searching and that makes all of our lives a lot easier, but it is worth recalling that not too long ago we used a lot of different search engines, including some South African ones such as Ananzi. Is it acceptable that Google’s leveraging of its technological leadership has pushed domestic search engines such as Ananzi out of the market? No doubt, Google makes life a lot easier and it does so at no out-of-pocket costs to us. Might we be paying for this in other ways?
Is it acceptable that Google collects data on our searches (we pay nothing for using its search technology) but then directs particular advertising at us? Is it acceptable that the advertising that is directed to us when we search is biased in a manner that maximises income for Google? Or, more problematically, is it acceptable for Facebook to collect information from our Facebook posts and friendship networks and sell this information to political parties so that parties can more effectively target their election campaigns? New digital technologies and artificial intelligence-based algorithms are now making information a very valuable resource which is shaping our economy, and our brains, in very fundamental ways — much of this is information that is collected while we use so-called “free” services such as Google and Facebook.
Is it acceptable that companies like Google and Facebook can and sometimes do use their power as “gatekeepers” of their platforms to disable rival companies who use their platforms? Given how much power they have, should they be required to carry information of their rivals?
The 4IR is forcing us to ask some quite fundamental questions about market power, big firms and market dominance, fair prices, whether something that is free is indeed free.
These questions have been the subject of quite intense debate in competition law and economics, and even in the political sphere — where the answers to these questions differ quite fundamentally in the US and the EU.
In the EU, its competition authority recently fined Google €2.4bn for anticompetitive behaviour in its comparative shopping service. Over 90% of all searches on the internet are done using Google. Google also has interests in goods and services that people purchase when they search, including shopping.
Google was fined because it changed the algorithm that displays search results from a neutral algorithm to one that favours search results that it has interests in — essentially, the search results now prioritises Google’s own shopping companies, and demotes that of its rivals much lower in search results. Since no one looks beyond the first page of two in a Google search, Google’s rivals are effectively excluded in the search results. The EU competition authority argued that this behaviour is anticompetitive and illegal.
Google was also fined €4.3bn — the largest competition law fine in history — in another case for forcing cellphone manufactures who use its Android software to preload its browser (Chrome) and search facility (Google Search). These, and a third case have had significant political implications with US President Trump accusing the European authorities of bias against American companies. All of these cases are on appeal and it will be very interesting to see what the final outcome will be.
Last week the EU competition authority announced that it is now investigating Amazon for possible anticompetitive conduct. Amazon uses its online platform to sell its own products. Its platform is also used by independent sellers. The essence of the allegation against Amazon is that it collects information about these independent retailers, and may be using this information against its rivals.
There are similar cases against Facebook about how it accumulates and sells information — in some cases of people who don’t even use Facebook.
Another interesting question is how large digital companies are purchasing virtually all smaller tech companies that may blossom into being competitors. The economic question here is whether these mergers and acquisitions entrench power over information and remove small companies from the market before they become competitive rivals.
A good example of this is Facebook’s purchase of WhatsApp. How many other startups, which may provide much better goods at cheaper prices, or may compete on terms such as data privacy, are being removed from the market by these “killer acquisitions” before they can grow and compete against the dominant players?
Public debates about new technology and the 4IR should be paying much greater attention to these questions. We have not yet had any big cases of this sort related specifically to the domestic market, but these issues will become more and more important as technology changes how we live and how the economy operates.
• Eleanor Fox is the Walter J Derenberg Professor of trade regulation at New York University School of Law. She is an expert in antitrust and competition policy. Professor Imraan Valodia is Dean of the Faculty of Commerce, Law and Management at Wits University and a member of the Competition Tribunal of SA. This article was first published in Business Day.
Technology can make collecting and analysing evidence for policy easier
- Neal Robert Haddaway, Carina van Rooyen, Martin Westgate and Witness Mapanga
There is more and more research being produced around the world every day. In total, about 3 million articles are published every year.
There is more and more research being produced around the world every day. In total, about 3 million articles are published every year.
That’s a lot of information, and a lot of evidence. But humans are finding it increasingly harder to read, analyse and assess so much data when trying to understand a particular topic, a process called evidence synthesis. This involves converting large bodies of scientific research – articles, reports and data – into reliable and digestible evidence that can inform management or policy.
So if humans might struggle to cope with the increasing volume of evidence needed to build effective, solid policy, what’s the solution? We think technology is the key. With accessible software tools and workflows, machines can be left to do the laborious work so that people can focus on planning, thinking and doing. That’s what prompted two of us (Neal and Martin) to create the Evidence Synthesis Hackathon series.
This initiative was launched in 2017 to bring together world-leading and emerging researchers, practitioners and software developers to produce new Open Source tools and frameworks that support evidence synthesis. There have been three hackathons since then – two in Stockholm, and one in Canberra. They’ve drawn participants from 13 countries on six continents and led to 19 projects being initiated.
One such project is metafor automated reports, which automatically writes methods and results text for a particular statistical model (meta-analysis). This ensures that all the relevant information is included in any report in a consistent and reliable way.
Other projects include tools that help researchers visualise databases of studies to help identify gaps in global knowledge, and those that extract information from documents, like important data that describe the study location or its findings. We have also produced discussion papers that introduce new ways to think about evidence synthesis.
The hackathons, and other digital projects of this nature, are one way of creating a community of practice which together produces freely accessible tools and workflows. This helps to ensure the tools can speak to each other and reduces the risk of lots of different tools being produced that do the same thing.
In practice
Many of the outputs produced at the hackathons are already being used by researchers. One example is EviAtlas. This is a tool for producing maps of evidence unearthed during systematic literature reviews. It converts a database into a set of attractive, interactive figures and tables that show patterns in the “evidence base” and where knowledge gaps and clusters might exist.
It also allows users to produce free, interactive websites displaying the nature of the evidence on a geographical map. This is something that would previously have been expensive and highly complex.
So, for instance if you wanted to know what research had been conducted on the impacts of buffer strips around farmland in temperate ecosystems in Africa, you could quickly and easily explore this interactive map to find out.
EviAtlas interactive web site.ESHackathon
Evidence synthesis, much like the primary research studies that the process is based on, can sometimes ignore specialist evidence from Africa – perhaps because researchers do not know the literature landscape as well as that from North America and Europe. Similarly, developing policies based on examples and evidence from developed world contexts doesn’t work for countries with very different contexts. That’s why it’s so encouraging that there’s a growing African presence at the hackathons.
African participation
Earlier in 2019, the Evidence Synthesis Hackathon was able to host three participants from the African continent, thanks to funding from the University of Johannesburg through the Africa Centre for Evidence.
The three participants were integral to the discussions and coding work at the hackathon, and were instrumental in its success.
Two of the participants were experienced software programmers Christopher Penkin and Mandlenkosi Ngwenya. They produced a tool to keep track of and save web-based searches for research. Until now, this has been almost impossible to do in evidence syntheses.
The tool, which is in the final stages of development, is a Chrome browser extension that logs user search information and downloads it into a central database. Internet searches are notoriously difficult to keep track of and report transparently, but this tool does the reporting for you, and also automatically saves all your search results in one place.
The third attendee from Africa, Witness Mapanga, is an evidence synthesis specialist. He worked with other top researchers on projects to build a brighter future for evidence use in policy. This work is due to be published by the end of the year.
Building communities
We’re planning a number of hackathons in 2019 and beyond – one of them in South Africa in 2020. Doing this will hopefully highlight what resource-constrained environments need from evidence synthesis and what they can produce.
In the long run, hackathons and similar events can be used to build communities of practice: networks of researchers, data scientists, and software developers focussed on driving progress towards a sustainable future. The Evidence Synthesis Hackathon represents a novel but increasingly important part of this new movement.
Mandlenkosi Ngwenya and Christopher Penkin contributed to this article.
The third international LCT (Legitimation Code Theory) conference hosted at Wits was huge success with 160 delegates in attendance and 98 papers presented.
Sixteen countries, 160 delegates, 48 universities and over 98 papers presented – this was the success story by numbers for the third international LCT (Legitimation Code Theory) conference that Wits hosted at the beginning of July on the Parktown Education Campus.
But the bigger success of the third iteration of the biennial LCT conference has been the maturing adoption and application of the LCT framework and LCT principles. LCT is seen as way to deepen understanding of the essential nature of knowledge and to use the LCT “toolkit” for analysis to reform teaching and learning with the aim of making people become more successful.
LCT is still a relativity young field at about 20 years old but is also seen as a fast-growing, multi-disciplinary approach to transform primarily education, even though it can be applied to a range of fields.
Chief proponent of LCT is Professor Karl Maton of the LCT Centre for Knowledge-Building from the University of Sydney. Maton who presented a keynote speech at the conference said: “LCT scholars and educators empowers people with the tools to know the ‘rule of game’ as explicit knowledge and also to change the game in ways that benefit us all”.
For Wits’ Professor Lee Rusznyak, LCT has the potential to play a role in achieving the aims to decolonise education and to make learning and access to knowledge– including through universities – less alienating and more inclusionary.
Rusznyak said Wits’ role as host of LCT3 has successfully connected participants from around the world to share their wide-ranging research. She added: “I have been impressed by the commitment to rigour, the use of theory to improve context and our collective question to break down and understand knowledge in our quest for social justice,” said Rusznyak.
The next LCT conference is scheduled to take place at Wollongong University in Australia in December 2021.
Huawei awards bursaries to Wits postgraduate students
- Wits University
Huawei South Africa has donated almost 2 million in scholarships to ICT and Engineering postgraduate students at Wits.
Every year South Africa and the world celebrates Nelson Mandela’s birthday on the 18th of July with a call to action to effect positive change. Huawei South Africa has kicked off its Mandela Month programme of supporting youth in ICT with a bursary donation of almost two million rand to benefit nine academically deserving postgraduate students studying IT and Engineering courses at Wits.
“This year Huawei is focused on various information and communications technology (ICT) youth skills for youth as we approach the much talked about Fourth Industrial Revolution and digital economy,” says Huawei Deputy CEO Kian Chen.
Huawei ICT Talent Ecosystem
The bursary programme is part of Huawei’s wider ICT Talent Ecosystem, which aims to grow and support ICT skills training and skills transfer in South Africa. Last month Huawei partnered with Wits to launch a free 5G training course for post graduate ICT students.
“Wits is an important academic partner for Huawei with a shared vision for the fourth industrial revolution in which technologies like 5G, AI and Cloud will shape economic and social development. We therefore want to support students who are studying these courses to so that they can positively contribute to growing the local digital economy,” said Chen.
He added, “we believe that South Africa’s talented young people have the potential to mature into world-class experts. By enhancing industry-academic cooperation, we, as an international ICT company, hope to make our contribution to achieving the country’s development goals.”
Wits and Huawei championing research and innovation
Speaking at the bursary awards ceremony held on 17 July 2019, Wits Director of Postgraduate Affairs, Professor Robert Muponde said Huawei's commitment to research and development resonated with Wits’ own vision of creating and championing globally significant research and innovation.
“Wits has taken the strategic decision to be a 45% postgraduate university by 2022 precisely because of the realisation that the future lies in the hands of those who can create skills that count. Huawei has made a breakthrough with practice that drives conversions of knowledge beyond expectations, said Professor Muponde.
He concluded by encouraging the bursary recipient’s to make their impressions on the future by embracing the opportunity to create lasting value, empower others and become innovators.
A step closer to a childhood dream
For Simamkele Madikwa, a master’s student in Project Management and Construction, Huawei’s financial assistance means she is able to fund her studies, bringing her a and is a step closer to realising her childhood dreams of being involved in infrastructure build.
“I had no plan of how to pay for my master’s this year, I just had enough to register, it was serendipity that Huawei happened to be interviewing for its bursary programme earlier this year, I tried out and was successful. I come from a rural village near the small town of Matatiele in the Eastern Cape. Growing up I was always fascinated by building and construction, I saw that as a sign of progress and improvement. I am looking forward to bringing connectivity infrastructure to more people in areas like the one I grew up in,” she says.
In his closing remarks at the ceremony, Chen quoted Nelson Mandela in his 1996 speech when he told guests at the launch of Academy of Science of South Africa: “On your shoulders rest the challenge of giving science a face that inspires our youth to seek out science, engineering and technology ….”
“Mr. Mandela’s words still ring true today, two decades later. Huawei is up to the challenge and looks forward to giving many more young people like Simamkele Madikwa a stepping stone to success so she can make her contribution in ICT,” concluded Chen.
Sibanye-Stillwater donates R50m worth of seismic data to Wits
- Wits University
Sibanye-Stillwater has donated their 2D/3D reflection seismic data worth R50m to the Wits Seismic Research Centre of the School of Geosciences.
The data will be used by Wits geophysicists and postgraduate students for training and research purposes. The seismic data was acquired between the 1980s and 2000s for gold exploration at their mining operations in the Witwatersrand basin.
Professor Musa Manzi, Director of the Seismic Research Centre, said this donation from Sibanye-Stillwater is extremely important for research and postgraduate student projects. “Seismic data has the capability to provide excellent images of the Earth’s subsurface structure. For accurate structural analysis, an effort should be made by geophysicists to improve the quality of old data. For example, our students will use the state-of-the-art software packages donated to the Centre by major international companies and develop new techniques to re-process these old seismic datasets to improve the imaging of deep-seated mineral ore deposits and to mitigate hazards (e.g., methane explosion and seismicity) faced by miners in deep underground gold mines. Furthermore, our research may also help mining companies improve their mining methodologies, thus reducing costs in a poor economic climate,” he said.
The Wits Seismic Research Centre in the School of Geosciences was established in 2015 by Professor Manzi to assist in easing the significant shortage of skills in geophysics in Africa. The Centre specialises in providing world-class geophysical training to undergraduate and postgraduate students from across Africa (and beyond) who are pursuing careers in the minerals industry, oil and gas exploration, and academia. The Centre’s fundamental, innovative and outstanding contributions to science are concerned with the development and application of sophisticated mathematical seismic techniques to gain a deeper understanding of Earth processes, and particularly in exploring for mineral deposits and oil and gas reservoirs in sedimentary basins across Africa.
One of the most essential components of successful mineral exploration, is reflection seismic surveying, which indispensable for oil and gas exploration. Data gathered through seismic surveys allow geophysicists to visualise the subsurface of the Earth using waves of sound to image geologic structures. The data assists mining companies to determine the location of deep-seated mineral ore and hydrocarbon deposits, and improve mine safety. The 2D/3D reflection seismic data donated to the Centre will enable students and academics to conduct impactful research in this field.
Mr Johan van Eeden, Unit Manager at Sibanye-Stillwater, and Mr Philip Staley, Senior project geologist at Sibanye-Stillwater, highlighted the importance of the mining industry in utilising latest technology developments in seismic processing through close relationships with academic institutions. They stated, “The donation of this nature is instrumental for building sustainable relationship with corporate institutions and academia in the country, and for the support of innovative research that may improve optimisation of orebody extraction at the their mining operations.”
The Centre has had a significant success with recruiting postgraduate students with the requisite high-level skills to utilise the donated software and datasets, so that the Centre becomes a world-leader in the field as well as the premier training facility on the continent. The Centre currently hosts more than 25 postgraduate students (MSc and PhDs) who are conducting their research on various scientific topics related to minerals, oil and gas exploration, as well as on mine safety.
In addition to this donation, the Centre has already received generous software and other petroleum data donations from local and international oil and gas companies, which shows that companies are supportive of research, capacity building and student training in Africa. These make the Centre unique in Africa and a platform of great benefit as they promote research opportunities in both hard rock mining, and in oil and gas related problems. The hydrocarbons-based research at the Centre is also important since South Africa’s prospects and potential for further oil and gas discoveries remain exceedingly positive.
You and Big Brother @Home online
- Amy Musgrave
Technology and surveillance cause a sense of moral panic, but such scrutiny has the potential to enhance society.
The tension between cyber phobia and cyber euphoria is one of the enduring questions of the technological age. And as the technologies of the modern world become more powerful – even more intrusive – the question becomes even sharper.
This sense of moral panic is surely linked to the way in which today’s technologies intersect – and even take over – the most personal spaces in our everyday lives. Many of the technologies that resulted from the second industrial revolution during the early 20th Century carried with them a limited invasive capacity. This was the case even when these innovations were developed for mass consumption, and thus entered our homes.
So the motor car, the telephone, the television set and video recorder became commonplace in the developed world, but they each belonged to a single identifiable place in the home. The car in the garage, the TV and VCR in the lounge, the phone in the study. The user could leave them in their designated place. Technology had also not yet broken down the distinction between home and office, work and leisure, or personal and public.
Convergence calamity
Modern tech is different and this altered relationship in the interface of the individual-to-consumer technology is perhaps the main distinguishing feature of the Fourth Industrial Revolution – and arguably a key driver of 21st Century techno-anxiety.
It does not help the sense of moral panic that consumer tech also obliterates the distinction in the use of the various devices we own and operate, thus increasing the individual’s dependence on these devices. TV and recorder, phone, messaging, watch and office capabilities can now be had from a single device. Home, work, and play now also exist seamlessly, challenging established notions of work/life balance.
Surveillance capitalism
But is the sense of dread justified? Breckenridge thinks this anxiety has a lot to do with the fear of surveillance, which modern tech makes easier. Fear of surveillance is based on the notion that the state – or large corporations today – are gunning for maximum control of our personal information for dubious purposes.
He cites the example of The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Futureat the New Frontier of Power, Shoshana Zuboff’s 2018 book about the quest by powerful corporations to predict and control our behaviour. “Zuboff vividly brings to life the consequences as surveillance capitalism advances from Silicon Valley into every economic sector.”
But Breckenridge makes the point that states still collect more information than any corporation, despite the data collection and storage capacity of the mega corporations of the internet age. This is especially true of the developed ‘mega-states’, such as the US, China, and the European Union governments. And, he adds, there is nothing wrong with states collecting as much information as possible, even through surveillance systems. “Every just society has and relies upon vast systematic surveillance,” he says.
Surveillance for citizen services
To understand and appreciate the point, it’s perhaps necessary to shift from the popular understanding of ‘surveillance’ – with its connotations of spying, intrusion and invasion of privacy – towards what Breckenridge means by it: the collection, collation and categorisation of citizens’ information to enable the state to deliver services efficiently.
One example is the developed welfare states of the Scandinavian countries, where citizens are required to notify local authorities within a certain period of relevant changes in their personal and family circumstances, such as moving to a new house. This allows better state planning and services such as schooling and healthcare.
The surveillance state, according to Breckenridge, works best as a trade-off between the individual and the state: you give the state maximum information about yourself and your personal circumstance, in return for socio-economic “goodies” (social grants, health, education, safety), in other words a state that takes care of basic needs.
In the South African context, better surveillance of citizens’ movements and lives will allow the state to be more efficient at paying out social grants, as well as tracking how the money the state pays out is spent, which is critical knowledge to have when planning local economic development.
Read more in the seventh issue, themed: #Ekhaya(isiZulu for ‘home’)about our homegrown research that crosses borders and explore the physical spaces we inhabit, where we feel we belong, where we’re from and what we identify with, including the physical/psychological space we may return to – or reject.
An eye on assistive tech at home
- Deborah Minors
Eye-gaze devices as assistive tech have the potential to empower people with disabilities by improving their independence at home.
Wits biomedical engineer Adam Pantanowitz discovered he had a neuromuscular condition as a teenager. Since then, the Lecturer in the School of Electrical and Information Engineering has researched the potential of technology to empower people with disabilities. In particular, he has explored the untapped potential of the brain through brain-computer interfaces (BCIs).
The brain as a network device
In February 2019, in an experiment believed to be a world first, Pantanowitz and colleagues incorporated the human brain as a computer network. Dubbed ‘BrainConnect’, the proof-of-concept innovation is under review for publication in the journal Communications in Information Systems.
The researchers connected two computers through the human brain and successfully transmitted words like ‘hello’ and ‘apple’, passively, without the user being aware that a message is present.
“We don’t know of anywhere else where the brain has been used to connect two disconnected computers so this presents an interesting theoretical system with a human literally being ‘in the loop’,” says Pantanowitz, co-author of the paper with Wits alumni Rushil Daya and Michael Dukes.
Morse code via light signals
BrainConnect links light, signal transmission, the visual cortex of the human brain, and two computers. It works by attaching a device to a person’s head, which links the two computers.
The person passively stares at a flashing light whilst a word, for example, ‘apple’, is encoded in the light signal. The flashing light stimulates the visual cortex in the brain and an electroencephalogram [EEG – a measurement that detects electrical activity in the brain] wirelessly transmits information to a second computer, which decodes the signals to appear on the second computer.
“You can think of it like Morse code via light signals,” says Pantanowitz. BrainConnect can decipher up to 17 symbols at a rate of four seconds per symbol. The more relaxed the person is, the greater the possibility of invoking a response through this ‘steady state visually evoked potential’.
Visionary assistive tech
Although BrainConnect is fledgling research, Pantanowitz says this brain-computer interface may have applications in eye-gaze devices, which allow for the control of the environment by detecting where gaze is focussed.
In a similar project, Wits students Kimoon Kim and Chelsey Chewins worked with Pantanowitz to create an eye-tracking system to interface more naturally with a computer. This project enables you to control your computer using a mouse that you control with your eyes.
“BrainConnect works through light stimulus of the visual cortex. Similar eye-gaze devices already serve as assistive tech to empower motor-impaired people or paraplegics,” he says.
Frugal innovation in Africa
He cites futurists who predict greater human-tech integration by 2030. The Fourth Industrial Revolution [4IR] is a feature of 21st Century society – human beings are now deeply connected to tech through smart phones and other close-contact devices. Research in South Africa and Africa, similar to this engineering innovation at Wits University,has the potential to advance 4IR.
“Africa’s challenges need unique solutions. The brain research is being conducted under what’s known as a ‘frugal innovation’, where low-cost equipment and innovative approaches keep costs down,” says Pantanowitz.
Robotic hands and Brainternet
Another of his similarly frugal innovations was a basic robotic hand, the prototype of which cost just R1 800 in South Africa, compared to a budget of close to a million Euros for a similarly functioning device in Europe. Pantanowitz and Wits students Graham Peyton and Rudolf Hoehler created a device with similar intentions to the European model, using the same technology of gazing at light to turn the device off and on.
Pantanowitz previously also pioneered'Brainternet', where he connected the human brain to the internet in real timeand streamed brainwaves onto the internet. He says that for people with epilepsy, for example, Brainternet could potentially predict the next seizure. “If they get into a particularly bad space, they could alert their friends and family without them being able to do so physically.”
Pantanowitz says, “There is potential for us in Africa to advance brain-computer interfaces and other assistive technologies, which could empower people with disabilities to control their environments with greater ease, and their homes are one context in which this can be life-changing.”
Read more in theseventh issue, themed: #Ekhaya(isiZulu for ‘home’)about our homegrown research that crosses borders and explore the physical spaces we inhabit, where we feel we belong, where we’re from and what we identify with, including the physical/psychological space we may return to – or reject.
New research initiative will be announced at this year's AI Expo Africa
- Wits University
Major machine learning research initiative will serve as a model for innovation and growth in Africa.
Wits University is pleased to announce it will be sending a high-level delegation to this year’s AI Expo Africa where it will launch a major research initiative that is intended to bring about a step change in scientific research and commercialisation in Africa.
The AI Expo Africa is the largest business focused Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Data Science community event in Africa, and takes place on 4 and 5 September in Cape Town.
In addition to launching the initiative, Professor Armstrong will participate on a Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR) panel to discuss how this new initiative will serve as a model for 4IR innovation and growth in Africa.
Read more about Wits’ contribution to 4IR research and innovation here: www.wits.ac.za/future/
The AI Expo was chosen as the launch event for the initiative due to its collaborative nature spanning academia and industry throughout Africa. Some of the attendees to join the Wits delegation at this year’s conference include the Ambassador of France to South Africa, Christophe Farnaud, and the Head of the AI for Good Global Summit.
What do you need to become a superhero? Certainly not superpowers, we can all be superheroes according to a team of Witsies.
What do you need to become a superhero? Certainly not superpowers, we can all be superheroes according to a team of Witsies.
The Wits team dubbed Wits Avengers, has landed at the Secunda Club Grounds, the base of the Sasol TechnoX 2019 where they are showcasing the life-changing impact of science and what can be achieved.
Armed with real life experiments and experiences, the Wits Avengers are showing masses of school learners the beauty of science careers.
TechnoX is South Africa’s largest career guidance exhibition with a focus on educating learners about careers in science, technology, engineering and mathematics. The expo coincides with National Science Week and drew 22 000 visitors in 2018.
The Wits delegation, led by the Schools Liaison Office, includes Wits academic scientists, students and Wits alumni from STEM related faculties who are united in the mission to win hearts and minds at the expo.
“This is an important space for us because the country’s young minds visit the expo. If you as an institution are not here then you missing on top talent.
Through the Wits Avengers we are demonstrating to kids that we have real life superheroes, saving lives and creating technology that is helping the human race”, says Sershin Naicker, Head of the Schools Liaison Office.
The Fak’ugesi African Digital Innovation Festival will explore and celebrate technology and creativity by Africans for Africa. This year, the Festival has cast its central theme as ‘Own Your Force’ which invites digital makers in Africa to stake their claim on their talent, industry and creative economy.
In the spirit of this year’s Festival theme, the Cultural Economies Conference will bring together a spectrum of contributors within the cultural and creative industries (CCI). From practitioners to policy makers, the programme will critically engage with the ecosystems and economies of local and continental CCI contexts.
The Cultural Economies Conference will feature future-focused and solutions-driven sessions that unpack the possibilities that tech and innovation offer the creative sector, with interrogation of topics such as the changing nature of storytelling and blockchain as highly anticipated highlights. “Stakeholders from across the CCIs are invited to take part in this exciting opportunity for engagement; in the hopes that they will be able to gain insight into the thinking of the CCI around their practice, realities and visions, particularly from an African and future-focused perspective,” explains Cultural Economies Conference project Manager Bandile Gumbi.
Fak’ugesi African Digital Innovation Festival director Dr Tegan Bristow adds, “We are looking forward to welcoming some of the continent‘s leading digital thinkers and practitioners to share with us at this year’s event.” Just two of Africa’s leading lights joining the Cultural Economies Conference in 2019 are C.J. Obasi and Babusi Nyoni. Hailing from Nigeria, Obasi is film director, screenwriter and editor. He is best known for his debut feature, a zero budget film titled Ojuju, which premiered at the Africa International Film Festival (AFRIFF) in November 2014, and won the award for Best Nigerian Film and earned Obasi the Trailblazer of the Year award in March 2015, at the Africa Magic Viewers’ Choice Awards. Zimbabwean-born Babusi Nyoni is design strategist and innovator currently living in Amsterdam. In 2016 he created what Forbes magazine described as “the world’s first AI football commentator” for the UEFA Champions League final on behalf of Heineken. More recently, Nyoni created an app for the early diagnosis of Parkinson’s disease using computer vision. The findings we presented of which were presented at Oxford University on the Skoll World Forum stage in April this year.
As a conference through line, Colliding Ecosystems explores the spaces of increasing overlap between the creative and digital industries; in particular taking into account the different contexts and ecosystems in which entrepreneurs need to be able to operate effectively. Economies Of Trust considers what these ecosystems are and need to be, in order to support ‘makers’, who often find themselves needing to both produce within, as well as be, the ecosystems for their work. The conference will also interrogate socially orientated vs traditionally capitalist approaches in the context of (intellectual) property ownership and the crossover between the fourth industrial revolution and the cultural and creative industries. In a session looking at Ecosystems of Tech-Knowledge-y, a panel of practitioners will offer their scene-setting perspectives on the intersections between the CCI and digital ecosystems. A look at the legal, policy and communications Frameworks in which these sectors are required to operate hopes to clarify perspectives on pertinent issues.
In addition, deeper consideration of the Changing Currencies operating in these new economic contexts requires looking at social (as) currency in the 4IR, and the investment required to operate in these changing marketplaces. These ideas are mined in a conversation around ‘Communications as the currency of the digital economy’. A session on ‘Storytelling as Africa’s value proposition’ will unpack suggestions for dismantling power structures and hierarchies of visual storytelling across genres and media. Additional engagement will be driven by tech-facilitated creative solutions and mechanisms for digital innovation for the creative sector; including how tech solutions are changing the game, using blockchain, smart contracts and digital copyright solutions.
Lesley Williams, CEO of Tshimologong Digital Innovation Precinct, which will host the Fak’ugesi Festival for a sixth year says the precinct is a natural meeting point for the digital arts community in Africa and across the globe. “This is where African digital artists interact with counterparts from around the world, collaborate around best practice and create something truly memorable,” she says.
For more information on the Fak’ugesi African Digital Innovation Festival visit www.fakugesi.co.za. Tickets available via Quicket.co.za - conference pass, including general festival access: R300 (R150 for students)
The 2019 Cultural Economies Conference is supported by, and presented on behalf of the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ), the GIZ (Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GmbH)) and the Goethe-Institut to promote the emerging market of cultural and creative industries in Africa and in the Middle East.
About Fak’ugesi
Fak’ugesi - Joburg’s one and only African Digital Innovation Festival will take place from 30 August to 8 September 2019, with the theme ‘Own Your Force’. The 2019 festival will focus on bringing to the table important African futures, by tapping into the sources of cross sector collaboration and culture alongside technology, creativity and innovation in new environments of trust, ownership and cultural equity in the fourth industrial revolution. Attend to explore how local culture can move and change the future of technology.
Fak’ugesi, which means “Switch it on” or “add power” in urban Zulu, is focused on culture, technology and innovation in Africa. It is an opportunity for young adults, with or without formal education, to learn or engage with tomorrow’s technology.
According to an Impact Report commissioned by the British Council ConnectZA- Fak’ugesi is believed to be the most important digital creativity festival in Africa.
The 2019 Fak’ugesi Festival has partnered with the City of Johannesburg’s Smart Cities Office to bring an exciting African-centric programme line-up.
The partnership highlights the importance of identifying local solutions for local problems, while also supporting the work of five talented individuals to take their ideas and prototypes even further through the joint support of the Smart City Office and Tshimologong Digital Innovation Precinct.
MMC for Finance, Counsellor Funzela Ngobeni, stated that “In the upcoming years, the City’s Smart City objectives will become evident as the City, through its core departments, begins to transition to more innovative and efficient means of engaging our citizens. The City has to implement new ways of engaging and solving problems for its ever-growing population and improving the efficiency and reliability of citizen interface with the City. While solutions may not always be technological, they will always be innovative and Smart.”
The Fak’ugesi African Digital Innovation Festival was founded in 2014 as a collaboration between the Tshimologong and the Wits School of Arts’ Digital Arts Department. The spirit of collaboration in celebration of all things digital continues as the City of Johannesburg’s Smart City Office recognises the important influence of African and South African culture on true innovation in the 4th Industrial Revolution, curtailed to local realities. The partnership is a natural fit as the 2019 festival has cast its central theme as ‘Own Our Force’ which invites digital makers in Africa to stake their claim on their talent, industry and creative economy.
Lawrence Boya, Head of the Smart City Office, noted that the City seeks to work with Tshimologong, and the talented ideas identified during the Fak’ugesi Festival. “The aim of the Smart City Office is to support five individuals who come up with solutions relevant to the Challenges faced by the City of Johannesburg, as a municipality or as a collective of citizens. We hope to see solutions that are not common in Europe, the US or even China, which address African or specific South Africa problems. Something unique to our Nation or City.
Tshimologong, in the youthful and dynamic heart of Johannesburg in Braamfontein, will once again host this year’s inspiring Festival line up and will also be the home of future digital solutions as proudly supported by the City of Johannesburg. The strategic partnership between the Fak’ugesi African Digital Innovation Festival and the City of Johannesburg’s Smart Cities Office will see the establishment of incubation support for prototypes and new developments from three exciting Fak’ugesi Festival initiatives including:
Blockchain Hack-a-thon for Creative Industries: In a collaboration between Fak’ugesi Festival, Animation SA and the City of Johannesburg, a brains trust and hack-a-thon will propose and porotype a new blockchain solutions to support South African culture and technology.
Cross-Sector Game Jam: A special focus at Fak’ugesi Festival 2019 that looks at how to bolster and support work across digital creatives sectors into gaming and gamification, music, user experience design, animation and screenwriting. This game-jam is set to change the way local digital industry works. The City of Johannesburg is proud to lend its support to this initiative as Joburg grows as a centre of creative work on the African continent.
SUPERPOWER! Johannesburg: working with UK-based Singaporean architect and technologist, Ling Tan, is a hands-on development workshop focusing on wearable technology and citizen data collection. Tan will be working with UJ Industrial Design students to explore how wearable technology can be used to help citizens and communities in need by collecting data about their environments and quality of life to share with government institutions and research organisations like the Gauteng City Region Observatory.
Over and above these three key initiatives, the Fak’ugesi African Digital Innovation Festival will also host a series of special exhibitions that speak to the concerns of the Smart City. The first is a poster exhibition by UJ Multimedia students that address speculative design for African Smart Cities, the second is a series of four films by acclaimed young South Africa artists Franois Knotze on the effects of eWaste on cultures and societies in Africa.
About Fak’ugesi
Fak’ugesi - Joburg’s one and only African Digital Innovation Festival will take place in September 2019, with the theme ‘Own Your Force’. The 2019 festival will focus on bringing to the table important African visions and futures, by tapping into the sources of cross sector collaboration and culture alongside technology, creativity and innovation. Explore how local culture can move and change the future of technology.
Fak’ugesi, which means “Switch it on” or “add power” in urban Zulu, is focused on culture, technology and innovation in Africa. It is an opportunity for young adults, with or without formal education, to learn or engage with tomorrow’s technology.
According to an Impact Report commissioned by the British Council ConnectZA- Fak’ugesi is believed to be the most important digital creativity festival in Africa.
About Wits University’s Tshimologong Digital Innovation Precinct
Setswana for “new beginnings”, Tshimologong is one of Johannesburg’s newest high-tech addresses in the vibrant inner-city district of Braamfontein, where the incubation of start-ups, the commercialisation of research and the development of high-level digital skills for students, working professionals and unemployed youths takes place. The Precinct was launched in September 2016 with strategic support from major companies including Microsoft, Cisco, TIA, Teraco, BCX, ACSA and MMI. Gauteng Province through its Department of E-Government and the City of Johannesburg have also provided significant support. The Precinct also houses the prestigious IBM Research’s Lab Africa – one of only 12 such facilities in the world. Website: www.tshimologong.joburg
Digital makers invited to ‘Own Your Force’ as Fak’ugesi
- Fak'ugesi Festival
Cross-sector digital creative technology at 2019 Fak’ugesi Festival – Africa’s best creative digital workshops, talks, pitches and digital art exhibitions
From 30 August to 8 September 2019 the Fak’ugesi African Digital Innovation Festival will return to Johannesburg to explore and celebrate technology and creativity by Africans for Africa. Wits University’s Tshimologong Digital Innovation Precinct, in the youthful and dynamic heart of Braamfontein, will once again host this year’s inspiring programme. The 2019 Festival is also made possible by sponsorship from the Agence Française de Développement (AFD), which includes a grant from AFD that enables Tshimologong to expand its activities to incorporate audio visual content creation.
The Tshimologong Precinct alongside Wits Theatre and the BKhz Gallery will host this year’s mind-bending line up of hack-a-thons, game jams, aniMarathons, workshops, digital art, creative pitches, exhibitions as well as a special conference on creative economies and digital innovation.
In total, Fak’ugesi Festival will offer 15 creative technology workshops across the week, starting with the Festival’s annual Making Weekend (31 August to 1 September) right until closing weekend on 7 September 2019, including an array of exciting talks, exhibitions, and meet-ups in between.
As part of a cross-sector evolution, with the aim of supporting cross sector development and exploration in the digital industries in South Africa, Fak’ugesi Festival is hosting four cross sector workshops. These include Screenwriting for games, Animation for games, Music for games and UX for games which then lead into a two-day Cross-Sector Game Jam that aims to see screenwriters, animators, musicians and other creatives join forces to prototype and develop new games.
Fak’ugesi 2019 workshops will also feature not-to-be-missed guest workshops by local and international visiting artists. The following are for those who love digital creativity:
Play & Program a dynamic screen play & program workshop by visiting Swiss Artists (supported by Pro Helvetia) Andreas & Sidi, this workshop was first offered by CreativeApplications.net and is sure to change your life.
In a special twist this narrative workshop uses WhatsApp and ChatBots both as research tool and development, don’t miss Good Neighbours: Storytelling with Chatbots by special guest artists, Netherlands based Natalie Dixon and Klasien van den Zandschulp.
Or a very special Solar Power for Yourself workshop by resident IBM Research Lab Engineer Toby Kurien, who will teach your how to test and spec our personal solar power needs.
Those inclined towards the business side of the creative enterprise can join the Creative Pitch Training led by Tshimologong Innovation Precinct’s own Khwezi Fudu Cenenda, or a special partner workshop by Harare-based ComeXposed for their Creative Enterprise Workshop.
In keeping with the spirit of collaboration across diverse disciplines, this year will see Fak’ugesi Festival team up with AnimationSA in a very special full day Animation Master Series, specifically designed for Animation producers and studios, both small and large.
In the annual games-focused partnership with the Wits Digital Arts Department comes the Fak’ugesi Arcade, which in 2019 is made up of specialist workshops and cross-sector engagements, including guest artist Mark Lustigman from Darjeeling Studios in France on Using Cultural Heritage to Design Games & local super stars Alphabet Zoo together with Wits Game Design on Zines for Urban Games. Fak’ugesi Arcade also presents an opportunity for indie developers to pitch to a brand new African traveling platform Masidlale Fak’ugesiand a special Global South Focused “Ludus Lekgotla” of games-related talks linked to the Fak’ugesi Arcade opening on 3 September 2019.
This year the Fak’ugesi Festival will once again showcase an incredible line up of digital arts exhibitions that will run for the full duration of the Festival, from 30 August to 8 September. Just some art exhibition highlights include: Francois Knoetze with his newly completed Core Dump film series on electronic waste; the Fak’ugesi Digital African Residency Exhibition of emerging digital artists from Southern Africa; a series of live AR Poetry Works by “Giving Poetry Wings”; Arts Research Africa Resident artist Russel Hlongwane with Ifu Elimnyama and a very special collection of VR from Southern Africa title Southern VR with Electric South, Eden Labs, TMRW Gallery and the Centre for the Less Good Idea.
Fak’ugesi - Joburg’s one and only African Digital Innovation Festival will take place in September 2019, with the theme ‘Own Your Force’. The 2019 festival will focus on bringing to the table important African visions and futures, by tapping into the sources of cross-sector collaboration and culture alongside technology, creativity and innovation. Explore how local culture can move and change the future of technology.
Fak’ugesi, which means “Switch it on” or “add power” in urban Zulu, is focused on culture, technology and innovation in Africa. It is an opportunity for young adults, with or without formal education, to learn or engage with tomorrow’s technology.
According to an Impact Report commissioned by the British Council ConnectZA- Fak’ugesi is believed to be the most important digital creativity festival in Africa.
About Wits University’s Tshimologong Digital Innovation Precinct
Setswana for “new beginnings”, Tshimologong is one of Johannesburg’s newest high-tech addresses in the vibrant inner-city district of Braamfontein, where the incubation of start-ups, the commercialisation of research and the development of high-level digital skills for students, working professionals and unemployed youths takes place. The Precinct was launched in September 2016 with strategic support from major companies including Microsoft, Cisco, TIA, Teraco, BCX, ACSA and MMI. Gauteng Province through its Department of E-Government and the City of Johannesburg have also provided significant support. The Precinct also houses the prestigious IBM Research’s Lab Africa – one of only 12 such facilities in the world. Website: www.tshimologong.joburg
School of Chemistry launches new AI research initiative for Africa
- Wits University
Africans should be the contributors, shapers and owners of the coming advances in artificial intelligence and machine learning, says Professor Zeblon Vilakazi.
TheMolecular Sciences Institute(MSI) at the University of the Witwatersrand (Wits) in Johannesburg, South Africa, in partnership with the Cirrus Initiative, today announced plans for a new artificial intelligence (AI) research operation in Africa.
Announcing the Cirrus Initiative during the2019 AI Expo Africain Cape Town,Professor Zeblon Vilakazi,Deputy Vice-Chancellor: Research and Postgraduate Affairs, said Wits is one of the leading institutions inmachine learninganddata scienceresearch in Africa, and that this collaboration will boost the University’s efforts as it envisions a step change in the research and application of AI in the region.
Hosted by the MSI in the WitsSchool of Chemistry, the newly formedCirrus Initiativewill focus on the analysis of research data in chemistry, with a view to collaborate with physics, technology and engineering projects using machine learning.
Advances in AI and its application in addressing the challenges facing Africa have the potential to drive innovation in academia and industry and shape future societies. There is a growing need for talent, infrastructure and funding to support such innovation and to fully realise the opportunities presented in our technology and data-driven world.
“To become competitive in this new wave of innovation fuelled by AI and the Fourth Industrial Revolution, and with the substantial accumulation of resources and investments in new technologies in North America, Europe and Asia, require efforts in southern Africa on a magnitude far greater than any previous endeavour spanning academia and industry,” says Vilakazi.
Cirrus aims to create a collaborative university and industry platform supporting an ecosystem that fosters innovation and entrepreneurialism. As the host university, Wits will lead the Cirrus Initiative’s cooperation efforts with universities, institutes, Centres of Excellence and research groups in Africa.
While Cirrus will initially focus on the research and application of AI in chemical, physical and biological systems, its capability will be extended to the benefit of other fields to foster the growth of a strong scientific ecosystem on the continent. Numerous direct and indirect employment opportunities for scientists and engineers will also be created.
“Combining Africa’s vibrant talent with the building of a globally competitive platform for leading scientific research and application will drive innovation and undoubtedly foster economic development in the region. In our pursuit of knowledge creation, it is also critical that Africans are the contributors, shapers and owners of the coming advances in artificial intelligence and machine learning,” says Vilakazi.
As part of the effort to foster collaboration, Cortex Group have entered into a cooperation agreement with the Cirrus Initiative to lead the establishment of Cirrus FOUNDRY Cape, an operation focused on developing start-ups and helping them move from ideation to commercial operation. Their team has been at the forefront of collaborative AI efforts in Africa and by working with Wits and Cirrus will be able to unlock even more opportunities.
The creation of a cooperation program: Supporting interdisciplinary cooperation spanning academia and industry around the world through its network, boosting the application of AI technologies and ensuring the transformative potential benefits for the region.
Adding State-of-art computing to the current research infrastructure: Supported by teams of hardware, software, machine learning and data engineers. It will bring together engineering teams, researchers, computing infrastructure and extensive scientific instrumentation to enable a step change in research efforts of academia and industry in the region.
Building Open Learning: Ensuring inclusive participation, the dissemination of knowledge and ideas and the development of the next generation of AI researchers.
The Cirrus FOUNDRY and Cirrus FOUNDRY Fund: TheCirrus FOUNDRYwill create a collaborative environment connecting start-ups to students, researchers, faculty, corporate partners and capital concerned with real world AI innovation. It will ensure that start-ups have the necessary resources, people and skills to better tackle the challenging problems across a range of industries and drive innovation toward significant impact on society. Importantly, the Cirrus FOUNDRY will specialise in fostering support for early stage innovations and in helping start-ups make the transition from science to real world application. Through theCirrus FOUNDRY Fund, funding provided to start-ups will ensure that they are not wholly dependent on outside capital and will increase the short-term success of the start-up by bridging the “Valley of Death” – the challenge of turning a start-up idea or scientific research into a large-scale commercial application.
The Cirrus Initiative will also initiate several research assistance programmes, including:
A Research to Communication programme
An Open Learning programme
A Residency programme
A PhD Internship programme
A Postdoctorate programme
An Assistantship programme
Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning at Wits
Wits University has anumber of highly skilledartificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML)researcherspiloting the growth ofthis field in Africa andhasthe only researchers on the continent to publish regularly in all major international AI, ML and roboticsconferences.
AI/ML and Data Science are twoof 15 areas of research excellenceat Wits. Initspursuit to create a strong research communitythat can find African solutions to AI challenges, Wits has several interdisciplinary collaborations in AI/ML education, research and innovation.
The first Deep Learning Indabain Africa was hosted at Wits in 2017, and has since attracted more than 1,000 of the most ambitious and skilled machine learning practitioners and researchers from across the continent.
TheannualFak’ugesi African Digital Innovation Festivaltakes place at Tshimologong andbrings together diverse digital and technology sectors to collaborate and share skills in digital media and technology innovation, including exploring AI/ML technologies.
AI and ML are two of the research areas of theWits Institute of Data Science (WIDS), aninterdisciplinary research and traininginstitute with a focus on innovation in data science and machine intelligence, directed byProfessor Turgay Celik.
Thought to be thefirst study to use machine learning to measure housing conditionsin sub-Saharan Africa, the innovative study was able to fill the data gaps and revealed that,whilehousing qualityhastransformed,the persistence of slum conditionscontinuestocompromise healthin the region.
The new Scilinx Research laboratory and Scilinx Studiodevelop bespoke business solutions by rethinkingthe operational process as a complex system, and applying machine learning as an adaptive analytical framework.
Mathematical Sciences Support is a research support unit with Interest Groups in High Performance Computing; Big Data; Computational Astrophysics; Robotics; Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning.
Wits also offers a wide range of honours, master’s and PhD programmes in e-Science, Big Data, Artificial Intelligence, Robotics, Digital Arts, and more.
Stay updated with the latest research news in AI/ML and technology/digital innovations at Wits University, by:
Do machines have moral agency, that is, can they make decisions based on right and wrong? Yes, in a functional sense they do, argued Fabio Tollon of Stellenbosch University’s Department of Philosophy.
Should hackers who break into computer systems of their own accord and expose weaknesses be paid for doing so? No, argued Yonnique Goliath, a strategist at Youth Employment Service completing her Masters degree on the subject at Wits.
Brazil does not have proper legislation to deal with the fake news spread during President Jair Bolsonaro’s 2018 electoral campaign, including political WhatsApp messages masterminded in Spain, lamented Adjunct Professor Nathalie Cadena of Brazil’s Federal University of Juiz de Fora.
Those were just some of the topics explored by 16 speakers from a total of 32 delegates who attended the 4IR: Philosophical, Ethical, Legal Dimensions conference at the TW Kambule Mathematical Sciences Building on West Campus from 3 – 5 September.
A special 2020 issue of the Springer journal, Philosophy & Technology, will feature selected papers from the conference. It will be guest edited by conference organiser, Helen Robertson of the Wits School of Computer Science and Applied Mathematics, who also presented a paper.
Professor Rod Alence, Head of the Department of International Relations at Wits, set the tone for how the outlandish becomes commonplace in industrial revolutions when he welcomed the delegates by speaking about watching Terminator 2 in Accra, Ghana in the early 1990s. The film features a cyborg who turns into molten metal but the part that drove the audience wild was when a young boy seemingly walks up to a wall and withdraws cash - they had never seen an ATM before.
The movies RoboCop, Dr Strangelove, The Island, Minority Report and Surrogates also popped up during the conference; in the world of 4IR what was sci-fi then, is closer to reality today.
As Karabo Maiyane, a lecturer at the Department of Philosophy at the University of Pretoria, said in his paper on lethal autonomous weapons: “As far as we know they have not been deployed - not that they have not been created".
Brent Mittelstadt, a Research Fellow and British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow in data ethics at the Oxford Internet Institute at Oxford University, and a member of the UK National Statistician’s Data Ethics Advisory Committee, presented the keynote address via a video link-up.
Titled: Data Ethics: From Principles to Practice, it showed how data has changed professions such as medicine. Mittelstadt said when he sees a doctor he expects the doctor to be "doing data entry and looking at the screen for most of the time’’.
He compared developing artificial intelligence with medicine as it is ‘’the most prominent example we have of attempting to go from high level principles down to practical recommendations’’.
But "will a principled approach to ethics actually work in the context of AI?" He believes not.
He said medicine promotes health and wellbeing which is what patients also want "so there is this fundamental alignment of common aims" which encourages trust.
"I don’t think we can say the same for AI,’’ he said, because it is often developed by institutions whose responsibilities are to shareholders, not users. "There is no real equivalent of the ‘patient’ in AI,’’ he said, so ‘’ethical decision-making in AI will often be adversarial rather than cooperative’’.
He presented a list of global initiatives addressing AI ethics – and scrolled down one screen image after another to reveal a total of 84, as at June 2019.
”Many countries are producing a national strategy because they see AI both as an opportunity and a risk," Mittelstadt said.
John Ostrowick, a director at SA’s Department of Justice and Constitutional Development but who spoke in his personal capacity, said the South African government is very aware of 4IR.
It has established an advisory commission which will create a report on what to do about 4IR and most departments are ‘’working on plans’’.
He produced stats from international strategy consulting firm Roland Berger which showed the likes of China, Britain and Germany each spending about 2b-euros on 4IR. In contrast, SA has spent only a few million rand, he said.
"In other words we haven’t exactly taken it seriously enough," said Ostrowick who feels the state is not showing awareness of 4IR threats such as bioengineering.
The future is innovation
- Wits University
"Wits and Tshimologong are the pioneers driving Gauteng to a modern economy in the new age of the digital revolution," said Premier David Makhuru.
The Gauteng Premier was leading a delegation of the provincial government who recently visited Wits University's Tshimologong Digital Innovation Hub and the IBM Research lab next door to see first-hand how this Precinct in Braamfontein is developing tech and digital skills, incubating start-ups and driving innovation.
Hosted by Professor Zeblon Vilakazi, Deputy Vice-Chancellor: Research and Postgraduate Affairs at Wits, and the founder and creater of the Tshimologong Precinct, Professor Barry Dwolatzky, Makhuru was accompanied by Gauteng MECs Nomantu Nkomo-Ralehoko (Finance and eGoverment) and Dr Kgosientso Ramokgopa (Economic Development, Environment and Agriculture).
Setswana for “new beginnings”, Tshimologong is Johannesburg's newest high-tech hubwhere the incubation of digital entrepreneurs, commercialisation of research and the development of high-level digital skills for students, working professionals and unemployed youth takes place.
The future is innovation
In his address, Makhuru said this is the first time he is visiting Tshimologong and he is very impressed "to see the results and outcomes of the vision that Professor Dwolatzky - the driving force behind the Tshimologong Precinct - has for Braamfontein, Johannesburg and Gauteng".
"The Provincial Government is working with Wits and others to build an innovation corridor that will stretch from Braamfontein to Auckland Park. Tshimologong is already doing great work in the development of skills for our future; and is a key contributor to the concentration of innovation in the province. As a central innovation corridor, the Precinct feeds into the collaborative vision we see for Gauteng’s digital economy," said Makhuru.
SA's Tech Village: A nerve centre for innovation and incubation
Joining the delegation, Professor Adam Habib, Vice-Chancellor and Principal of Wits, shared Wits' vision for Braamfontein, saying Tshimologong is where "we incubate new digital entrepreneurs, create new startups in fields such as fintech, hightech, socialtech, miningtech and more. Tshimologong is the place where new ideas are created and where, collectively, we find innovative solutions to the challenges facing our society".
The delegation also visited Tshimologong Makerspace where a group of intrepid inventors are hosted in the App Factory. The space seeks to promote and enable access to innovation through collaborative making, training, upskilling and experimentation/purposeful play (R&D - Research and Development).
Some of the practical engagements housed in the space include Fourth Industrial Revolution technologies such as 3D printing (prototyping & customisation), laser cutting, IoT (Internet of Things), electronics and robotics; Augmented Reality (AR) and Virtual Reality (VR); and design for digital fabrication.
Following the visit to Tshimologong, the delegation moved on to the IBM Research Lab next door to learn more about how Wits is collaborating with IBM on quantum computing research, big data, cloud computing and innovation in health care, digital urban ecosystems and astronomy.
This year, Wits University became the first African partner to join the IBM Q Networkand will be the gateway for academics across South Africa and the 15 universities who are part of theAfrican Research Universities Alliance (ARUA) to gain access to the IBM Q quantum cloud service.
“Having access to IBM Q is pivotal for Wits University’s cross-disciplinary research program and allows our researchers in quantum computing, artificial intelligence, and in the broad natural sciences, including in laser technology, quantum optics and molecular design, to leverage the next level of discovery research. It’s envisioned that the first results from this collaboration will be forthcoming in the next two years,” said Professor Zeblon Vilakazi.
"Far from being a leap of faith, investment in quantum technologies in South Africa is crucial if we want to leverage the next level of discovery research that can help us to address the country’s most intractable problems. Just as crucial is thedigital economic potential that quantum computing holds fortechnology start-ups in the hardware and software development fields. One of the most promising applications of quantum computing will be in thearea of chemistry. In the South African context, early interest in this field is inHIV drug delivery research." - Professor Zeblon Vilakazi
Read more about Wits' efforts in quantum computing.
Wits researcher wins international award for infection control innovation
- Wits University
Wits academic Michael Lucas took top honours at the International Conference on Prevention and Infection Control in Switzerland, 10-13 September 2019.
Lucas won the prestigious Prix Hubert Tuor Innovation Award for his Antimicrobial Coating Technology.
The technology, now in its fifth year of development, is a novel solution to address the problem of nosocomial infections. These infections, acquired during hospital stays, are a significant and persistent issue faced by hospitals across the world.
“Infection control is an ongoing challenge in hospitals. Surface contamination and subsequent microbial transmission are known contributors to this. My design for a self sanitizing surface coating serves to address this growing problem, and the results are very promising. These antimicrobial coatings can be applied to high contact surfaces where there is a risk of contamination, including medical facilities, food processing plants and public transport surfaces,” says Lucas.
Metal coated plastics are an emerging field of research and development with a wide range of applications. The distinguishing features of Lucas' research include the novelty of multi-step and multi-process additive manufacturing through the use of cold spray and polymer 3D printing. These manufacturing techniques offer design freedom and manufacturing versatility. This means that manufactured parts can be retrofitted into existing hospital surfaces.
The coatings are made up of various metals with known antimicrobial properties, including combinations of copper, silver and zinc. The uniqueness of Lucas' innovative way of depositing the coatings is a competitive advantage that Wits University is protecting through a patent.
“Research is a process of exploration and it's this aspect that appeals most to me. I enjoy problem solving and seeing the application of research,” says Lucas.
The most promising particle-embedded cold spray polymer metallised coatings were found to be effective self-sanitising surface coatings. Under simulated touch-contact conditions copper coatings on various polymer substrates, for example, repeatedly achieved complete microbial elimination within only a 15 minute contact period. These tests were conducted under laboratory conditions against a variety of dangerous pathogens that are found in hospital high contact surfaces including a multi-drug resistant Staph strain. Thus, the potential of these coatings for the mitigation of surface contact transmission of infections was confirmed.
Preliminary pilot studies validated this, using coated security access cards and a custom coated smartphone cover exposed to various healthcare associated environments within the University of Witwatersrand’s Medical School and adjacent Charlotte Maxeke Academic Hospital.
Commenting on receiving the Prix Hubert Tuor Innovation Award at the International Conference on Prevention and Infection Control for his Antimicrobial Coating Technology, he says: “This is a medical conference, so to bring in an engineering aspect set my research apart. Most of the other innovation-related research presented at the conference pertained to hand hygiene and related technology. Environmental contamination and particularly surface contamination were agreed to be of high importance. I believe that the preliminary results of an approach to contamination control present notable advantages, which set my research apart.”
Michael describes the process of participating in the conference as an incredible journey, from identifying the conference as uniquely relevant to his research, submitting an abstract and being accepted, to the material and finally presenting it.
“My late supervisor, Professor Ionel Botef, was the primary instigator for this opportunity. His belief in me and my research has instilled the confidence to embrace the challenge. Winning this award is the culmination of the past five years of technology development and I see it as a stepping stone onto future opportunities.
“The next steps include verifying the safety of the coatings for the intended application and to assess the coatings’ efficacy in real world hospital high contact surface environments. This would be the start of taking the technology to market,” says Michael, adding that he sees an opportunity to turn his technology into a viable startup business.
The development of the technology is ongoing, having started during Lucas' undergraduate research project and continuing into his doctoral studies. Together with the now late Professor Ionel Botef from the Schoo l of Mechanical, Industrial and Aeronautical Engineering, Lucas has worked on further developments with Professor Sandy van Vuuren in the Wits Pharmacy and Pharmacology department. Financial assistance has been provided by the DST-NRF Centre of Excellence in Strong Materials (CoE-SM) and SITA Information Networking Computing UK.
Michael graduated with a Bachelor of Science in Engineering (Mechanical Engineering) from WITS in 2016. Before graduating, he was asked to present his undergrad research into biomaterials via cold spray and 3D printed polymers at the 2015 Mechanical, Industrial and Aeronautical Engineering (MIA) annual valediction. He was subsequently awarded the best presentation in the Mechanical Engineering programme by the South African Institution of Mechanical Engineers (SAIMechE). Due to the novelty and sophistication of the develooment, Michael’s Master's in Engineering was upgraded to a PhD research study under the title: Antimicrobial surface coatings via cold spray and 3D printing technologies, which he is currently completing at WITS University.
Tumi Ngqondo, Innovation Support Manager at WITS Commercial Enterprise, which assists WITS’ innovators with fundraising, business case development and spinning out companies, says: "We are delighted for Michael and look forward to supporting him as he takes the next steps to finalise development and commercialise the technology."
Enabling the future by decoding the past
- Curiosity
The eighth issue of Wits University’s research magazine, Curios.ty is themed: #Code, and is available download or read online.
#Code refers to any systems, letters and symbols that have meaning, are representative and govern behaviour. Today it is also associated with computer coding, big data, artificial intelligence and machine learning.
In this issue Wits researchers explore not only these Fourth Industrial manifestations of code, but also our genetic code, cryptic codes in queer conversation, political speak and knitting, and interpreting meaning through words, animation, theatre, and graffiti.
We delve into data surveillance, the 21st Century ‘Big Brothers’ and privacy, and we take a gander at how to win the Lottery by leveraging the universal code of mathematics.
Highlights
Are we just walking data sources for the benefit of giant multinationals? [Page 8]
How knitting won a war [Page 18]
Gene editing: Designer babies could spell disaster for future generations [Page 24]
Gayle – A South African language (or code) of secrets [Page 36]
Data domination by Big Tech, such as GAFA (Google, Amazon, Facebook and Apple), has ominous implications for economies and privacy globally [Page 46]
How to win the lottery by leveraging the universal code of mathematics [Page 48]
About Curiosity
Curios.ty is a print and digital magazine that aims to make the research at Wits University accessible to multiple publics. Available on the Wits website here: http://www.wits.ac.za/curiosity/
Structured light promises path to faster, more secure communications
-
Quantum mechanics is embracing patterns of light to create an alphabet that can be leveraged to build a light-based quantum network.
Structured light is a fancy way to describe patterns or pictures of light, but deservedly so as it promises future communications that will be both faster and more secure.
Quantum mechanics has come a long way during the past 100 years but still has a long way to go. In AVS Quantum Science, from AIP Publishing, researchers from the University of Witwatersrand in South Africa review the progress being made in using structured light in quantum protocols to create a larger encoding alphabet, stronger security and better resistance to noise.
“What we really want is to do quantum mechanics with patterns of light,” said co-author Professor Andrew Forbes from the School of Physics at Wits University. “By this, we mean that light comes in a variety of patterns that can be made unique - like our faces.”
Since patterns of light can be distinguished from each other, they can be used as a form of alphabet. “The cool thing is that there are, in principle at least, an infinite set of patterns, so an infinite alphabet is available,” he said.
Traditionally, quantum protocols have been implemented with the polarisation of light, which has only two values - a two-level system with a maximum information capacity per photon of just 1 bit. But by using patterns of light as the alphabet, the information capacity is much higher. Also, its security is stronger, and the robustness to noise (such as background light fluctuations) is improved.
“Patterns of light are a route to what we term high-dimensional states,” Forbes said. “They are high dimensional because many patterns are involved in the quantum process. Unfortunately, the toolkit to manage these patterns is still underdeveloped and requires a lot of work.”
The quantum science community has made many recent noteworthy advances, both in the science and derived technologies. For example, entanglement swapping has now been demonstrated with spatial modes of light, a core ingredient in a quantum repeater, while the means to securely communicate between nodes is now possible through high-dimensional quantum key distribution protocols. Together they bring us a little bit closer to a fast and secure quantum network.
Similarly, the construction of exotic multi-party high-dimensional states for quantum computer has been realised, as has enhanced resolution in ghost imaging (produced by combining light from two light detectors). Yet it remains challenging to break beyond the ubiquitous two photons in two dimensions for full control of multiple photons entangled in high dimensions.
“We know how to create and detect photons entangled in patterns,” said Forbes. “But we don’t really have good control on getting them from one point to another, because they distort in the atmosphere and in optical fiber. And we don’t really know how to efficiently extract information from them. It requires too many measurements at the moment,” he added.
Forbes and his co-author, Isaac Nape helped pioneer the use of hybrid states - another big advance. Old textbook quantum mechanics was done with polarisation.
“It turns out that many protocols can be efficiently implemented with simpler tools by combining patterns with polarisation for the best of both worlds,” said Forbes. “Rather than two dimensions of patterns, hybrid states allow access to multidimensional states, for example, an infinite set of two-dimensional systems. This looks like a promising way forward to truly realize a quantum network based on patterns of light.”
The article, Quantum mechanics with patterns of light: Progress in high dimensional and multi-dimensional entanglement with structured light, authored by Forbes and Nape can be accessed at http://aip.scitation.org/doi/full/10.1116/1.5112027.
WitsQ to hold first Summer School
- Wits University
The WitsQ Quantum Computing Summer School takes place from 2 - 10 December at the Science Stadium.
Aimed at undergraduates, postgraduates, academics, researchers and members of industry who are interested in Quantum Computing, the Summer School will be an opportunity to produce and facilitate research that incorporates quantum computing.
In June, Wits became the first African partner on the IBM Q Network – a community of Fortune 500 companies, startups, academic institutions and research labs working with IBM to advance quantum computing and explore practical applications for business and science.
The Summer School has space for 300 attendees and is open to anyone who have the following prerequisites:
Good Mathematics: Complex Linear Algebra
Understanding of the properties of quantum mechanics: e.g. superposition, entanglement, interference
Some programming experience: Python is preferable
Attendees will be in introduced to quantum computing; to its theory as well as to:
Qiskit and IBM Quantum Computers
Basic Quantum Algorithms
Advanced Quantum Algorithms
Applications of Quantum Computing
Understanding the hardware of Quantum Computers
The school will run from 2 December - 10 December 2019 at the Wits Science Stadium, Braamfontein Campus West, Johannesburg.
Following the Summer School, IBM Q will be hosting an invite-only Qiskit Camp Africa in South Africa (11 – 14 December 2019) for 200 quantum researchers and computer scientists. Qiskit is a full-stack, open-source quantum software development kit to create and run quantum computing programs.
South Africa is one step closer to processed titanium alloys
- Michael Oluwatosin Bodunrin
Low-cost titanium alloys in South Africa could be used in non-aerospace sectors, such as car parts, medical devices, implants, jewellery and kitchen appliances.
Wits to host human capacity development workshop in big data and artificial intelligence
- Wits University
The two-day workshop will be part of the National Conference of the Centre of High Performance Computing.
The Wits Institute of Data Science (WIDS) and the Wits Institute for Collider Particle Physics (ICPP) have partnered to organise a workshop on Big Data and Artificial Intelligence.
The workshop will take place during the National Conference of the Centre for High Performance Computing (CHPC), to be held at the Birchwood Conference Centre, Kempton Park from 1 to 5 December. The conference will gather about 500 researchers, students and representatives from industry partners, in what has become one of the largest events of its kind in South Africa
The two-day workshop, which will make part of the conference, will include a few introductory lectures pertaining to Machine Learning and the handling of Artificial Intelligence with a large variety of data sets, including the Big Data problem. It will also include a hands-on session using standard tools, including the use of Python, TensorFlow and other open source packages.
The first day will be devoted to an introduction to Machine learning that will include notions and algorithms, such as linear and logistic regressions, gradient descent, support vector machines, decision trees, boosting and clustering. Lectures will be followed by a hands-on session with exercises in text analysis, image classification and recognition.
The second day will build on the material covered during the first day, where the Big Data problem will be defined. Lectures will cover the symbiosis between Big Data and Artificial Intelligence driven by Big Sciences. The session will cover practical problems in anomaly detection.
WIDS contributes to running of the DSI-NICIS National e-Science Postgraduate Teaching and Training Platform (NEPTTP) which is a multi-institutional platform. The NEPTTP aims to develop qualifications, curricula and pedagogic interventions to advance training of postgraduate students across disciplines in e-Science.
The ICPP is a member of the South Africa – CERN program, funded by the DSI and hosted by the NRF’s iThemba LABS. The SA-CERN program facilitates knowledge and technology transfer in High-Tech, Big Data and Artificial Intelligence to South Africa from the European laboratory, CERN.
Lectures and discussions will be led by Professors Turgay Celik, Deepak Kar, Bruce Mellado and Terrence Van Zyl from Wits University, who will be assisted by Dr Xifeng Ruan and other researchers.
“Meeting the challenges of the fourth industrial revolution requires collaboration across disciplines. This includes mathematicians, computer scientists, statisticians and physicists,” says Dr Happy Sithole, Director, Centre for High Performance Computing and Center Manager, National Integrated Cyber-Infrastructure at CSIR-NICIS
“Big Sciences play a pivotal role in the dissemination of knowledge and provides a platform for skill and human capacity development in areas that are invaluable to a modern economy,” says Bruce Mellado, the Director of the ICPP.
“Data Science and Artificial Intelligence are amongst the major foundational blocks of the nation’s 4IR initiative. NEPTTP and WIDS continuously make significant contributions towards forming and strengthening those foundational blocks,” says Turgay Celik, the Director of the NEPTTP and the WIDS.
More information about the conference and how to register can be found here.
Enabling the future by decoding the past
- Curiosity
The eighth issue of Wits University’s research magazine, Curios.ty is themed: #Code, and is available download or read online.
#Code refers to any systems, letters and symbols that have meaning, are representative and govern behaviour. Today it is also associated with computer coding, big data, artificial intelligence and machine learning.
In this issue Wits researchers explore not only these Fourth Industrial manifestations of code, but also our genetic code, cryptic codes in queer conversation, political speak and knitting, and interpreting meaning through words, animation, theatre, and graffiti.
We delve into data surveillance, the 21st Century ‘Big Brothers’ and privacy, and we take a gander at how to win the Lottery by leveraging the universal code of mathematics.
Highlights
Are we just walking data sources for the benefit of giant multinationals? [Page 8]
How knitting won a war [Page 18]
Gene editing: Designer babies could spell disaster for future generations [Page 24]
Gayle – A South African language (or code) of secrets [Page 36]
Data domination by Big Tech, such as GAFA (Google, Amazon, Facebook and Apple), has ominous implications for economies and privacy globally [Page 46]
How to win the lottery by leveraging the universal code of mathematics [Page 48]
About Curiosity
Curios.ty is a print and digital magazine that aims to make the research at Wits University accessible to multiple publics. Available on the Wits website here: http://www.wits.ac.za/curiosity/
EDITORIAL: It is only through understanding yesterday that we can shape today and create tomorrow.
Anyone who knows me will know that I am a physicist with a keen interest in history and the history of technological developments in particular. I am a firm believer that we learn from the past to build our collective futures. As Wits approaches its 100th anniversary, the timing is appropriate to decode some of the University’s innovations that open up endless possibilities in the 21st Century.
Take our advances in moving from binary to quantum computing as an example. In the 1960s, Wits was the first university to host an IBM mainframe computer in Africa (p. 50). Today,Wits is the first African partner on the IBM Q Network, enabling academics across Africa to enter the quantum computing universe. Quantum computing is exponentially faster than classical computing and promises to solve problems – from chemical simulations to reducing the time for drug discovery.
This issue ofCurios.ty, themedCODE, explores how we decipher and create meaning out of systems, letters and symbols. For those caught in the hype of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, CODE is associated with computer coding, big data, artificial intelligence, and machine learning – all areas in which Wits leads currently. Read aboutWits’ 4IR effortson pages 6, 8 and 12. And yes, it’s good for your kids to learn to code (p. 16).
This issue also explores CODE-related climate change modelling (p. 30), decoding knowledge and languages (pages 14 and 42), mathematics as a universal code (p. 34), decoding political texts (p. 43), data dominance (p. 46), and representation in the arts (pages 38 and 40). We delve into issues around data privacy, ethics, governance and access in a hyper-connected world (pages 8 and 24). Transdisciplinary and multidisciplinary research approaches are evident in many of these stories.
Wits is renowned for its world-firsts such asbouncing the first radar of Northcliff Hill after World War 2began, but today I found the story on how knitting won the war through Morse code particularly intriguing (p. 18). The first medical school in Johannesburg opened its doors in 1919 (three years before Wits was inaugurated) and amongst its eminent alumni isNobel Laureate Sydney Brenner, recognised for his work on genetic codes and molecular biology. At Wits today, scientists build on this legacy through advances in precision medicine (p. 24) and revolutionising the treatment of haemophilia, a genetic blood disorder (p. 26).
Read more in theeighth issue, themed: #Codehowour researchers are exploring not only the Fourth Industrial Revolution manifestations of code, such as big data, artificial intelligence and machine learning, but also our genetic code, cryptic codes in queer conversation, political speak and knitting, and interpreting meaning through words, animation, theatre, and graffiti. We delve into data surveillance, the 21st Century ‘Big Brothers’ and privacy, and we take a gander at how to win the Lottery by leveraging the universal code of mathematics.
Surfing the data tsunami tomorrow
- Shaun Smillie
Humankind is facing an ever-growing data tsunami that could swamp us as a species – or provide us with unheard of opportunities.
We have entered an age where information is being released at increasing rates. Ninety percent of all data generated in the history of humankind were produced in just the last two years. Mining and analysing this data will require new technologies and skill sets, and this is where universities like Wits hope to play a role. With new technologies come the promise of jobs, medical breakthroughs, and scientific discoveries. And it is all so new.
"Data analysis and data science were not fields of study 15 years ago, so some of the jobs to be created by this technology do not exist," explains ProfessorZeblonVilakazi, Deputy Vice-Chancellor for Research and Postgraduate Affairs at Wits. "So the future of data is about the future of jobs."
There have already been projects where South African scientists have had to tackle big data. The Square Kilometre Array (SKA) in the Karoo is now generating more data than the Large Hadron Collider in Geneva. And the SKA is still in its infancy and promises to spew out even more data in the decades to come. “So there has to be a future where we need to be thinking how we manage this data,” saysVilakazi.
As a species, humans are not neurologically wired to process all this information.AdamPantanowitz, a biomedical engineer in the WitsSchool of Electrical and Information Engineering, says, “Dealing with data in the future is going to be a challenge and an opportunity, and one of the main ways we are going to tackle this is through machine learning and artificial intelligence [AI].”
Both these technologies will enable us to process and make sense of vast amounts of data. Wits has joined several projects across the continent to deal with the data management challenge. In 2019,Wits became the first African partner on the IBM Quantum Computing (IBM Q) Network, which will include 15 African Research Universities Alliance (ARUA) partners. This network will enable researchers to use quantum computing and machine learning in fields such as cosmology, molecular biology and HIV drug research.
Wits University is also afounding member of the 4IRSA, which aims to help South Africa respond to the challenges of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, through research. By harnessing data and utilising it to its full potential,Pantanowitzbelieves the spin-offs will be immense.
“A huge belief I have is that the most successful cities, nations and continents of the future will be those that will be able to sense their environment and create feedback loops that act rapidly on that environment,” he says. “We would be able to make better decisions from a resourcing and governance perspective.”
The African advantage
Although it may appear that Africa – with its lack of infrastructure and digital divide – is ill prepared for such a future, this might be to the advantage of the continent, believesVilakazi.
Participation has grown remarkably over the last couple of years, but being able to leapfrog existing technology means having something with which to replace it. In the WitsSchool of Physics, scientists are working on something that could one day transport huge packets of data.
“We have trialled it in the laboratory and it all works. Now we have a local company that has ceded their IP [intellectual property] to us and we plan to use this IP as a platform to build a practical device,” says Forbes. “We are hoping in the next few years that we would have taken the lab demonstration through to a device that can then be commercialised.”
With the ever-increasing utilisation of data come issues of ethical use. Already there are allegations of elections being swung through the information gleaned from millions of social media accounts.
“We have been looking at what should be happening with AI in Africa. There are a lot of questions on what kind of expectations people should have, what should be taken into consideration when these systems are built,” he says.
Another issue is that of culture. “It is important to get more involvement from society, and for people who think about societal norms and values and ethics to get involved in these conversations, otherwise they are just kind of implicitly dealt with by whoever designed the system,” he says.
Ultimately, it is going to come down to just how we are going to deal with that data tsunami and if we learn to surf that wave to a brighter future.
Read more in theeighth issue, themed: #Codehowour researchers are exploring not only the Fourth Industrial Revolution manifestations of code, such as big data, artificial intelligence and machine learning, but also our genetic code, cryptic codes in queer conversation, political speak and knitting, and interpreting meaning through words, animation, theatre, and graffiti. We delve into data surveillance, the 21st Century ‘Big Brothers’ and privacy, and we take a gander at how to win the Lottery by leveraging the universal code of mathematics.
Fair trade: Your soul for data?
- Retha Langa
In an increasingly data-driven world, are we just walking data sources for the benefit of giant multinational corporations?
Every single minute, there are 3.8 million search queries on Google; 4.5 million videos watched on YouTube; almost $1 million spent online; 41.6 million messages sent via WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger – and these are a fraction of the interactions that currently happen online.
As we go about our daily lives – sharing our personal experiences on social media, asking Siri to set our alarms, and counting how many steps we walk on our wearables – we are essentially becoming walking data points, where our information is collected and analysed to predict behaviour. Where will it end?
Wits Biomedical engineers have already connected a human brain to the internet in real time. ThisBrainternetprojectessentially turned the brain into an Internet of Things node on the World Wide Web.
“Do we really need to have our physical bodies to experience life, or do we only need to have our own brain?” asksCelik. “We will be seeing the systems creating those virtual environments to give humans an experience of nature. You want to go and see theosean, but do you really need to physically go there? Can I stimulate a part of my brain to give me that experience?”
Android rights and the Big Other
Dr Christopher Wareham, Senior Lecturer in theSteve Biko Centre for Bioethicsat Witsargues that we need to think about the implications of such technological developments from the perspective of artificial agents. These “digital beings” will potentially have lives – and rights – of their own.
“Traditionally the focus on this question is very much on the other side of the issue: How are we going to stop them from harming us? There is very little work that looks at it from theother side. How are we going to prevent humans from harming this being, experimenting on it? Should there be laws that protect this type of being?”
The developments in machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI) already significantly affect how we live our lives today. American academic ShoshanaZuboffcoined the term ‘surveillance capitalism’ in 2014. Surveillance capitalism depends on “the global architecture of computer mediation… [which] produces a distributed and largely uncontested new expression of power”.Zuboffchristens this the “Big Other”. Currently, the “Big Other” includes Facebook, Google, Microsoft and Amazon.
Surveillance capitalism
Writing inThe Guardian,Zuboffexplains, “The logic of surveillance capitalism begins with unilaterally claiming the private human experience as free raw material for production and sales. These experiences are translated into behavioural data. Some of this data may be applied to product or service improvements, and the rest is valued for its predictive power. These flows of predictive data are fed into computational products that predict human behaviour.”
Surveillance capitalism is a “real issue”, saysProfessor Brian Armstrong,Chair in Digital Businessat theWits Business School. “In my view, a very big concern is around the whole idea of social scoring.” This refers to the practice of developing a social rating system to establish if a person is a fit and proper member of society, in terms of their “social score”.
In China, private companies are already operating social credit systems, as is local government in pilot projects. The plan is to develop a nationwide system that scores the individual’s behaviour, including giving citizens a score and adding rewards and penalties for specific actions. For example, if you donate to charity, you score points but you lose points for traffic violations.
But one need not look as far as China for Big Brother-style surveillance. In Johannesburg, thousands of surveillance cameras already monitor motorists and pedestrians 24/7. In June, the Financial Mail reported thatVumacam– a subsidiary of internet fibre company,Vumatel– had installed more than 1 200 surveillance cameras to combat crime. By 2020, the number of cameras will increase to over 10 000.
Local security companies can access theVumacamlive feed and, as the artificial intelligence system learns what a typical day in a neighbourhood looks like, it will flag behaviour that is out of the ordinary for that area.Dr Helen Robertson, who lectures Data Privacy and Ethics in theSchool of Computer Science and Applied Mathematics, refers to the battle between our right to safety and our right to privacy that such forms of surveillance bring to the fore.
“It strikes me as plausible that we think our claims to safety have increased weight in contrast with our claims to privacy. If the relevant algorithms are going to identify abnormalities in the footage, we need to keep in mind how good these algorithms are or aren’t.”
Safety vs. privacy
Our views on privacy have not only been impacted by safety concerns. The pervasiveness of social media has also played a role. Robertson says that the average person is willing to share a lot more about their private lives today compared to a few decades ago. These evolving views are not necessarily problematic.“It might simply be a matter of one society’s convention in contrast with another society’s convention, and how they tend to feel with regard to how much they are willing to share.”
Celikbelieves that privacy will become personalised, with individuals being able to define how much privacy they want for themselves.
Our autonomy is another area influenced by the online world. Wareham argues that a lot of micro-targeted advertising and political messaging is designed specifically to degrade our autonomy. “If you do a Google search now, you’re not going to get an unbiased sample of information … you’re going to get information that Google has catered for you to get ... these sorts of micro-targeting … want to trigger you through nudges to behave in certain non-rational ways.”
The question then becomes about who decides what you read, listen to, or watch, and who makes the decisions on what content is “appropriate” for a specific digital platform, and what is not.
Towards tech that teaches
Data-driven advancements are, however, not all doom and gloom. “Data in itself is not agnostically good or bad, but it is what we do with it. It can be abused, or it can be used for very positive purposes,” argues Armstrong, adding that education is one area in which South Africa could benefit immensely.
“If we were able to use learning management systems more efficiently to see how students are learning, to see what material they are struggling with … to learn what teaching styles work best, we can individualise the learning experience.”
In China, AI-enabled education has already blossomed with tens of millions of students using some form of AI to learn. This includes tutoring platforms where algorithms curate lessons and adapt the curriculum based on an individual’s understanding of specific concepts, reports MIT Technology Review.
Protecting personal data
Staggering amounts of data are generated daily, but who owns all this data? Robertson points out that there is currently no consensus among ethicists about this thorny issue.
Some argue that the data subject owns the data. Others say that the data processor who uses his/her resources to create and analyse a dataset has ownership rights, while someargue that in certain cases, such as medical research that benefits society, the public’s need for medical treatment and breakthroughs mean that data belong to the public.
These different claims to ownership “add a lot of ethical greyness”, says Robertson. “The ownership of data is particularly difficult. It is an object that can be traded, but at the same time, it has a reference to an individual, something like other artefacts do, such as photographs. The rights certainly seem to pull in different directions.”
In the near future, South Africans will have considerable legal power regarding the protection of their data. The Protection of Personal Information Act (POPIA) aims to protect the right to privacy, while enabling the social and economic benefits that result from the free flow of information. POPIA stipulates conditions under which personal information must be processed lawfully, although there are exceptions.
These conditions include that personal information “must be collected for a specific, explicitly defined and lawful purpose”. Further processing of personal information can only take place if it is in line with the purpose for which it was originally collected. Most sections of the Act have not yet commenced. The announcement of a commencement date is expected before the end of 2019, after which companies will have one year to comply.
VerineEtsebeth, a Senior Lecturer in theWits School of Lawwho specialises in data protection and information security law, says the POPI Act is long overdue. “The sooner it is in practice, the sooner it can come before our courts and we can have precedents set,” saysEtsebeth. “It is going to be survival of the fittest. If your competitor complies and you don’t, you won’t be able to retain your customers. Companies will realise just how much their reputations are worth.”
Digital disempowerment
Despite the excitement over technology’s potential to solve some of our most complex problems, many South Africans are still excluded from these advances. Only 40% of Africa’s population has access to the internet compared to 61% for the rest of the world. In South Africa, internet penetration currently sits at 56%.
“In today’s world, digital disempowerment is one of the most profound forms of disempowerment,” says Armstrong. “Digital disempowerment comes in three levels. The first is do you have access, secondly do you use it, and thirdly are you engaged, transacting and impacted? In South Africa, you don’t have access if the networks don’t cover where you are, or if you can’t afford the mobile device … or if you can’t afford the price of data. In all of those areas we have a challenge.”
Read more in the eighth issue, themed: #Code how our researchers are exploring not only the Fourth Industrial Revolution manifestations of code, such as big data, artificial intelligence and machine learning, but also our genetic code, cryptic codes in queer conversation, political speak and knitting, and interpreting meaning through words, animation, theatre, and graffiti. We delve into data surveillance, the 21st Century ‘Big Brothers’ and privacy, and we take a gander at how to win the Lottery by leveraging the universal code of mathematics.
Plugging digital leaks
- Tamsin Oxford
Data are gathering in pools and lakes. As we dip our toes into these murky waters, we see a sign that says, ‘Here be dragons…’
The student standing in the corner tapping updates onto her Instagram profile. The tutor sending a quick WhatsApp to his wife, ‘Sorry, I’m going to be late’. The accountant uploading documents to the company intranet. Marketing releasing the monthly newsletters. Each individual adding another byte to the data lakes pooling in virtual space, filled with structured and semi-structured data that teases insight and value but never quite seems to deliver.
Oceans of info
This data is supposedly capable of helping decision makers gain granular insight into their business yet the nature of data is constantly changing in both how it is captured, why it is analysed, and what value it can deliver. It’s an evolution from hastily scribbled notes about the good, the bad and the organisational ugly into digital archives that have swollen with information that has no context or relevance and yet whisper about possibility.
“The problem is that data hasn’t been strategically recorded in such a way as to deliver a specific economic value, or considered in light of ‘If we do X with the data, then we will achieve Y’. Instead we now have tons of data and no clear vision or idea on what to do with it or how to get it to share its most valuable secrets.”
Potential in the pool
Khoza teamed up with 10 other researchers to developScilinxLaboratory andScilinxResearchwith the goal of advancing the operational capabilities of organisations through a hybrid structure that targets the generation and application of value-creating research insights.In short, brilliant minds applying themselves to the data conundrum, working to pull out its potential from the mess that relentless data collection has left behind. The goal is to create intelligent networks that define the next generation of analytics and how data relationships are interpreted across multiple data platforms and sources.
At the peak of the big data hype, people were trotting in with fancy algorithms and mathematical constructs supposedly designed to whisk out insights from within these lakes of data. Yet what they saw, what they found, didn’t make much sense. The problem wasn’t the data but the questions that people were asking. Pipelines built to carry data insights into stressed executive offices literally leaked insights from every conduit but they lackedrelevance. Where was the insight that would help the business make a decision that would positively impact bottom line or customer engagement?
Data conundrum
“Businesses were told that if they built these data centres and gained access to all this computational capacity that they could extract economic value from this data,” says Khoza.
“But when it came time to do this extraction, it couldn’t be done. The off-the-shelf solutions were incapable of dealing with the heterogeneity [differences] of the data. These collections of data across email, social media, and operations, that were different dependent on the organisation, were impossible to unify into single solutions. You cannot interpret the data-powered insights from a supply chain company against one that operates in financial services.”
What happened next? Companies started to invest into the potential abilities of emergent technologies such as machine learning (ML) and artificial intelligence (AI) – technologies capable of deep diving into the data and scouring the murky depths for even the tiniest grain of relevant insight. These technologies are essentially the pen needed to connect digital dots. Yet they too slip at one hurdle – context. Is the data generated for the marketing department being interpreted by a data scientist who understands what marketing needs?
Science-link solutions
“Scilinxcombines machine learning and science to find out what is happening,” saysTresiaHoltzhausen, a member of theScilinxResearch team and a lecturer at Nelson Mandela University. “Everything around you is a system and these systems can be represented by networks and managed by ML and AI. We examine where we can improve and optimise data interpretation, using techniques that are not embedded in traditional mathematics but that emphasise the connection to maths and network science, to find out where to make the most improvement and to see what’s happening underneath the waters of big data.”
There is so much information. Vast quantities of data with no context, no point of reference, all gathered relentlessly from the moment that someone said, ‘Gosh, maybe this could be useful one day.’
Through theScilinixResearch work, the team has developed a prototype that can pull data from multiple sources such as twitter, PDF documents, and emails, and build a picture of what is going on.
“We are taking particular datasets and applying a range of ML techniques, some we have developed from scratch, and seeing the results we get, then working out a systematic approach to integrate them,” says Khoza. “We draw a narrative across varied datasets and unlock the relationships hidden within.”
This research combines the information to create analysis that allows the business to make systematic and relevant decisions. It helps the organisation to pull together data from multiple sources and spaces to create a coherent picture. From the broken cash machine (backend alerts) to the outraged consumer (tweets of fury) the data is collated with context and relevance to present an outline of the real business situation.
“Nobody has the right answer – we are all partially right and partially wrong,” concludes Khoza. “If, together, we can erase our biases and create a more accurate representation, then the data have inordinate value. Data allow us to understand why things happen, what people do, and why things have gone wrong. It allows for the business to change and improve, to adapt to what the market wants. As we become increasingly adept at adding context to the data and asking it the right questions, the more we will see how everything is connected.”
The data mess is tidied up not with a plug in a panic, but by dropping a stone into a lake and watching the ripples as they expand outwards and influence markets, businesses, individuals and insights. There, within those myriad mixes of sentiment and data lay the answers the business seeks, not trapped in numbers but revealed in relationships.
Read more in theeighth issue, themed: #Codehowour researchers are exploring not only the Fourth Industrial Revolution manifestations of code, such as big data, artificial intelligence and machine learning, but also our genetic code, cryptic codes in queer conversation, political speak and knitting, and interpreting meaning through words, animation, theatre, and graffiti. We delve into data surveillance, the 21st Century ‘Big Brothers’ and privacy, and we take a gander at how to win the Lottery by leveraging the universal code of mathematics.
Do kids need to code?
- Ufrieda Ho
Preparing for a digital revolution is as much about getting the basics right as it is looking to the future.
Artificial intelligence (AI), robotics and greater automation is on the horizon. But, says Mitchell Cox, a Lecturer in the School of Electrical and Information Engineering at Wits, the dreams of AI and the 4IR are not the things to worry about, if we lay the foundation of teaching and learning that builds the critical skills of problem solving, reasoning and logic.
Reading, writing, reasoning?
Back to basics, he says, can start with setting the foundation of maths skills at a primary school level. It’s the first building block of computer programming or “coding”, Cox says.
Maths presents a way to break down complex problems into components, allowing us to organise our thoughts and processes to allow solutions to be constructed – it’s a thought process at the heart of coding, which in turn is at the heart of making computers do what we want them to do for us.
Programming is not likely to become obsolete in the near future, but it will certainly evolve and become more sophisticated, as the relationship between people and machines evolves and become more sophisticated.
“Programming is never going away; programming gives the instructions to computers to perform more of the mundane, routine tasks. Automation frees people up to do more creative things, solve other problems or even become more sophisticated programmers,” he says.
Coding for communication
Cox also believes that basic proficiency with code is a useful skill for everyone to have, regardless of age or discipline, especially in an era of hyper-customisation or personalisation of devices and apps. It’s the difference, he says, between using more of the functionality of an Excel spreadsheet or getting better results from a Google search. He calls it “speaking Google” fluently.
“Speaking” to computers is one element of building skills for the future. The other is better communication. Cox says that communication allows for better collaboration across disciplines and that the ability to factor in different perspectives allows creativity to flourish.
“It’s why we teach in a way that’s that not about giving students all the answers or all the ways to find answers. Allowing them to figure out things for themselves, to follow their own leads, teaches them adaptability and resourcefulness, which are the skills they will need to survive,” he says.
Empowering humans
Preparing the next generation at foundation phase level are the likes of school teacher Dorian Love. He teaches coding at a private all-girls school in Johannesburg and believes coding skills recalibrate the power balance between people and computers in human beings’ favour.
“For me it is about finding the most humanising approach so humans determine how machines serve us,” he says. Love completed his Master’s at Wits University researching the role of knowledge in Information Communications and Technology (ICT) integration at his school, through the principles ofLegitimation Code Theory(LCT – a sophisticated framework for exploring practices in terms of their organising principles or ‘legitimation codes’).
Love says it’s as much about making all teachers less afraid of technology as it is about convincing girls to become interested in coding. Demystifying coding and showing its real life implications can help close the gender gap that still exists in the world of tech.
“I tell the girls that men still dominate when it comes to things like developing computer games and, because men and women experience colour differently, men get to decide on the colours, even in games. It’s one way to get them [girls] thinking about why having coding skills can mean women have a greater say in the world,” he says.
“It’s a bit like you may never know what’s going on inside your TV that makes it work, but you want to know how to use the remote so you can get to the channel that you want,” she says. Williams adds that the current panic – about the digital divide and people who don’t code falling through the cracks – is not productive.
“We need to create a way of thinking that allows people to use technology as an enabler. We need to help children find their unique value and to think like entrepreneurs in using this unique value, together with technology. For that, we all need to be continuous learners, be agile and be attuned to the world around us – we should be connecting more across the continent right now for digital innovation.”
It means there’s work to be done in the present and opportunities in the moment that need to be seized so that our digital future is to be one that holds more potential for more of us.
Says Williams: “While there will be job losses in digital transformation, new unknown industries will be birthed giving rise to new forms of employment. We need to focus on developing adaptable skills, because technology will keep becoming obsolete. Coding as a language needs to penetrate the ranks of the education system so we bridge the ever increasing digital divide that low-income communities are not accessing.”
Read more in theeighth issue, themed: #Codehowour researchers are exploring not only the Fourth Industrial Revolution manifestations of code, such as big data, artificial intelligence and machine learning, but also our genetic code, cryptic codes in queer conversation, political speak and knitting, and interpreting meaning through words, animation, theatre, and graffiti. We delve into data surveillance, the 21st Century ‘Big Brothers’ and privacy, and we take a gander at how to win the Lottery by leveraging the universal code of mathematics.
How knitting won the war?
- Stacey Rozen
Craftivists have been savvy cryptographers for aeons longer than any computing geek.
An undercover operative dodging adversaries on a secret assignment makes for a gripping spy novel. Yet, this intriguing yarn about codes and craftivism is a real-life story. During World War II, a secret agent, perceived to be an innocent grandmother, was stealthily observing while clicking her knitting needles.
Granny’s stereotypical feminine façade hid encoded espionage messages knitted into fabric. The Belgian resistance had recruited her to record the type and time of trains passing her kitchen window overlooking the railyard.
Granny was a learned artisan with the technical prowess to transform stitch alphabets and patterned configurations into data for intelligence gathering – hidden to the uninformed eye yet decipherable to those privy to steganography [the technique of hiding secret data within an ordinary, non-secret, file or message].
The Office of Censorship banned the postage of knit and crochet patterns abroad, suspecting they held coded classified communications. Yet, it was the knitted garments themselves encoded that the censors never spotted.
Code name: Paulette
British spy and proficient knitter, Phyllis Latour Doyle, parachuted into Normandy under the code name Paulette. No ordinary coder, Paulette had handicraft skills she inherited from generations of knitters in her family that resulted in her becoming a brave craftivist with the ability to code in dangerous contexts. She knitted encoded information into scarves and beanies while riding a bicycle through enemy territory. Seventy years later, the 93-year-old heroine received the Legion ofHonourin recognition of her courage in assisting the Allied forces. James Bond is an amateur sleuth in comparison. Perhaps he should take up knitting …
Charles Dickens was inspired by knitting codes to create the fictional character, Madame Thérèse Defarge inA Tale of Two Cities. As atricoteuse, Madame Defarge encoded the name of the beheaded in her knitting as the guillotine fell at public executions during the French Revolution. A gory story captured through the hands of a craftivist.
Even though the term craftivism was only coined by sociologist Betsy Greer in 2003, brave women have been craftivists for centuries. The earliest woven fabric, created using a technique callednalebinding, was found at Dura-Europos archaeological digs and dates back to 265AD.
Knit-as-code
Computer code is a descendant of knit and crochet code. The analogue code of threadedfibreand the digital code of Internetfibreco-create. Similar to the 0s and 1s of binary computerese, there are two stitches in knitting: knit and purl. An index variable with incremented and decremented operations echoes a knitted row with increased and decreased stitches. Knit and crochet patterns are like computerprogrammes: input a thread of yarn and output a sweater.
Morse Code knitters use a single purl stitch for a dot and three in a row for a dash creating short and long coded signals. The compiler is the craftivist.Knit-as-codeis being formally researched by Dr Elisabetta Matsumoto in her physics lab at Georgia Tech. She investigates yarn as a programmable material with stitchpatterns more complex than the ones and zeroes of binary.
Granny’s knitted espionage secrets were mathematical topologies of slipknots, which makes a grandmotherly Elder a highly qualified tutor at Knit to Code, anorganisationusing knitting as a teaching simulator for computer coding. Both media use the same logic: Learning to knit assists in learning to code. So, contrary to popular belief, Granny is actually on par with her millennial granddaughter’s generation of computerfundis[experts].
The preservation of traditional handicraft skills for craftivism continues today. Susan Hewes is an extreme handcrafter with two Guinness World Records: the first for knitting the longest scarf and the second for crocheting the longest chain… both whilst running marathons! That’s an incredible feat in coding-while-multitasking and raising money for Alzheimer’s research.
Yarns the tellers of us
Another layer of code allows handicrafts to carry personal and collective narratives embodied with thought and emotion. The suffragettes, protesting for women’s right to vote, hadcolourcodes for their embroidery threads – purple for dignity, white for purity and green for hope. FromPussyhats, handcrafted to raise awareness about women's issues in the USA, to protest banners handcrafted by Story Scarves to stop gender-based violence in Soweto, craftivism artefacts hold coded clues inciting mindful dialogue in the social fabric of our lives, globally.
Some of these stitched stories are invisibly submerged awaiting decoding. The coded fabric’s significance is in its potential to make meaning. Human beings have an innate ability to decipher these meaningful codes. Craftivism is indelibly shaped by code that make our yarns the tellers of us.
StaceyRozenis a story-weaver, craftivist, creative arts practitioner and interdisciplinary designer. She will graduate with an MA from Wits in December 2019. Her dissertation focusses on craftivism and the use of handicrafts to inspire social change. She is currently working on a series entitledOur Yarns are the Tellers of Us, which delves into the synergy between analogue and digital craftivism for personal and collective narratives. She was director ofStory Scarves, a craftivism project for young women in Soweto.
Read more in theeighth issue, themed: #Codehowour researchers are exploring not only the Fourth Industrial Revolution manifestations of code, such as big data, artificial intelligence and machine learning, but also our genetic code, cryptic codes in queer conversation, political speak and knitting, and interpreting meaning through words, animation, theatre, and graffiti. We delve into data surveillance, the 21st Century ‘Big Brothers’ and privacy, and we take a gander at how to win the Lottery by leveraging the universal code of mathematics.
Editing disease in South Africa
- Beth Amato
Gene therapy – there is a long road ahead to mainstream techniques and ensure that the technology is cost-effective.
Consider the following scenario: a young South African woman, whose mother developed breast cancer, wants to have a baby. But because breast cancer is often hereditary, the young woman gets tested for the pathogenic BRCA1 gene, a mutation that causes breast cancer. Her result is positive so the woman decides to have a baby via in vitro fertilisation (IVF) – a more precise way to control what the baby inherits.
After undergoing the process, a few embryos are created. Let’s imagine the male embryos aren’t viable, and that two female embryos are healthy. However, both female embryos test positive for the pathogenic BRCA1 gene. How does one eliminate the chances of developing breast cancer? One way is to edit the genome of the embryo.
Ethical by design
Human genomes comprise the entire set of genes within an individual and encode a series of messages within the DNA sequence. A scientist, with molecular scissors, could chop and change the sequence to alter the message it relays. If this is done with this embryo, it may grow into a woman free from breast cancer and its consequences.
Germline editing – the process of changing the genetic code of an embryo – is no longer relegated to the pages of a 1970s science fiction novel. In 2017, a Chinese scientist, HeJankui, used genome-editing technology, CRISPR-Cas9, to produce twin girls (through IVF) that were naturally immunised against HIV.Jankuicrippled the production of the protein CCR5, which HIV uses to drive an infection.
Germline editing has been widely criticised by scientists, including US scientist JenniferDoudna, who helped develop the CRISPR-Cas9 gene editing technique. Molecular scientists and ethicists at Wits University are wholly against germ cell editing, and the misuse of powerful gene editing technology.
Professor AmesDhai, Director of theSteve Biko Centre for Bioethics, says that the making of the so-called designer CRISPR babies could spell disaster for future generations and, indeed, this experimentation has been banned in many countries. “We don’t have enough information about the effects of germ cell gene editing. If you chop something out, we need to know what effect that has on other systems in the body,” saysDhai.
Antidotes for Africa
The use of CRISPR-Cas9 and other gene editing technology is powerful, however, if used to recode somatic cells – these being any cell in the body that are not gametes (sperm or egg), germ cells (cells that go on to become gametes), or stem cells. Dr Stuart Ali, director ofPrecision Medicine for Africa, says somatic cell gene editing is particularly useful in targeting viral and bacterial infections, and doesn’t affect the human genome.
Somatic cell gene therapy research (which includes gene editing technology) in South Africa is focused on “high burden” diseases, such as HIV, hepatitis B, tuberculosis (TB), and cancer.
Research Professor at thePerinatal HIV Research Unit at Witsand President of the South African Medical Research Council,GlendaGray, says that there could be a “serendipitous breakthrough” in curing HIV with gene editing technology, and that this could happen within the next decade at the current rate of scientific innovation.
AGTRU is currently researching a cure for hepatitis B, a contagious virus that wreaks havoc on the liver. The team uses CRISPR-Cas9 and TALENS gene editing technology to disable the virus. “We deliver the CRISPR-Cas9 system to the liver, hone in on the hepatitis B virus to deactivate the DNA, and halt the infection process,” says AGTRUAssociate Professor Abdullah Ely. TALENS (Transcription Activator-Like Effector Nucleases), on the other hand, are enzymes that can be coded to cut DNA sequences, thus inactivating the hepatitis B virus.
Tuberculosis is another disease burden in South Africa. The bacteria that cause TB have a very thick cell wall, which prolongs the duration of treatment. “These cell walls are like thick armour capable of blocking the strongest of drugs,” saysProfessorBaveshKana, Director of theCentre of Excellence in Biomedical TB Researchat Wits.
Gene editing technologies can weaken this cell wall. “Ultimately we’d like to inactivate the enzymes responsible for building the bedrock of the cell,” says Kana. He notes that TB treatment has come a long way in South Africa, with shortened treatment regimens and a better understanding of managing the effects of TB, such as reducing inflammation in damaged lung tissue.
Cancer is the toughest disease to treat with gene editing technology, notesProfessorPaul Ruff, Head ofMedical Oncology at Wits and the CharlotteMaxekeJohannesburg Academic Hospital. “There are so few cancers with a specific gene. In addition, cancer is very clever, outsmarting many attempts to cure it,” says Ruff.
Currently, the pillars of cancer treatment have been surgery, chemotherapy and radiation therapy. However, cancer research is advancing each year – a patient’s own immune cells can even now be engineered to treat cancer. “While modern immunotherapy [a component of the gene editing field] is an exciting field, it’s prohibitively expensive,” says Ruff.
Universal health coverage
The health budget is stretched in South Africa, and not enough is done to address the systemic injustices in the healthcare system, sayDhaiand Kana. “The debate needs to beabout how to provide universal and quality healthcare to everybody, not just to the 20% who can afford it,” saysDhai. “I am not saying we must halt science – I am saying we need to place social justice first.”
This is why AGTRU is pioneering accessible and affordable technology. “We need our work to serve everybody and to tailor what we do to ensure scalability,” says Ely. This will change the health landscape in South Africa. Gene therapy is able to treat a wide range of diseases previously thought untreatable.
“Our view is that the need for gene therapeutics is immense, particularly in a country like South Africa. The cost of living with HIV, for instance, needs to be assessed against that of a possibly expensive, yet single therapeutic cure. If gene technologies become mainstream, costs will be significantly reduced,” says Arbuthnot. “South Africa must prioritise this so we can reap the benefits of this very promising medical intervention. While not a panacea, gene therapy holds significant promise to combat intractable medical problems. We feel strongly that South Africa needs to invest in these promising technologies to gain maximum benefit rather than relying on researchers in the developed world.”
Wits University haematologist,Professor Johnny Mahlanguis leading research set to revolutionise the treatment of haemophilia, a genetic blood disorder. Gene therapy for haemophilia offers a single administration of the therapeutic to potentially produce a lifelong cure and in so doing to overcome many of the shortcomings of traditional replacement therapy.
Haemophilia gene therapy in South Africa is burgeoning, with several FVIII and FIX programmes having started. Two South African patients who received gene therapy for severe haemophilia in Europe are currently being followed up locally. A regional gene therapy infusion centre has been set up in Johannesburg, and patients for several gene therapy studies are currently being recruited. Participation of patients of African origin in gene therapy is particularly important, as they have generally been under-represented in global gene therapy studies.
Professor Michèle Ramsay, Research Chair and Director of theSydney Brenner Institute for Molecular Bioscienceat Wits has been selected to serve on an international commission to develop principles, criteria and standards for the clinical use of genome editing of the human germline, should it be considered acceptable by society. The Commission, convened by the UK’s Royal Society, the US National Academy of Sciences, and the US National Academy of Medicine, comes at a time when reports of the first genetically edited babies were publicised at the end of 2018. The Commission’s final report will be issued mid-2020.
Read more in the eighth issue, themed: #Codehowour researchers are exploring not only the Fourth Industrial Revolution manifestations of code, such as big data, artificial intelligence and machine learning, but also our genetic code, cryptic codes in queer conversation, political speak and knitting, and interpreting meaning through words, animation, theatre,and graffiti. We delve into data surveillance, the 21st Century ‘Big Brothers’ and privacy, and we take a gander at how to win the Lottery by leveraging the universal code of mathematics.
Diagnosing the dead and predicting mortality
- Shaun Smillie
A new generation of apps could soon help health professions to decode the causes of death, and predict the likelihood of dying.
Two academics in the Wits Institute of Data Science are investigating the use of machine learning (ML) to sift through masses of data and, through coded algorithms, identify patterns that will give health practitioners real time lifesaving information.
Mpanyais working on a project that, if all goes well, will assess a patient’s probability of being hospitalised or dying as a result of heart failure.
Heart failure is a common pathway for most heart conditions such as hypertension and coronary artery diseases.
“Machine learning refers to the ability of the computer to learn without any form of explicit programming, meaning that the computer analyses pre-existing data, learns patterns and subsequently makes predictions,” explainsMpanya.
Her project involves mining data collected since 2009 in the Division of Cardiology at CharlotteMaxekeJohannesburg Academic Hospital. These data were captured electronically from patients who were admitted to the hospital with heart conditions.
Mpanyaplans to use this data to create a risk model that predicts a patient’s likelihood of mortality and hospitalisation.
“This risk stratification is important because if a patient is at a high risk of mortality, then such patients can be seen more frequently at a hospital, optimising therapy,” saysMpanya.
“Already we have such a high burden of patients with heart diseases in South Africa and there aren’t enough cardiologists. So, with my model, once you have risk stratified the patients, those that are at low risk will be seen less frequently and may even be seen by doctors at a primary or secondary health care level. And those that are high risk will be seen by specialists.”
South Africa has a growing cardiovascular disease epidemic and one of the biggest problems facing doctors is identifying those at risk.
Recent statistics show that one out of three South Africans over the age of 15 has hypertension (high blood pressure), which puts them at risk of a heart failure. Most don’t even know they have hypertension.
This risk calculator,Mpanyahopes, will take the form of an app.
“So, if you are in a rural area and you are treating a patient and you don't know what is wrong with them, that risk calculator will tell you that patient is high risk and send them to a hospital,” she says.
The app will work by requesting a doctor to input details such as the patient’s demographic and clinical parameters and thereafter will estimate the probability of mortality and hospitalisation.
Pathological patterns
WhileMpanya’swork deals with the prevention of mortality, her colleagueMichaelMapunduis using machine learning to diagnose the deceased.
Verbal autopsies are often used as a method to establish cause of death in low- and middle-income countries. Most of the world’s annual deaths are undocumented, meaning there are no autopsies.
How verbal autopsies work is that health professionals will gather information about the deceased, collected from those who knew them and from learning about the circumstances around their death. The World Health Organization has a set of guidelines governing how verbal autopsies should be performed.
Through machine learning, this data and future data could alert authorities to disease patterns that they are not seeing in hospitals and clinics.
“Those verbal autopsy narratives, they have a diagnosis which is labelled by an expert who might be a doctor,” saysMapundu, in theWits School of Public Health. “From these narratives a possible cause of death might be added and that gives us a label that you can use to train our machine in order for it to possibly predict a possible cause.”
As withMpanya,Mapunduenvisions an app that will be web based, easy to access and work in a rural setting.
“It will have real time classification where a user can feed data and those narratives can be automatically classified by our machine learning model,” he explains.
Machine learning prediction models are in use in the Global North, but their introduction here in South Africa promises to save lives through data gleaned from the living and the dead.
Read more in theeighth issue, themed: #Codehowour researchers are exploring not only the Fourth Industrial Revolution manifestations of code, such as big data, artificial intelligence and machine learning, but also our genetic code, cryptic codes in queer conversation, political speak and knitting, and interpreting meaning through words, animation, theatre, and graffiti. We delve into data surveillance, the 21st Century ‘Big Brothers’ and privacy, and we take a gander at how to win the Lottery by leveraging the universal code of mathematics.
Recreating Earth through code
- Schalk Mouton
The first Earth System Model developed and based in Africa are creating one of the most reliable and most detailed modulations of climate change.
What does it take to recreate Earth? A couple of thousands of line of code, throw in some data from all the weather stations around the world, and a supercomputer.
Add to that mix a specialist climate model developer such asProfessor Francois Engelbrechtfrom theWits Global Change Instituteand you’ve got the first Earth System Model developed and based in Africa, which is to contribute to the World Climate Research Programme’s Coupled ModelIntercomparisonProject Phase Six (CMIP6).
Engelbrecht, who joined Wits in January 2019 after working at the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) for a decade, is working to build a mathematical model of Earth, including all the atmospheric, oceanic, land and carbon cycle processes and their interactions, in order to be able to project the impacts of future climate change in Africa and across the globe. Towards this end, he is working in close collaboration with scientists from the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) in Australia, the CSIR in South Africa, the University of Cape Town (UCT) and the University of Venda.
“Coding is part of my life. I code every day,” says Engelbrecht, who is one of only a handful of climate model developers around.
How to build an Earth System Model
Building an Earth System Model is no simple task. To do this, Engelbrecht needs to process data from 50 layers of Earth’s atmosphere, which is approximately 50km deep; the ocean from its surface to the bottom, divided into 30 layers and the land, divided into six layers to simulate soil moisture and temperature.
An Earth System Model provides a numerical sampling of all the physical processes occurring in the three-dimensional coupled ocean-atmosphere-land system. He also needs to include ocean and atmospheric chemistry, including the effects that the carbon cycle has on the climate system.
“Both the ocean and the land are large sinks (absorbers) of carbon. There are also natural processes that release carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. We need to see how these processes work and model how the carbon cycle will impact climate in the future in the presence of increased carbon dioxide emissions emanating from our dependence on fossil fuels for energy,” says Engelbrecht.
An Earth System Model is based in a set of mathematical equations that describe how Earth changes over time to changing radiative forcing (for example, increasing concentrations of carbon dioxide). That is, when the laws of physics is applied to the atmosphere, one obtains a set of partial differential equations. These equations can be solved numerically to get a picture of our future climate.
“The moment that you work with these types of data and numerical mathematics, you need a supercomputer to process it,” says Engelbrecht.
“The mathematical model breaks up the atmosphere in a number of layers, and the Earth in horizontal grid points. The larger the computer, the more grid points you can add, which makes the model more accurate.”
Accessing hte power of supercomputers
Engelbrecht only in recent years gained access to a supercomputer with sufficient processing power to undertake these computationally expensive simulations and process theenourmous of data. This is theLengaucluster of the Centre of High-Performance Computing (CHPC) of the Department of Science and Technology based in Rosebank, Cape Town. A single climate simulation requires the use of hundreds to thousands of processors on the cluster, applied in parallel to solve the intricate equations of the Earth system.
Even on the fastest supercomputers of the world, the spatial resolution of Earth System Models remain limited to about 100 km in the horizontal. In a recent development, Engelbrecht and his colleagues are also moving into the world of Artificial Intelligence, to utilise specially engineered algorithms that can represent the finer details of the system at spatial scales not directly resolved by the Earth System Model.
“Traditionally the representation of fine-scale processes in Earth System Models was based on conventional statistics informed by field observations of how the fine-scale processes relate to the large-scale flow features of the ocean and atmosphere. Machine learning allows for more complex and thus more realistic relationships to be formulated between fine-scale and larger scale flow features in the climate system,” Engelbrecht states.
Engelbrecht, who did his PhD in numerical meteorology at the University of Pretoria leads the development of the global ocean model applied within the Earth System Model. The CSIRO provides to the system sophisticated global atmospheric and land-surface models, while the CSIR is providing and developing the carbon cycle model and atmospheric chemistry applied within the Earth System Model.
In order to describe an initial state of the ocean and atmosphere to the Earth System Model, Engelbrecht and his colleagues use information from weather stations all over the world, which is compiled and shared through the World Meteorological Organisation.
Engelbrecht points out that understanding the climate and carbon cycle of the Southern Ocean and the dynamics of the Antarctic sea-ice and ice sheets is critical to the reliable projection of future climate change.
“The Southern Ocean is a massive carbon sink, and we (South Africa, through the Southern Ocean Carbon and Climate Observatory (SOCCO) of the CSIR), have the best knowledge in the world about the Southern Ocean chemistry and physics, which makes our Earth System Model incredibly relevant for the rest of the world,” says Engelbrecht. “Our model is built through the lens of Southern Ocean and African climate processes.” SOCCO of the CSIR andUCT’s Marine Science Institute are therefore important partners in the development of the Earth System Model.
“A National Research Foundation Earth System Science Research Programme (ESSRP) project is providing important initial momentum to this collaboration,” says Engelbrecht.
Building an Earth System Model is a completely interdisciplinary task, involving experts from a variety of fields, including climatologists, oceanographers, ecologists, mathematicians, physicists, chemists and computer scientists. Engelbrecht intends to increasingly attract experts in all these fields to work together in building and improving the African-based Earth System Model.
“One of the reasons I came to Wits was to expose the Earth System Model development process to colleagues whom have leading expertise in oceanography, climatology, numerical mathematics, high-performance computing and artificial intelligence so that we can collaborate and jointly contribute to this truly multi-disciplinary field. We have already assembled at the GCI and the Wits Schools of GAES and APES a strong group of post-graduate students that will have the opportunity to work in this exciting multi-disciplinary field, while contributing their novel thinking to the Earth System Model,” he says.
“We are creating one of the most reliable and most detailed modulations of climate change for Africa. If we can reliably project our likely climate change futures in Africa, then we can estimate risks to aspects such as water security, agriculture, biodiversity, and human health, and take timeous action through climate change adaptation and mitigation projects.”
Read more in theeighth issue, themed: #Codehowour researchers are exploring not only the Fourth Industrial Revolution manifestations of code, such as big data, artificial intelligence and machine learning, but also our genetic code, cryptic codes in queer conversation, political speak and knitting, and interpreting meaning through words, animation, theatre, and graffiti. We delve into data surveillance, the 21st Century ‘Big Brothers’ and privacy, and we take a gander at how to win the Lottery by leveraging the universal code of mathematics.
Lingua franca of mathematics
- Shaun Smillie
Speaking to visitors from outer space would one day require a common language and one not found in a dictionary.
One day, when extra-terrestrial aliens finally make contact with us Earthlings, we’ll need to communicate. Such an historic occasion will demand that we make a good impression, and that might mean leaving the introductions to a mathematician or a physicist.
“The natural place to start conversing with aliens would be to use mathematics because it is universal,” saysProfessor VishnuJejjalain the WitsSchool of Physics. “Aliens might not have the same biology as we do. We are carbon based, they could, for instance, be silicon based.Who knows? But whatever their physiology is, the mathematics that we have is exactly the same as the mathematics that aliens have.”
The persistence of Pi
DEFINING Pi: Pi (π) describes the ratio between a circle’s circumference and its diameter. Pi’s decimal representation (3.14…) never ends and never settles into a permanently repeating pattern. The Guinness World Record for a person to memorise the value of Pi is 70,000 digits.
Across the universe, the same numbers keep cropping up in unexpected places, much like an invisible code that appears to unite unrelated principles. The famed mathematical constant, Pi (or π), which describes the ratio of a circle’s circumference to its diameter (with a value of 3.14…) is one example.
Another example is the so-called ‘Golden Ratio’ – also known as the Divine Proportion – which is expressed not only in the geometric shapes of nature (such as in the shape of the Whirlpool Galaxy, Nautilus shells and hurricanes) but also in many human creations. The Pyramids of Giza were allegedly built using the Golden Ratio, and artist Leonard Da Vinci apparently used its eye-pleasing proportions to paint the iconic Mona Lisa.
Jejjalaexplains that numbers such as Pi and the Golden Ratio recur because the language we use to analyse physical phenomena – mathematics – is in itself a universal language.
“As a physicist, I work on various problems and the same sort of numbers appear in various places. It is not just the same numbers appearing, it is also the same equations that areappearing; the same phenomena that manifest in vastly different situations.” Pi, for instance, appear everywhere because circular forms appear in various places in nature, saysJejella. “Pi is just a reflection in phenomena in which these things happen.”
Other examples of where numbers appear across a variety of disciplines appear in periodic phenomena.
“The infection rate for disease might be one example. Such periodic behaviour is characterised by trigonometric functions, like sine or cosine. The period for such a function is 2Pi, which relates back to the circle [the circumference of a circle is 2PiR].”
Various other phenomena are exponential. The half-life of radioactive isotopes, the inflationary phase of the cosmos, the population growth of various organisms are all described as “e” raised to the power of something.
“The number ‘e’ – or Euler’s Number, which is approximately 2.71828, pops up everywhere, like in calculations of compounding interest and probability theory, while other numbers, such as the Euler-Mascheroniconstant, the zeta function evaluated at special points and the Golden Ratio that all appear in different contexts.”
E.T.phone home
So, because mathematics is universal, it would be the natural lingua franca for a conversation with Martians. But what form would such a conversation take? How would we say hello?
“The conversation might start with teaching each other prime numbers,” saysJejjala. “The distribution of prime numbers is described by Riemann's zeta function. The famous Riemann conjecture states that all of the non-trivial zeroes of the zeta function have real part equal to 1/2. No one has been able to prove this statement. We could, for instance, describe the function in terms of the prime numbers and ask the aliens for help.”
Mathematics has been described as “unreasonably effective at describing the natural world”. The fact that everything in nature works so well (through mathematics) have had philosophers, mathematicians and physicists puzzled for years, but, up until now, there are only partial answers.
“In the end, it seems that every bit of mathematics has some utility in physics,” saysJejalla. “The second thing to note is that there are only certain equations we can solve. So we are bullying whatever we thought into one of the equations we can solve.” And while progress is slow in deciphering newly discovered equations that could advance our understanding of the world,Jejallabelieves we are on the right track.
“One of the key insights in science is that the same patterns appear in many places and the methodologies for describing those patterns is largely the same irrespective of the subject. This is how we translate developments in one area to other areas.”
Read more in theeighth issue, themed: #Codehowour researchers are exploring not only the Fourth Industrial Revolution manifestations of code, such as big data, artificial intelligence and machine learning, but also our genetic code, cryptic codes in queer conversation, political speak and knitting, and interpreting meaning through words, animation, theatre, and graffiti. We delve into data surveillance, the 21st Century ‘Big Brothers’ and privacy, and we take a gander at how to win the Lottery by leveraging the universal code of mathematics.
Reptile laundering
- Delia du Toit
PhD candidate Shivan Parusnath plans to use social media and machine learning to help stop illegal reptile trade on global scale.
In 2017, a man who had travelled to South Africa from Japan was caught by Malmesbury police with 48 lizards he had poached from the wild and intended to smuggle out of the country. His sentence was 13 years imprisonment or a R1 million fine. A month later, another Japanese man was caught for the same offence, and a few months after that, two German men.
His post-doctorate, for which he is currently procuring funding, will focus on the sale of South African reptiles on online forums, social media, and at international reptile fairs. His initial research reveals how crucial this study will be.
Parusnath’s documentary on sungazers, Saving Dragons, recently won the Simon MabhunuSabela Award for Best Environmental Conservation film from the KwaZulu-Natal Film Commission
“Without much difficulty, I found several reptile trade groups selling South African reptiles on social media. I’ve even done some searches on the dark web, which came up empty-handed. Chances are that social media already provide such an easy means to conduct illegal trade that using the dark web isn’t even necessary,” he says – the dark web, often used for illegal trade, refers to websites that exist on encrypted networks and cannot be found through traditional search engines
Although some platforms have banned the sale of live animals, the rules are not always enforced. “There are many loopholes, such as creating secret groups on Facebook, or pretending to ‘rehome’ animals – those in the market will know that it’s code for a sale, and will contact the person privately,” explainsParusnath.
Getting a better idea of the species being sold in this manner, and in what quantities, will help inform legislature and scientific authorities to better protect species threatened by trade.
Besides manual searches and visiting international trade shows,Parusnathalso employs machine learning for his research. After feeding an algorithm with training data (images of reptile species to be searched for), the software will be able to access data on which speciesare being sold online, where they are sold, and at what price, and even identify false keywords or guises used to cover up sales.
Genetic barcodes
Parusnathhas so far concentrated most of his research onsungazerlizards (Smauggiganteus), named for their upward-arching stance when basking in the sun. Over the past decade, several of these vulnerable lizards were shipped or smuggled from South African shores into the hands of exotic reptile collectors, fetching thousands of dollars each. The biggest markets are in Europe, Japan and the USA.
In his PhD,Parusnathfocused on investigating the genetic structure of the species by ‘DNA barcoding’ almost 200sungazersin 13 different colonies in Mpumalanga and the Free State – their only natural habitat. This was done using microsatellites, special genetic markers he developed especially for thesungazer.
“Microsatellites allow one to understand more about the population and social structure of a species in the wild. You can, for example, determine if a baby belongs to a certain parent, if two animals are first cousins, or if they are not related at all. You can then use this information to learn more about their social behaviour, for example if babies and parents live together in a burrow or not,” saysParusnath.
Secondly, the information can be used in regulating trade in the species.Sungazersare listed on CITES Appendix II, a multilateral treaty to protect endangered plants and animals, and species on this list may only be traded if bred in captivity. Microsatellites can help clarify whether animals were indeed bred in captivity when a trader applies for a permit.
The technology is so effective that it’s been used to identify poaching hot spots for elephants. When a detailed enough network of DNA barcodes is collected from across a species’ distribution, it can be used to determine where an animal came from.Parusnath’snetwork is already big enough to determine if a confiscatedsungazercame from the East or West Free State, for example.
Code Red
For his Master’s,Parusnathreassessed the conservation status of the species, which was last done in 1978.Sungazerpopulations had declined 30% since the last assessment, and they’re at the same level as rhinos on the National Environmental Management: Biodiversity Act (Nemba) list of Threatened or Protected Species.
His research led to the finding by the South African scientific authority that trade in wild-caughtsungazerswould be detrimental to the species. A legislative change followed, and trading insungazersnow requires proof of captive breeding before a permit is issued, effectively stopping what is known as reptile laundering, where wild-caught animals are sold under the guise of captive breeding.
Parusnathis also a professional photographer with a number of awards under his belt and uses his wildlife images to educate and raise awareness. “A good photo can make people see an animal differently, and make even spiders, snakes and scorpions more relatable. Some scientists judge their career on the number of papers they’ve published. For me, it’s about making a difference.”
Read more in theeighth issue, themed: #Codehowour researchers are exploring not only the Fourth Industrial Revolution manifestations of code, such as big data, artificial intelligence and machine learning, but also our genetic code, cryptic codes in queer conversation, political speak and knitting, and interpreting meaning through words, animation, theatre, and graffiti. We delve into data surveillance, the 21st Century ‘Big Brothers’ and privacy, and we take a gander at how to win the Lottery by leveraging the universal code of mathematics.
Data and dominance
- Imraan Valodia
COLUMN: Data domination by Big Tech, both nationally and internationally, has ominous implications for economies – and privacy.
The so-called 4th Industrial Revolution, the associated growth in artificial intelligence (AI), and the use of data science has become a key feature of our current economy.
The data aspect has seena number ofuniversities, including Wits University, developing new programmes that combine data science with finance, health, engineering and related fields.
While there is potential for these developments to generate new sources of economic growth, there are some concerns too, which policymakers need to address.
One concern has been the use of data by technology giants like Google and Facebook, and the associated concerns about privacy, use of data without consent, and, as the notorious Facebook-Cambridge Analytica case shows, concerns about the political use of data and AI.
Exclusion by domination
An area that has not received much attention – at least in public debates about data-related issues – is the fact that data collection and its use (or misuse) may be creating conditions in some instances for firms that dominate economic activity to exclude other players in the market, especially new and innovative entrants. Competition economists and lawyers have been grappling with these issues fora number ofyears.
In June 2019, the United States Federal Trade Commission announced that it was investigating a potential anti-competition case (or antitrust case, as the US refers to it) against Amazon, which has a market share of almost 50% of all online sales in the USA. It operates both as the provider of a platform for online sales, and as aretailer in its own right, usingits own platform to sell goods. Third parties also use the Amazon platform to sell their goods.
The allegation against Amazon is that it may be using the data generated on its platform to exclude its retail competitors that sell their products on Amazon’s platform. The problem is that third party retailers have no option but to use Amazon’s platform.
GAFAgang
The Amazon case followsa number ofother similar cases in the European Union (EU), where the region’s competition authority recently fined Google 2.4 billion Euros for anti-competitive behaviour in its comparative shopping service.
Google is used for over 90% of all internet searches. Google also has interests in goods and services that people purchase when they search using Google’s shopping search facility.
Google was fined because it changed the algorithm that displays shopping search results from a neutral algorithm to one that favours search results in which it has interests – essentially, the search results prioritised Google’s own shopping companies and demoted those of its rivals to much lower in the search results. Since no one looks beyond the first page or two in a Google search, Google’s rivals were effectively excluded in the search results.
The EU competition authority argued that this behaviour is anti-competitive and illegal. Furthermore, in the largest competition law fine in history, Google was fined 4.3 billion Euros for forcing cell phone manufactures that use its (supposedly free) Android software to preload the Google browser (Chrome) and search facility (Google Search).
The EU is also investigating Facebook for anti-competitive behaviour. The German competition authority has banned Facebook from combining users’ data across its own platforms without their consent, because this places Facebook in a position to exclude its competitors from competing fairly.
These and similar cases against the so-called GAFA (Google, Amazon, Facebook and Apple) raise important questions about the use and abuse of data in the economy. Many of these cases are on appeal and it will be interesting to see the outcome.
Killer acquisitions
From an economic perspective, the developments in these cases raise policy questions. One is the question of ‘killer acquisitions’ – are large digital companies purchasing virtually all smaller tech companies that could blossom into competitors?
The economic question here is whether these mergers and acquisitions entrench power over information, and remove small companies from the market before they become competitive rivals?For example, when Facebook purchased WhatsApp, Facebook argued that the companies operate in different markets and it would be impossible to combine data from these markets. The reality has proven different.
A number of these data industries are characterised by what economists call a ‘two-sided market’ – these are markets with two distinct user groups. Credit cards are a good example of a two-sided market – card holders and merchants engage and trade through an intermediary’s platform. The rise of data has created a number of these platforms.
The competition policy challenge is that these two-sided markets often ‘tip’ – that is,a number offirms compete in the market but, at some point, the market tips so that only one player – or a few players – come to dominate the market. Google’s dominance of the search industry exemplifies such a tip.
Big Tech bullies
The difficulty from a policymaker’s perspective is that there is a lot of innovation and competition in these markets to begin with, but once the tipping point has been reached, one firm or a group of firms then dominate the market and may well be stopping smaller, innovative firms from growing. And, they may well be acquiring and ‘killing off’ very innovative new competitors, thus reducing the rate of innovation and technological development.
The challenge is the difficulty in predicting the ‘tipping point’. So often these challengeshave tobe dealt with when firms are already dominant and possibly abusing their dominance of data.
Read more in theeighth issue, themed: #Codehowour researchers are exploring not only the Fourth Industrial Revolution manifestations of code, such as big data, artificial intelligence and machine learning, but also our genetic code, cryptic codes in queer conversation, political speak and knitting, and interpreting meaning through words, animation, theatre, and graffiti. We delve into data surveillance, the 21st Century ‘Big Brothers’ and privacy, and we take a gander at how to win the Lottery by leveraging the universal code of mathematics.
When computers came to Wits
- Deborah Minors
The University bought its first computer from IBM 59 years ago. Today, Wits and IBM are partners in quantum computing.
In 1960, Wits was the first university to have a computer in South Africa. Professor GuerinoBozzoli, Vice-Chancellor from 1969 to 1977 purchased an IBM Model 1620 Mark 1. At this time, International Business Machines (IBM) sold computers to universities at an 80% discounted rate so that IBM could dominate the fledgling computer market.
The computer required its own room and a special cooling plant. Data were fed into the computer by means of a punched tape and the output printed on a telex machine. The capability of the IBM 1620 Mark 1 was approximate to a then R50 calculator. Dr Derek Henderson was director of the Wits Computer Centre and the first Professor of Computer Science at any South African university.
The Wits Computer Centre was firmly established by the mid-1960s. A card machine soon replaced the punched tape input and afast electronicprinter was acquired. Later, an upgraded IBM System 360 could very quickly solve simultaneous equations, which enabled Wits to service business and industry.
By 1988, the Collins Dictionary of Computing published that year declared ASCII “the most important code for microcomputing purposes” and noted that ‘modern’ programming languages and terminals made coding sheets largely obsolete.
Fast-forward to the 21st Century and in June 2019, Wits University and IBM announced a new collaboration thatmakes Wits the first African partner on the IBM Q Network. This enables Wits to access the 20 qubit-IBM Q quantum computer.
Today, theSchool of Computer Science and Applied Mathematicsat Wits has invested in preserving the remnants of the original mainframe computer. This and other old Wits computers are preserved in theComputer Museum, which is part of the TWKambuleMathematical Sciences Laboratory in the Science Stadium on Braamfontein Campus West.
Sources:
G.RBozzoli(1995), A Vice-Chancellor Remembers, The Computer Era and The Nineteen Sixties, pg. 94-97, Wits University Press
Ian R. Sinclair (1988), Collins Reference Dictionary Computing, Code, Code Conversion, Coding Sheet, pgs.48-49, Collins
MrShunmugaPillay, Manager: Scientific and Research Systems, Mathematical Sciences and Curator, Wits Computer Museum
Read more in theeighth issue, themed: #Codehowour researchers are exploring not only the Fourth Industrial Revolution manifestations of code, such as big data, artificial intelligence and machine learning, but also our genetic code, cryptic codes in queer conversation, political speak and knitting, and interpreting meaning through words, animation, theatre, and graffiti. We delve into data surveillance, the 21st Century ‘Big Brothers’ and privacy, and we take a gander at how to win the Lottery by leveraging the universal code of mathematics.
Information Security is a leading skills priority
- JCSE
The 10th ICT Skills Survey shows that the Fourth Industrial Revolution is still waiting in the wings.
Wits University's Joburg Centre for Software Engineering (JCSE) in partnership with the Institute of Information Technology Professionals South Africa (IITPSA), have released their findings of a survey of skills trends in the South African ICT sector. This is the tenth edition of the JCSE’s Skills Survey.
The survey sketches a mixed future for the ICT landscape in South Africa should current trends persist. “Although many stakeholder groups are making concerted efforts to improve the competency and employability of young people through some excellent initiatives, the results tend to be counted in terms of hundreds or maybe thousands of candidates when what is needed is opportunities for tens or even hundreds of thousands in the digital economy,” says Professor Barry Dwolatzky, Director of the JCSE.
With the aim of identifying current ICT skills priorities and gaps to assist business leaders and policy makers to develop strategies for growing and retaining digital skills, this year’s survey report also calls for urgent coordination between public and private sector activities, so that there is a clear relationship between forecasted skills needs and the pipeline to fill those needs.
This is particularly true for South Africa’s stated 4IR ambitions, as underpinned by the recent appointment of a Presidential Commission on Fourth Industrial Revolution and the launch of the 4IRSA initiative. “4IR is used, in South Africa at least, as a catch phrase referring to all aspects of digital adoption and transformation, only some of which relate to cutting-edge ‘revolutionary’ innovations. Much of what is spoken and written about in relation to 4IR is part of an ongoing process of evolutionary digital transformation,” notes Dwolatzky.
The 2019 results show Information Security as a leading skills priority followed by a cluster of second level priorities made up of Big Data/Data Analytics, Software as a Service/Cloud Computing, Artificial Intelligence and Application Development. “Once again the survey has highlighted the poor state of education in South Africa and in particular the very low number of learners achieving competence in STEM subjects. There are many initiatives attempting to address this issue, but they tend to be in relatively small pockets and are not resolving the underlying lack of appropriate curriculum, relevant teaching materials and skilled teachers,” says Dwolatzky.
“One disturbing trend given South Africa’s high unemployment figures, particularly among the youth, is the dramatic rise in employers recruiting overseas. This is unfortunate as it shows South Africa is not making inroads into the opportunity to skill and employ locally. In addition, companies tend to train for basic or entry level skills as opposed to the skills required for 4IR,” adds Dwolatzky.
He notes that at a more foundational level, several of the SETAs have highlighted the problems in the education pipeline, where South Africa is (so far) tackling the critical need for vast improvement in curricula for STEM subjects and in learning methodologies in only fits and starts. “On the positive side, survey respondents were asked a new question this year – do they feel a responsibility to assist their employees to reskill to meet the challenges of the new era of digitalisation? To which the answer was an overwhelming ‘yes’. The common thread is the urgent and persistent need to raise the game in the education pipeline and it is incumbent on the private sector to drive the required changes through partnership with government and expansion of the many initiatives taking place.”
The 2019 report has once again emphasised that the average South African ICT practitioner continues to perform multiple task sets, with only a few identifying their role as specialist in nature. Dwolatzky says this is a red flag as it is unlikely a practitioner can maintain focus on specific objectives while juggling several major responsibilities all at once. This ongoing trend also leads to over-dependence on the individual concerned, who may be perceived as irreplaceable, and more attractive to overseas recruiters. “There is a glaring gap between unskilled and multi-skilled practitioners and that’s where one of the industry’s most pressing challenges lies.”
“Fundamentally, recognition by policy-makers and industry strategists that South Africa must rapidly acquire the skills to take advantage of the shift in production and business practices is only a tiny step towards putting that knowledge into the hands of people who can turn it into economic value,” says Dwolatzky.
The Joburg Centre for Software Engineering (JCSE) is a three way partnership between government, academia and industry. Based at Wits University, the JCSE is multifaceted with various programmes and facilities positioning it as a focal point of a software development industry for South Africa and the rest of the continent.
The JCSE strongly supports the City’s “Joburg 2030 Vision”, which sees Johannesburg becoming a World Class city with service delivery and efficiencies that meet global best practice. It supports this goal by promoting best practice in software development within an African context; growing the country’s capacity to deliver world class software; and developing research and training initiatives to strengthen the local software development industry.
About the IITPSA
IITPSA (Institute of Information Technology Professionals South Africa), formerly Computer Society South Africa (CSSA), is a professional body, recognised by the South African Qualifications Authority (SAQA). Established in 1957, the Institute has a long and proud history of service to, and representation of, South Africa’s ICT professionals and practitioners, attracting a broad and active membership from all levels of the ICT Industry.
Wits innovation set to light up lives
- Wits Enterprise
PeCo Power, a new spin-off company, is a home-grown electrical off-grid solution that will radically change lives and impact local communities.
An innovation out of Wits University’s School of Electrical and Information Engineering (EIE) has reached commercialisation stage and will soon find its way into rural and un-serviced communities, with the promise of deep social impact.
ThePersonal Consumer grid innovationis essentially a home electrical grid solution, to easily integrate renewable energy sources along with batteries and appliances, for the electrification of households in Africa. This expandable solution ensures that as a householdcanafford more solar panels or wind generators, batteries or 12 V appliances, these components are easily added to the system, with no need for a trained person to undertake these changes to the system.
Over the past four years,Professor Willie Cronjefrom the Electric Power Research Group in the EIE has led research into the solution to help address the challenge of electrification for homes that do not have access to a utility power grid.
Almost one billion people worldwideneedoff-grid electrification and in Africa this problem is the most severe. In South Africa, at least 10% of the population is unlikely to be connected to the grid in the foreseeable future. This percentage is larger in other African countries.
The low load demand and dispersed nature of rural settlements (less than 38 people per square kilometer on average in Africa), as well as excessive and rising infrastructure costs, mean that extending conventional electricity networks is no longer viable to many rural areas. At the same time, there is a call to improve health and safety through mitigating the serious fire risk associated with the use of paraffin, candles and wood. In addition, the use of renewable energy sources addresses the need for reducing the carbon footprint.
“Current off-grid solar home solutions do not accommodate multiple or different types of power sources, and multiple or different types of batteries. They restrict the number of loads i.e. appliances that can be connected. The Wits solution, which works on 12V direct current, can accommodate multiple loads, power and battery components and no central controller, or configuration by a technician is needed: each unit self-configures as the ‘grid’ is expanded in a plug-and-play approach. We are now at the excitingcommercialisationstage: afterfouryears in the making, the technology is proven and a company has been formed to bring it to market,” says Prof Cronje.
Commercialisation
Wits, through its Technology Transfer Office, assisted Cronje and his team, to obtain a Technology Innovation Agency (TIA)seed-fund grant for part of theresearch and developmentand then assisted in starting thecommercialisation.
This led to the establishment of anew spin-off company PeCo Power (Pty) Ltd (“Peco Power”)in October 2019. Umbono Natural Resources (Pty) Ltd (“Umbono”) became the commercial partner because of its strong alignment with Wits’ mission to provide workable solutions to African challenges such as electrification, and further because of its commercial experience, and networks in the independent power producer (IPP) sector. Umbono brings capital and experience to the venture through their hands-on involvement in the development process.
With the assistance of Umbono, the team has concluded a pilot, and the learning gained from it will be used tofinalisethe system design so that the technology is commercially ready. PeCo Power has been established, and the intellectual property developed by Witsand Umbono will be transferred to it. This will enable it to continue the joint development andcommercialisationprocess, whilst leveraging the partnership between Witsand Umbono to attract additional investment into PeCo to establish distribution partnerships.
“In Wits we have found a local, research-grounded and innovation-driven partner who is supportive of our fledgling PeCo Power company. Basing the team at the Goldfields Labon Wits’ Braamfontein Campus West, will continue to provide the much-needed technical incubation as we move towards fullcommercialisation. We are extremely excited to see a home-grown solution, to real community problems, ultimately impact and radically change lives,”saysKerwinRana, Chief Executive - Umbono. “Umbono is privileged to be a keycommercialisationand funding partner in this remarkable Witsinnovation, which is squarely aligned with our desire to positively impact local communities.”
Due to ease of use and scalability, the PeCo Power home grid solution has applications in several markets:
Rural e.g. households and small businessesthat are farfrom the electricity grid;
Urbanoff-grid e.g. high-densityinformal settlements;
Camping and off-roading;
Emergency Services such as whenNGOs, relief organizationsandgovernment organizationsrequire bulk distribution of power, e.g. where a natural disaster has cut off access to electricity.
MuhammedAswat,Wits alumni and Engineering ManageratPeCo Power, says: “When I started working with Prof Willie Cronje on this solution as an undergraduate student, I was inspired. We have an opportunity to make a real impact in communities by literally lighting up lives throughout Africa whilst creating jobs and driving local economy through PeCo Power. Mohammed Raees Dangor, PeCo Power-Business Development, and I are the first employees and shareholders of PeCo Power through the Wits’ benefit sharing policy. I am really grateful to ProfessorCronje, Witsand WitsCommercial Enterprise for availing this opportunity to us".
Acknowledgements:
The completion of thePeCo Power field prototypewas made possible through a WITS-TechnologyInnovationAgencySeed Fundprojectmanaged byWITS Enterprise’s Innovation Support Unit.
SABERTEK as manufacturing partner.
EIE as theSchool in Wits providing infrastructure and administrationsupport.
Patent funding support was provided by the Intellectual Property Fund, managed by the National Intellectual Property Management Office at the Department of Science and Innovation.
Engineering pivotal moves
- Wits University
Top marks are due for a bionic hand engineered by Wits University postgraduates, who have made mobility more accessible to the 1 million amputees in SA.
Their 3D-printed hand is not only light in weight, but light on the pocket, as it drops the cost of this prosthetic from around US$100 000 to US$78.
Biomedical engineers at Wits have researched how brainwaves can be used to control a robotic prosthetic hand. The impact is far reaching as such a Brain Computer Interface (BCI) will enable amputees and people with motor impairments to regain some hand mobility.
“In South Africa, stroke victims may benefit significantly from this technology,” says Abdul-Khaallq Mohamed, Lecturer and PhD candidate in the School of Electrical and Information Engineering at Wits. “Stroke afflicts an estimated 132 000 South Africans per year.”
Currently, a prosthetic hand costs around US$ 100 000, an investment out of reach for most South Africans. This research will use 3D-printing to create a prosthetic hand for US$ 78, thereby increasing access to such healthcare for many.
Mohamed coordinates a research group of six students studying different aspects of potentially controlling a robotic hand. Most BCI experiments to date have centered on basic hand movements such as finger taps, button presses or simple finger grasps.
Biotech of interpreting brainwaves
“I envisage a BCI capable of controlling a robotic prosthetic hand that will enable people with motor disabilities to write, hold a glass or shake hands,” he explains. The Wits-based research group focuses uniquely on a combination of hand movements including wrist extension, wrist flexion, finger flexion, finger extension and the tripod pinch.
BCls can use electroencephalograms (EEGs) brainwaves to interpret human intentions from electrical signals in the brain and use these to control an external device such as a prosthetic hand, computer, or speech synthesizer.
The prosthetic robotic hand relies on EEGs extracted via electrodes on the skull, or electromyography (EMG) obtained from electrodes recording muscle signals, for information. A BCI will interpret these signals and translate them to instruct the movements of the artificial hand.
The brain as a network device
Other life-changing research within biotech and engineering is being done at the globally ranked university, which has over 97% of its graduates employed within six months of graduation. This includes engineering advancement by Wits biomedical engineer Adam Pantanowitz and his teams.
Pantanowitz discovered he had a neuromuscular condition as a teenager and since then, the Lecturer in the School of Electrical and Information Engineering has researched the potential of technology to empower people with disabilities. In particular, he has explored the untapped potential of the brain through Brain Computer Interfaces (BCIs).
In February 2019, in an experiment believed to be a world first, Pantanowitz and colleagues incorporated the human brain as a computer network. Dubbed ‘BrainConnect’, the researchers connected two computers through the human brain and successfully transmitted words like ‘hello’ and ‘apple’, passively, without the user being aware that a message was present.
Morse code via light signals
BrainConnect links light, signal transmission, the visual cortex of the human brain, and two computers.
It works by attaching a device to a person’s head, which links the two computers. The person passively stares at a flashing light whilst a word, for example, ‘apple’, is encoded in the light signal. The flashing light stimulates the visual cortex in the brain and an electroencephalogram (EEG) – a measurement that detects electrical activity in the brain, wirelessly transmits information to a second computer, which decodes the signals to appear on the second computer.
“You can think of it like Morse Code via light signals,” says Pantanowitz. BrainConnect can decipher up to 17 symbols at a rate of four seconds per symbol. The more relaxed the person is, the greater the possibility of invoking a response through this ‘steady state visually evoked potential’.
Seeing visionary assistive tech
Although BrainConnect is fledgling research, Pantanowitz says this BCI may have applications in eye-gaze devices, which allow for the control of the environment by detecting where the gaze is focused.
Join one of the leading postgraduate teams of researchers at Wits University and position yourself at the top of engineering and biotech fields. For more information about the world-changing work being done by Witsies, go towww.wits.ac.za/future/and www.wits.ac.za/news/latest-news/research-news/.
Wits leads Quantum Computing National Working Group
- Wits University
“Investment in quantum technologies in South Africa is crucial if we want to leverage the next level of discovery research,” says Professor Zeblon Vilakazi.
Vilakazi, Deputy Vice-Chancellor for Research and Postgraduate Affairs at Wits University, will be chairing the Department of Science and Innovation’s (DSI) National Working Committee to develop a Framework for Quantum Computing and Quantum Technology (NWG: QC&QT) driven research and innovation in South Africa.
Vilakazi, who was instrumental in Wits becomingthe first African partner on the IBM Q Networkearlier this year, together with the Director: Research Development at Wits, Dr Robin Drennan, form part of the NWG: QC&QT that also comprise of representatives from various higher education and research institutions in South Africa, as well as from IBM Research – Africa.
Says Vilakazi: “Countriessuch as the US, China,fromthe European Union, Singapore, Japan and many others have invested billions in the development of quantum computing and associated technologies. Quantum computing technologies are the next accelerated technologies that will spawn new research, new technologies, and new industry almost at the same scale as the rapid technological advances of the past 20 years.
“It is most appropriate that theDSIare putting together a team of leading scientists and researchers to advise onSouth Africa'sresponsiveness to this fast-developing technology.”
According to the DSI, at the core of the Fourth Industrial Revolution (41R) is the emergence of cyber-physical systems, which are based upon the ability to collect massive amounts of data, manipulate andanalyseit efficiently, and transfer it fast and securely. Quantum technologies have the potential torealisethis vision.
The initial focus of the NWG: QC&QT will be as follows:
To determine what the current state of QC and QT in SA is. The NWG will address the current landscape of QC and QT, identify challenges and opportunities, leverage and collaborate with existing initiatives, and engage the quantum community at large;
To conduct a SWOT Analysis of QC and QT in SA, in terms of (a) human capital and research capacity development, (b) technology capacity and capability development, (c) availability and need for research and innovation infrastructure, (d) partnerships and networks, (e) collaborative platforms and {f) institutional landscape; and
Based on the outcomes of the SWOT Analysis and scoping of the institutional landscape, the NWG: QC&QT will (i) scope where the path to the future lies as it pertains to QC and QT; (ii) identify priority areas for SA to focus on in the next ten years in order to align with theDSl'sDecadal Plan (currently under development), (iii) set indicative targets for HCD; research, technology and innovation (RTI) investment; RTI infrastructure requirements, (iv) identify potential African and international partners to accelerate and strengthen the Qc and QT RTI capacities and capabilities in SA; and (v) clearly articulate synergies and alignment with theDSl'sConverging Technology Platform initiative with special reference to the creation of relevant instrument/s and the establishment of an appropriate platform/s for thisendeavour.
Vilakazi says the actual Secretariat support for the NWG: QC&QT will be provided by Wits Universitythatalready has expertise in this field. “One of the world-leading experts in quantum technologies and lasers,Distinguished Professor Andrew Forbes from the Structured Light groupin theWits School of Physicsis one of the key members of the team. Quantum computing researchersfrom the Universities of KwaZulu-Natal, Stellenbosch and Pretoria, and other universities are also involved.”
“One of the key challenges in our current economic climate will be around the resources and how to liberate the necessary resources and focus on how this key, strategic investment ought to be made by prioritisingcertain areas and consolidating where possible,” says Vilakazi.
“It is a sense of pride forWits that is rightat thecentreof this fast-evolving projectwhich we hope,by the end of March next year,will yield something that will shape the way government and other universities think around the quantum technologies.”
The digital economy is becoming ordinary. Best we understand it
- Brian Armstrong
The digital economy will, soon, become the ordinary economy as the uptake - and application - of digital technologies in every sector in the world grows.
The digital economy has been getting a lot of attention, with increasingly strong headlines offering apocalyptic as well as breathtakingly exciting scenarios. Some warn of job losses due to automation, some wonder at the things digital technology can do. And then there’s real scepticism about whether this will translate into delivering to people who need it most.
With all of this discussion, however, there is seldom an explanation of what the digital economy actually is. What makes it different from the traditional economy? Why we should care about it?
The digital economy is a term that captures the impact of digital technology on patterns of production and consumption. This includes how goods and services are marketed, traded and paid for.
The term evolved from the 1990s, when the focus was on the impact of the internet on the economy. This was extended to include the emergence of new types of digitally-oriented firms and the production of new technologies.
Today the term encompasses a dizzying array of technologies and their application. This includes artificial intelligence, the internet of things, augmented and virtual reality, cloud computing, blockchain, robotics and autonomous vehicles.
The digital economy is now recognised to include all parts of the economy that exploit technological change that leads to markets, business models and day-to-day operations being transformed. So it covers everything from traditional technology, media and telecoms sectors through to new digital sectors. These include e-commerce, digital banking, and even “traditional” sectors like agriculture or mining or manufacturing that are being affected by the application of emerging technologies.
Understanding these dynamics has become non-negotiable. The digital economy will, soon, become the ordinary economy as the uptake – and application – of digital technologies in every sector in the world grows.
I have been part of a team of researchers looking at what this means for a society like South Africa. In particular, we have been focused on looking at what the proliferation of the digital economy means for inclusion – making sure that everyone can access it – and economic opportunities.
But the first step was to get absolutely clarity on what this multifaceted phenomenon is.
The digital core
At the centre of the digital economy is a ‘digital core’. This includes the providers of physical technologies like semiconductors and processors, the devices they enable like computers and smartphones, the software and algorithms which run on them, and the enabling infrastructure these devices use like the internet and telecoms networks.
This is followed by ‘digital providers’. These are the parties that use these technologies to provide digital products and services like mobile payments, e-commerce platforms or machine learning solutions.
Lastly, there are the ‘digital applications’. This covers organisations that use the products and services of digital providers to transform the way they go about their business. Examples include virtual banks, digital media, and e-government services.
A concrete example helps paint the pictures. Consider a typical agriculture value chain: a smallholder farmer needs inputs (like financing) to produce and then sell crops to, say, processors or directly to consumers. Today smallholders can obtain financing through their mobile phones from digital financial services providers rather than physically visiting a bank. These digital financial services are able to assess the risk of lending to the farmer by building a profile using AI algorithms in conjunction with alternative data sets, such as mobile phone usage or satellite farm imagery.
Then there are the mobile applications that can help farmers produce better crops. They can provide advice on the best time for planting, soil quality and dealing with pests. It means that a farmer no longer has to rely on face-to-face advice from friends or agro-dealers.
Another example in the agriculture arena is the ability of farmers to rent tractors. Known as asset-sharing platforms, these enable farmers to gain access to a tractor they wouldn’t ordinarily be able to afford.
Digital versus traditional
So what makes the digital economy different to the traditional economy?
Firstly, digital technologies allow firms to do their business differently as well as more efficiently and cost-effectively. They also open up a host of new possibilities. Take navigation apps. No team of people would ever be able to provide real time, traffic-aware navigation in the way that smartphone apps do.
This means that products and services can be offered to more consumers, particularly those who couldn’t be served before.
Secondly, these effects are giving rise to entirely new market structures that remove, among other things, transaction costs in traditional markets. The best example of this is the rise of digital platforms such as Amazon, Uber and Airbnb. These companies connect market participants together in a virtual world. They reveal optimal prices and generate trust between strangers in new ways.
Lastly, the digital economy is fuelled by – and generates – enormous amounts of data. Traditionally when we made purchases in a brick-and-mortar store using cash, no-one was keeping an account of our personal consumption or financial transactions on a large scale. Now, ordering online and paying electronically means that many of our consumption and financial transactions generate electronic data which is recorded and held by someone.
The collation and analysis of this data provides enormous opportunities – and risks – to transform how a range of economic activities are performed.
The digital economy is with us. Yet the boundaries between digital and traditional are blurring as technological change permeates every facet of of modern life. We all need to understand the nature of this change to be able to respond at every level: society, corporate and personal.
Fibre communications on steroids: Wits student breaks the code
- Wits University
A team from Wits (South Africa) and HUST (China) show that multi-dimensional quantum communications with twisted light is possible down legacy fibre networks.
A PhD student at Wits University, along with colleagues from Wits and Huazhang University of Science and Technology in Wuhan, China, found a way to transfer data securely across optical fibre networks.
The team, led by Wits Professor Andrew Forbes, have demonstrated that multiple quantum patterns of twisted light can be transmitted across a conventional fibre link that, paradoxically, supports only one pattern. The research, published in Science Advances, opens up the way to securely transport data across fibre networks, using multiple dimensions of light. Combined with the qualities of entangled quantum light, this data transfer can also now be done in a highly secure manner, which was previously not possible.
“Our team showed that multiple patterns of light are accessible through conventional optical fibre that can only support a single pattern,” says Wits PhD student, Isaac Nape, one of the leading PhD students on the team. “We achieved this ‘quantum trick’ by engineering the entanglement of two photons. We sent the polarised photon down the fibre line and accessed many other patterns with the other photon.
Entanglement is when a pair or group of particles (such as photons) interact in such a way that the quantum state of each of the particles cannot be described independently of the state of the others, even when the particles are separated by a large distance. In other words, qualities such as the handedness (like left or right) of the one entangled particle will directly affect its entangled counterpart.
In this case, the researchers manipulated the qualities of the photon on the inside of the fibre line, by changing the qualities of its entangled counterpart in free space.
“In essence, the research introduces the concept of communicating across legacy fibre networks with multi-dimensional entangled states, bringing together the benefits of existing quantum communication with polarised photons with that of high-dimension communication using patterns of light,” says Forbes.
In the last few decades, quantum entanglement has been extensively explored for a variety of quantum information protocols, notably making communication more secure through Quantum Key Distribution (QKD).
Using so-called “qubits” (2D quantum states) the information capacity is limited but it is easy to get such states across fibre links using polarisation as a degree of freedom for the encoding.
The spatial pattern of light is another degree of freedom that has the benefit of high-dimensional encoding. However, while you can use many patterns of light in communications, this requires custom fibre optical cable, so it is unsuitable to already existing networks.
“Our team found a new way to balance these two extremes, by combining polarisation qubits with high-dimensional spatial modes to create multi-dimensional hybrid quantum states,” says Nape.
“The trick was to twist the one photon in polarisation and twist the other in pattern, forming ‘spirally light’ that is entangled in two degrees of freedom,” says Forbes. “Since the polarisation entangled photon has only one pattern, it could be sent down the long-distance single-mode fibre, while the twisted light photon could be measured without the fibre, accessing multi-dimensional twisted patterns in the free-space. These twists carry orbital angular momentum (or spin), a promising candidate for encoding information.”
The team demonstrated transfer of multi-dimensional entanglement states over 250 m of single-mode fibre, showing that an infinite number of two-dimensional subspaces could be realised. Each subspace could be used for sending information, or multiplexing information to multiple receivers.
“A consequence of this new approach is that multiple patterns of light can be used in the fibre, but two at a time. It is a compromise because you can still get to “infinity” but by adding 2+2+2 … rather than in just one step,” says Forbes. Importantly, high-dimensional states are unsuitable for transmission over conventional fibre networks, whereas this new approach allows legacy networks to be used.
Wits team and industry closer to final LVPS prototype
- Wits University
Team visits Jemstech to view progress on first SA-made prototype for Tile Calorimeter of the ATLAS Detector at CERN.
Jemstech has populated the electronics boards for the first prototype made in South Africa of the LVPS for the upgraded Tile Calorimeter of the ATLAS Detector at CERN, the European Laboratory for Particle Physics, where the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), the world’s largest and most powerful particle accelerator, is housed. (*)
The LVPS will power the future on-detector electronics of the Tile Hadronic Calorimeter – one of components of the ATLAS calorimetry system – that is being designed for the Phase-II upgrade of this detector.
South Africa is responsible for the production of over 1000 of these boards, where the printed circuit boards (PCBs) designed at Wits are manufactured by Trax Interconnect in Cape Town and then passed to Jemstech for population.
The Wits team in charge of the South African production is composed of Edward Nkadimeng, Nkhosiphendule Njara, Thabo Lepota, Ryan McKenzie, Charles Sandrock, Roger van Rensburg and Bruce Mellado. They are part of the ICPP in the Wits School of Physics.
“We discussed quality control issues, details of the bill of materials and other components as well as the implementation of Artificial Intelligence in the process of quality control assessment,” says Professor Bruce Mellado, Director of the ICPP.
(*) Calorimeters measure the energy a particle loses as it passes through the detector. It is usually designed to stop entire or “absorb” most of the particles coming from a collision, forcing them to deposit all of their energy within the detector.
Wits switches to remote online teaching and learning from 20 April 2020
- Wits University
Wits institutes an emergency remote teaching and learning programme as one measure to help minimise the time lost in the academic project.
Dear Colleagues and Students
We are living through an unprecedented era which has tremendous implications for humanity and for us as the Wits community. We know that through our collective efforts we can stave off the coronavirus, and that through physical distancing, testing and quarantining, we can flatten the curve and eventually overcome the disease. But what we do not know, is exactly how long this will take and the exact nature of the resources that will be required.
As the Wits community, we are thus left with some difficult options – wait out the pandemic (and potentially lose the 2020 academic year) or switch to emergency remote teaching and learning alongside a range of other contingency and continuity plans. After consultation with our various constituencies, we have opted for the latter.
We are cognisant of the tremendous effort that has been expended by academics and professional and administrative staff in recent weeks, who have tirelessly prepared online material, who have learnt to switch between pedagogies, and who now have a better understanding of our learning management systems.
At the same time, we are acutely aware of the anxiety and uncertainty that this mode of learning presents for both our colleagues and students. The world as we know it is in flux, and it will take our collective courage, dexterity and commitment to fend off the effects of this pandemic and to adapt to new ways of teaching and learning.
We are aware that the playing field is uneven and that whilst many in society and our community enjoy greater levels of privilege, the consequences of the pandemic have illuminated and amplified the existing inequalities in our society – with the poor, marginal, precarious and under-resourced disproportionally experiencing its fallout. We understand that our emergency remote teaching and learning plan has to take into consideration the different learning environments of our students and their access to learning resources, appropriate devices and data.
Our success is dependent on how we respond as a community – our Senior Executive Team members have to be agile enough to ensure that requisite plans and resources are in place to switch to the emergency remote teaching and learning programme. Our Deans, Heads of Schools, academics and professional and administrative staff have shown that they are able to adapt to a changing environment and are now going beyond the call of duty to ensure student success. Our students will have to exercise their own agency and will have to make an extraordinary effort to adapt to remote online learning with the requisite support from faculties, particularly over the next few months. We acknowledge the importance of the University to provide support but it is also important for our students to develop their own agency to overcome the challenges that confront us today.
Wits re-opens online on 20 April 2020
The next few days (15-19 April 2020) will be used to transition to the online environment with the University officially opening for the second block on 20 April 2020. The almanac has been revised but is dependent on how the crisis unfolds in the months ahead. To be clear, the University is not transitioning to a permanent online modality for all courses, nor are we becoming a correspondence institution. We are instituting an emergency remote teaching and learning programme as one measure that will help us to minimise the time lost in the academic project.
We are clear that the emergency remote teaching programme will not serve as a comprehensive solution to our current challenges. There are specific disciplines that may be patient-based, laboratory-based, studio-based or involve creative practices that cannot be undertaken online. In these instances, we will have to explore high intensity immersion classes when we resume contact teaching, resequencing the academic year to allow for theory to be taught online upfront followed by the practical and laboratory-based components later in the year, and perhaps even recalibrate the almanac.
Access to devices, data and learning resources
Multiple surveys across the institution have revealed that between 10% and 15% of students do not have access to appropriate computing devices, adequate access to data or conducive learning environments. To this end, we are putting in place the following measures to ensure that the majority of students are able to learn remotely:
Wits has established a Mobile Computing Bank (MCB) which will enable qualifying students who do not have access to appropriate mobile learning devices to loan basic devices from the MCB. These basic computing devices will be suitable for educational purposes and will be pre-loaded with the required learning resources before being delivered via the South African Post Office to students who absolutely need them. The cost of the device will be added to students’ fee accounts and will be reversed if the device is returned in good order at the end of the 2020 academic year. The students most in need will be prioritised when devices are allocated.
The University has finalised an agreement with four telecommunications service providers: Telkom, MTN, Vodacom and Cell C to zero-rate Wits’ library and learning management sites from 15 April 2020. The full list of zero-rated sites is available via this link:https://www.wits.ac.za/mywits/zero-rated-data-to-students-and-applicants/
We are working through Universities South Africa to reach agreement with telecommunications service providers to ensure that other products and sites like Microsoft Teams, Zoom and other learning sites are either zero-rated or reverse billed to the University. These sites may have to be accessed via the Wits VPN. Negotiations are underway and we will keep the University informed of these matters in the coming days.
In cases where students do not have access to any device or data, other options are being explored, including the possibility of using the South African Post Office to deliver paper-based material to our students. Additional support will be made available for students when contact teaching resumes, and particularly for students who will have had difficulty in transitioning to online learning. It may be necessary for face-to-face lectures to be extended through the September and December vacation breaks and for some cohorts, to extend the academic programme into 2021.
Students who have queries related to the academic programme should contact their respective schools. Students who do not have access to adequate mobile computing devices and cannot secure them elsewhere, should contact the following Faculty representatives:
As per the communique sent to all postgraduate students on the 6th of April 2020, those students pursuing their Masters or PhD degrees should engage directly with their supervisors to ensure that their research continues. A list of the library sites that have been zero-rated has already been shared with all postgraduate students. In cases where patient-based, studio-based or laboratory-based work is required, these matters should be discussed with the supervisor, Head of School and/or Dean of the respective Faculty.
Conclusion
The next few weeks are going to be challenging for us as a country and as a University. We have no choice but to stand strong in order to overcome this common invisible enemy. We should galvanise our resources to achieve one common goal – to see our students succeed and complete the academic year, despite the inequalities that pervade our society. In so doing, we will develop the high level skills to rebuild our country and produce the problem-posers and problem-solvers needed to tackle the complex problems that confront our society.
We will emerge from this crisis – stronger and more resilient than ever. This is a complex challenge that will require multiple responses from all of us. Let us use this time to find each other and to work together towards a common goal for our students, our staff and our common humanity.
Keep healthy and stay safe.
SENIOR EXECUTIVE TEAM
14 APRIL 2020
Wits COVID-19 dashboard goes continental
- Wits University
New features added as inter disciplinary and inter-institutional collaboration data on the pandemic grows.
Wits University’s COVID-19 South Africa Dashboard has grown with new data features, including snapshot views of how the pandemic is spreading in Africa, as well as statistics showing world trends, being added. (As featured in this article in TIME Magazine.)
The dashboard, launched on 22 March, by Professor Bruce Mellado from the Wits School of Physics and Senior Scientist at iThemba LABS, has gained momentum with a number of volunteers from different disciplines working 24/7 to develop and maintain the dashboard. Wits university is working in collaboration with iThemba LABS of the National Research Foundation.
The visualisation of large quantities of data on the pandemic is a critical step in the analysis of that data. It provides an essential input for analysts to develop the first intuition with which to devise models. The relevance of the visualisation that the dashboard provides is therefore significant.
“The design, development and updating of the dashboard requires a large collaborative effort,” says Professor Barry Dwolatzky, Director of Wits University’s Joburg Centre for Software Engineering (JCSE). “I am assisting in the coordination of the project. Under Bruce Mellado’s leadership a team of highly dedicated and motivated student volunteers, drawn from a variety of disciplines, is working to develop and maintain the dashboard. Although all of us are locked down and working from home, a strong team spirit has developed. I find it interesting that few of us have actually met."
The dashboard is maintained daily and updated within minutes of Government’s announcements on the latest statistics. It provides historical data of relevant parameters, provincial and other breakdowns and it has undergone a number of upgrades since its release.
“Many of the upgrades have been requested by scientists and journalists from all over the country to improve the presentation of the South African data. Currently the site averages about 10 thousand views a day,” says Mellado.
One of the upgrades performed on the dashboard is the addition of a dashboard for the African continent that includes a detailed account of total cases, mortality and recoveries for all African counties. This addition has triggered a collaboration with the Botswana International University of Science and Technology (BIUST) to develop the first COVID-19 dashboard for Botswana, using data from the National Emergency Operation Centre of Botswana.
“This adds a new and important dimension to our existing collaborations with Wits and iThemba LABS,” says Professor Gregory Hillhouse, Head of the Department of Physics and Astronomy at BIUST.
“It is gratifying to see that one of our MSc students who has been trained at iThemba LABS, Mr Otsile Tikologo, is actively involved with this project.”
Another upgrade illustrates the global analysis of the spread in the conditions of containment (or “lockdown”) using epidemiological models. A number of countries have been selected for which containment measures have led to significant reduction in the rate of spread.
Data analysis and statistical treatment of this feature are performed using a frequentist framework. For this purpose the data processing framework ROOT developed by the European Laboratory CERN is used. Results are presented in terms of lower and upper curves for the cumulative number of positive cases as a function of time. These are estimated on the basis of a 68% confidence level. Predictions are updated on a daily basis.
“Understanding the impact of containment measures on the spread of the virus is essential to managing this crisis. Global data provide an invaluable insight into the dynamics of this complex problem,” says Mellado.
Wits researchers launch most comprehensive COVID-19 dashboard in South Africa
- Wits University
The dashboard is aimed at informing government, scientists, the media and general public with quick, easy-to-understand information on the current situation.
An interdisciplinary team of researchers at Wits University has launched the most comprehensive data dashboard on the COVID-19 virus in South Africa to date.
The dashboard, that shows the latest statistics on how the virus is affecting the population of South Africa, is updated on a daily basis, using official statistics from both local sources, such as the National Institute for Communicable Diseases (NICD) and international sources such as the World Health Organisation (WHO). The statistics on aspects such as the cumulative confirmed cases in South Africa, the daily confirmed cases, relative increases of infections are presented in colourful, easy-to-interpret visualisations. Other statistics include infections by gender, province, age and transmission routes.
“We are experts in analysing and interpreting big data, and we believe that it is important that someone put this data together and present a bigger picture of the impact of the virus on the country,” says Professor Bruce Mellado from the Wits School of Physics, who initiated the project. The team working on the project includes computer and data analysts, engineers and physicists.
The dashboard is aimed at informing government, scientists, the media and the general public with quick, easy-to-understand information on the current situation. It is updated every day approximately an hour after the release of the official COVID-19 update from the NICD. As more data becomes available, more features will be added to the dashboard.
Mellado is in talks with several government departments to get them to recognise as well as to add to the database, in order to make it a powerful tool in the fight against the virus.
“Our team believes in the power of knowledge to solve complex issues, and we hope that our strong ties and cooperation between the scientific community, the executive and the public can help overcome challenges such as the COVID-19 pandemic,” says Mellado.
This communique outlines the process through which students who require assistance with a loan device can apply.
MESSAGE FROM THE DEAN OF STUDENT AFFAIRS
Dear Students
This communication follows the email that you received yesterday and will specifically outline the process through which students who require assistance with a loan device can apply.
COVID-19 is challenging us all to do things differently and to adjust to a “new normal”. We do this from very different circumstances. The University acknowledges these disparities and is doing all it can to ensure that our students are supported during this difficult time. As previously indicated, the remote online teaching and learning programme will start on 20 April 2020.
Whilst we have addressed the majority of the issues related to data access, we understand that some students still do not have access to devices appropriate for online and remote learning. We have thus secured a limited number of devices suitable for educational purposes that will be made available to students in need. Applications will be considered on a case by cases basis, and will take the needs of each applicant into account. These limited number of devices will be delivered to students in need.
Please note these are basic devices, will be on loan to students and will be charged to fee accounts. The charges will be reversed if the device is returned in good working order at the end of the academic year. Whilst we acknowledge that it may be difficult for some students to do so, we want to encourage those students who are able to, to continue their own efforts in securing an appropriate device.
Who may apply for a loan device?
Students registered for a full-time degree in 2020;
NSFAS funded and “missing middle” students with a family income of less than R600 000 annually. Bursary/scholarship funded students who have not received devices from their funders. (Please note that all information supplied will be verified); and
Students who do not have their own device, or who do not have access to a device.
Due to the challenges with delivery, regrettably only students residing within the borders of South Africa are eligible for this assistance.
Devices will be allocated in the following order of priority: final year undergraduate students, first year students, other undergraduate students and then postgraduate students.
Conditions
Devices will be made available on a case by case basis, and decisions are made on the basis of the information available and/or provided. In addition:
All devices must be returned by the end of the 2020 academic year. Where devices are not returned, students will be charged for the full cost of the device;
Where a device is damaged and/or lost, a student will be liable for the full repair and/or replacement cost of the device; and
Wits takes no responsibility for maintenance or the insurance of the device.
Application process
Students in need may approach their respective faculties for assistance, provide all the information required and note the conditions for assistance. Recommendations for assistance may also be made to faculties through student leaders (the SRC, school councils and class representatives) and the Division of Student Affairs, provided that all the relevant information is supplied. Incomplete applications will not be considered.
As the academic programme starts on 20 April 2020, those needing assistance are urged to apply through their faculties as soon as possible.
Students must make sure that they provide the following information:
A brief motivation (including proof of income, if possible);
Name and Surname,
Student Number,
Identity Document Number,
Year of Study,
Physical delivery address details (including province) on the application for assistance, including providing their up to date contact mobile numbers; and
Name and contact details of a next-of-kin, parent, or guardian (the University may contact the next of kin / parent/ guardian to verify information provided).
Applications are made through Faculties, via the details listed below:
We hope that these loan devices will go a long way in supporting students in need. Online and remote learning will require some adjustment to your way of learning. It won’t be easy. Some mistakes will be made and lessons will be learnt. We will do our best to support you towards your academic success and the realisation of your dreams.
Stay safe!
Jerome September
Dean: Student Affairs
COVID-19 Update 23: Wits opens online on Monday, 20 April 2020
- Wits University
Wits will commence with emergency remote online teaching and learning from Monday, 20 April 2020.
Dear Students
We hope that you are all in good health.
As you know, Wits will commence with emergency remote online teaching and learning from Monday, 20 April 2020. Whilst many students are looking forward to starting the second teaching block, we understand that many of you may feel uncertain and anxious about learning online. We would like to reassure you that we are on hand to support you as we embark on this different learning journey together.
A phased approach to online learning
The academic programme will be introduced in phases over the next few weeks, so that you have time to adjust to the new learning environment. All lectures will be available on our learning management systems and can be downloaded at any time. If you are still waiting for your mobile computing device to be delivered or your data to be connected, do not despair – you can access your lectures and other resources from Sakai or Moodle as soon as you are connected. Whilst we will be resolute in our efforts to recover the lost elements of the 2020 academic year, we remain committed to you, our students who are an integral part of the Wits community.
Tests and assignments
No assignments or tests will fall due or be scheduled until the 4th of May 2020. These measures will ensure that students are not academically disadvantaged in any way.
Mobile Computing Devices dispatched
We are cognisant of the digital and related learning inequalities in our society and we are doing our best to ensure that we address your needs. Hundreds of mobile computing devices have been pre-loaded with the requisite software and have already been dispatched. Staff are working through this weekend to ensure that the remaining devices are pre-loaded and dispatched, so that they reach students on Monday or during the course of next week.
Zero-rated sites
Wits has negotiated with telecommunications service providers to have learning and library sites zero-rated so that you can access them at no cost to users. You may require R1 of data to be loaded before you access these sites: https://www.wits.ac.za/mywits/zero-rated-data-to-students-and-applicants/. (P.S. Zero-rating means that you are not charged when you access these sites.)
Access to data
The University has signed a contract with MTN to provide 30 gigabytes of data (10GB Anytime and 20GB Night Express) at no cost to you (Wits students) for one month, to kick-start your online learning journey. It is imperative for your mobile number to be updated on the student self-service portal if you wish to make use of this service, as these numbers will be provided to MTN.
Help is a click away
Please direct academic enquiries to your respective faculty as follows:
Our academics and professional, administrative and support staff have worked tirelessly over the past few weeks to prepare to go online. We have galvanised our resources to support you over the next few months and your success is our priority. We accept that this is a new learning experience and that there may be some challenges, but we are on hand to solve them together. Please feel free to share suggestions on how we can improve emergency remote online teaching and learning over the next days, weeks and months.
Look after yourself and keep healthy and safe.
SENIOR EXECUTIVE TEAM
17 APRIL 2020
COVID-19 Update 24: How to access your data
- Wits University
Dear Students
ACCESS TO DATA – MTN and VODACOM
Yesterday we informed you that the University had signed a contract with MTN to provide 30 gigabytes of data (10GB Anytime and 20GB Night Express) at no cost to you (Wits students) for one month, to kick-start your online learning journey.
We are pleased to let you know that Vodacom came on board this morning with an equivalent offer and will provide details on this in the course of the next 48 hours.
MTN is in the process of verifying information and will be activating the data before Monday morning. Please access the attached information for MTN users to see how to check balances.
If you are using an alternative service provider you may wish to purchase a sim card and then get yourself on to either the MTN or Vodacom network. Please bear in mind that you would then need to update your cell number on the self-service portal. Your new number will only be relayed to MTN and Vodacom on Monday.
It is imperative for your mobile number to be updated on the student self-service portal if you wish to make use of this service.
Please note that this offer runs for one month from 20 April 2020, so please use the data responsibly for educational and learning purposes.
Should you encounter any problems – please contact the service provider in the first instance and then the University via ithelp@wits.ac.za or log a query via https://witshelp-ism.saasiteu.com on Monday.
SENIOR EXECUTIVE TEAM
18 APRIL 2020
COVID-19 Update 24: Data access: All four major mobile service providers on board
- Wits University
Students will get 30GB of data if registered on MTN, Vodacom, Cell C or Telkom.
Dear Students
Wits University is pleased to announce that you can now access 30GB of data (10GB Anytime & 20GB at night) if you are registered with any of the four networks - MTN, Vodacom, Cell C or Telkom. This service is at no cost to students. The offer is valid for one month starting on 20 April 2020, and should be used wisely for online learning and educational purposes.
Here are some tips to maximise your data usage:
Streamline social media apps to save bandwidth. Visit https://wits-e.wits.ac.za/x/FZjd2e to find information on how to reduce data usage on YouTube, Twitter, Instagram and Facebook.
Turn off automatic media downloads in apps such as WhatsApp
Turn off auto play in video apps like YouTube
When viewing videos, select low resolution options. High Definition (HD) videos use high volumes of data.
Turn off automatic system updates and if possible, choose critical updates only. Schedule these to take place at night.
Email documents in a zipped format but use email as a last resort. Content should rather be loaded on Moodle/Sakai where possible.
Turn off cloud storage and syncing options such as iCloud.
If your device has low data or data saver modes, activate them.
Use the following links to streamline data usage on your devices:
Android devices
Tips on how to reduce data usage for Android devices.
Tips on how to reduce data usage for iOS devices. These steps will vary depending on the model of the device that you are using as well as the version of iOS you have installed. Please refer to the online user manuals if your version isn't covered here.
Turning on low data mode
Limiting apps using data
Limiting background data usage
Turning off the iCloud drive
Turning off automatic downloads
We hope that these are helpful. We wish you all the best on your online learning journey.
SENIOR EXECUTIVE TEAM
19 APRIL 2020
Wits COVID-19 dashboard gets grant award from the IEEE
- Wits University
New features added as inter disciplinary and inter-institutional collaboration data on the pandemic grows.
Wits University’s COVID-19 dashboard has received a grant award by the IEEE. The IEEE is the world’s largest technical professional organisation dedicated to advancing technology. The IEEE has over 400,000 members from all continents. Through its members the IEEE promotes the development of research and technology transfer activities across 40 societies, which span a wide range of disciplines ranging from Aerospace to Vehicular technology, going through computing, electronics, industry applications and many others.
The grant award supports COVID-19-related visualisation and analytics for Southern Africa. The nature of the project is interdisciplinary, where medical data and expertise need to be combined with the wealth of methodologies and algorithms used in advanced analytics, Big Data and Data Science. Assumptions used in the project revolve around our current level of understanding of advanced analytics driven by Data Science and other disciplines. Both main-stream statistical frameworks, frequentist and Bayesian are an underlying assumption to model development. Input from the different medical, virology and custodians of static data pertaining to populations, social and medical vulnerabilities, access to medical infrastructure, prevalence of various relevant pre-existing conditions are also underlying assumptions.
"The project encapsulates methodologies in Data Science and Artificial Intelligence that effectively combine medical and other data to provide a comprehensive synthetic view of the predictive landscape.” says Professor Bruce Mellado of Wits University and iThemba LABS.
The chief goal of the project supported by the IEEE grant award is to control the number of people infected, hospitalisations, ICU admissions and mortality in South Africa and other countries. These outcomes will be predicted as a function of non-pharmaceutical interventions in the post-lockdown period to allow for the economy to reactivate. Analytical and predictive tools developed by these projections will assist policy makers to enact rules and regulations with which to revive economic activity, while preventing a massive outbreak of the virus. This is essential to alleviate the economic impact of the virus in African countries, in particular to slow down the rate of job losses.
This grant award provides various forms of support, including support for the organization of monthly webinars. “These webinars will be hosted by Wits University’s Joburg Centre for Software Engineering (JCSE) and will bring together panels of experts who are actively collaborating and working on the Wits COVID-19 dashboard project, including data scientists, modellers, medical experts and software engineers. The webinars will be open to all and will be advertised shortly,” says Professor Barry Dwolatzky.
Wits University’s COVID-19 dashboard continues to expand. A dashboard for the Gauteng Province has been put in place. Following a successful collaborative model developed with the Botswana International University of Science and Technology, three new dashboards have been launched: Nigeria, Eswatini and Namibia. This takes place in collaboration with local universities and institutions. Collaborative efforts have been established with Zimbabwe, Morocco and Senegal.
The weekly series is presented by Professor Barry Dwolatzky, the “Grand Geek” and Director of the Johannesburg Centre for Software Engineering (JCSE) at Wits University, and in the format of a conversation with a panel of experts and leading figures in South Africa’s digital revolution. Each session is shared on the Facebook page: Optimizing Podcast: Leading Africa’s Digital Future - another podcast series hosted by Dwolatzky earlier this year that aims to develop inter-generational conversations about digital transformation in Africa:
JCSE Listening Circle Session 2: Social activism for digital professionals
JCSE Listening Circle Session 3: Digital technology in support of energy challenges
JCSE Listening Circle Session 4: How to Slay a Werewolf: Reflections on the State of Software Engineering in South Africa
JCSE Listening Circle Session 5: South Africa’s IT industry
Wits students’ research on cover of leading world optics journal
- Wits University
Wits Master’s students create best practice guide for efficient and accurate use of DMDs in structured light laboratories.
A research paper by a group of Master’s students at Wits University features on the cover of the April issue of the prestigious optics journal, Optical Engineering, published by the Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers (SPIE) Digital Library, the world’s largest collection of optics and photonics applied research.
“Our paper is one of the most comprehensive guides published to date for the use of digital micromirror devices (DMDs) in structured light research, and is particularly appealing for optics laboratories in Africa given the high costs of buying equipment overseas for this field of study,” says Stirling.
“To be on the cover of Optical Engineering is both prestigious and useful. It means that the paper is more likely to be read, remembered, and shared. This will help both new researchers planning to use DMDs and existing labs who wish to standardise DMD operation. Being featured on the cover of a leading international journal shows the potency of science in Africa and cements the reputation of Wits as the leading physics institution on the continent,” he adds.
Stirling explains that structured light is a field of physics dedicated to understanding and controlling all of the different properties of light, such as polarization, shape and wavelength.
“By manipulating these properties, we can forge light into a powerful tool for advancing not only our understanding of the Universe, but also our quality of life by revolutionising technologies in everything from the smartphone industry to medical imaging.”
“But while new technologies are constantly being developed, a common approach to create structured light is to use what is called a Spatial Light Modulator (SLM),” says Stirling, adding that a SLM is an electronic screen that displays a ‘hologram’, a carefully designed picture so that when the SLM is illuminated, light with a desired set of properties is produced.
Enter DMDs
Recently, a new type of SLM called a Digital Micromirror Device (DMD) has emerged.
DMDs were originally developed for use in digital projectors and are built around a screen made up of millions of microscopic mirrors.
Stirling explains: “These devices have rapidly become widely used thanks to their low cost when compared to other more traditional SLM. However, despite their growing ubiquity there was ambiguity around the proper usage of DMDs in the laboratory environment - this was what our paper set out to tackle.”
Two key factors influence the performance of SLMs:
Optical efficiency – how much of the illuminated light is wasted by the device, rather than being available for the application, and
Accuracy – how closely does the light produced match the desired outcome?
“Our research addressed both of these issues. First, we derived a mathematical model to predict the optical efficiency of the DMD based on how it was illuminated. We then validated our model using measurements taken in the lab. We found that the optimal configuration for illumination yields a 20% improvement in efficiency.
“However, this improvement would not be beneficial if it came at the expense of accuracy. We iteratively adjusted the picture the DMD displayed until we achieved the best possible accuracy, in excess of 96%.”
“Finally, we described some of the subtler aspects of DMD operation to a naïve user. Our paper is one of the most comprehensive guides to DMD use published to date,” says Stirling.
The world is flat: Covid-19 becomes the driving force for 4IR
- Barry Dwolatzky and Mark Harris
The most profound change is the accelerated of way in which digital transformation and the Fourth Industrial Revolution have moved at warp speed.
In February 2020 the Presidential Commission on the 4th Industrial Revolution (4IR) finalised its recommendations. As it did so an unexpected and terrifying tsunami was gathering on the horizon. On 26 March South Africa went into a national lockdown in response to the Covid-19 pandemic.
It is still far too early to understand the ramifications of the pandemic on the country, our economy and institutions. However, one immediate and obvious consequence has been the rapid adoption of digital technology. This is driven by necessity as the world has been catapulted into rapid digital transformation.
Many people are discussing the “new normal” that will emerge beyond the current coronavirus emergency. There seems to be a consensus that we won’t simply return to our old ways of working, at least until a vaccine is available, but possibly forever. New standards for health and safety are emerging that will prioritise social and physical distancing. These standards will permanently influence the nature of the “workplace” and how work is done. What will the “new normal” look like? Has 4IR suddenly arrived?
Digital transformation inhibitors
Over recent years many digital transformation initiatives have failed, both in South Africa and internationally. In an article inForbesmagazine published on 30 September 2019,Blake Morgan wrotethat 70% of corporate digital transformations fail.
While each failed transformation initiative can be attributed to specific reasons, a common theme in almost all failed digital transformation projects is a lack of buy-in. Either executive support for the proposed initiative is insufficient or change management is unsuccessful. People have a natural propensity to resist change, and digital transformation usually involves a profound and significant change in how people are expected, or required, to behave.
In South Africa, the challenge of creating a new digital world is compounded by other inhibitors to the digital transformation such as poor connectivity, lack of digital literacy and a low level of access to suitable technology, such as smartphones.
Some examples of digital transformation in SA in response to Covid-19
Detailed case studies of how specific organisations and sectors in South Africa are responding to the pandemic are still to be written. We have, however, been collecting some of our own observations and those of others. We have used these to inform the comments that follow.
The sudden decision by the government to impose a general lockdown gave companies and institutions only three days to move to a work-from-home (WFH) policy. Different sectors dealt with this enormous challenge in different ways, some coping better than others
The health sector: Perhaps the most important example of digital adoption in the health sector has been the rapid adoption of basic tele-medicine methods. Health practitioners, including GPs, psychologists, biokineticists and pharmacists have started using tools such as WhatsApp, Zoom and various apps to engage with patients and clients. There has also been innovative use of data visualisation tools such as Google’s Data Studio to aggregate and present Covid-19 data in the form of dashboards.
Education:Although the issue of e-learning and distance education has been discussed in South Africa for decades, the sudden arrival of the lockdown caught most institutions completely unprepared. It is in this sector that the deep chasm of the digital divide has become most visible. Issues of connectivity (both the cost and availability of network connection) and access to technology and computer literacy have become critical factors. We have, however, seen rapid adoption of e-learning and distance education tools and methods.
Justice:Who would have imagined a few months ago that advocates would be arguing cases on Zoom to judges while they all sat in their studies at home? This is now happening in “virtual courtrooms” around South Africa. One of the professions most reluctant to embrace digital transformation before the lockdown has been transformed in the space of a few weeks.
We could list other sectors. Driven by necessity, individuals and institutions are willingly adopting digital technology in order to survive and continue operations. And – most importantly – the technology adopted has been existing applications that are readily available. This digital transformation has been achieved at a very low cost using technology that is free, some of it open source, and all of it easy to use.
Digital transformation in South Africa beyond the pandemic
It is our belief that the pandemic has removed some of the significant inhibitors to digital transformation in South Africa. These are:
Executive buy-in:With the arrival of Covid-19, executives who in the past were lukewarm to digital adoption now have evidence that digital technology actually works within the context of their organisation, and that it supports effective and better ways of working.
Policies and regulation:Both government and business are having to rewrite a variety of policies and regulations to accommodate the need for rapid change to cope with the changes we are experiencing.
Buy-in from staff and other stakeholders:Before the pandemic, many people working in organisations and people interacting with organisations might have been resistant to using digital technology. The pandemic has blown away many of these doubts and opened up people’s minds to different ways of working and interacting.
Concerns about cost and new technologies: A common preconception has been that digital transformation is expensive and requires the development of new customised digital solutions with a large price-tag. Many organisations have made effective use of available, low-cost (or free) solutions, most of it on the Cloud.
Concerns about skills:Another preconception is that digital transformation requires lengthy and expensive training of existing staff, or recruitment of new staff. During the Covid-19 crisis many people have rapidly and easily taken to working in a digital world.
Connectivity and access:While some short-term solutions have been found during the lockdown period, a great deal will need to be done in the future to remove the digital divide. Government, companies and other institutions have all come to realise the importance of having the entire population well connected.
Redefining a ‘job’
In the old style of working, a “job” is defined as supervised attendance at the workplace. Being employed means having a “job”, which means that one is paid to spend a certain number of hours each month at a place of work. This is usually understood as a specific physical space in an office provided by the employer. Measurements of an employee’s performance are usually relative to time spent at the workplace and managers track delivery through inspection. We might, for example, measure productivity as the output produced per time spent at the workplace.
WFH fundamentally changes the definition of a job. In the future, jobs will be deconstructed into a set of activities or tasks. In thinking about a “job” we will no longer see it as belonging to an individual. The tasks within a job might be done by different individuals, or might even be automated and done by robots. While there will still be tasks that require physical presence, this will likely be the focus of moves to drive automation. We’ll discuss this in more detail later.
A redefinition of the notion of a job brings into focus the issue of how work is measured and how it is managed. There will be a requirement for new tools and processes. These tools will be designed to give management oversight of tasks. The output of tasks will need to be monitored, measured and coordinated.
Human resource models will have to be re-examined
Contractual relationships that currently bind an individual having a job to a specific organisation will be replaced by tools that measure task outputs. Instead of me saying, “I have an employment contract with Company X that defines my job at Company X”, I will say: “I spend my day doing tasks of a certain type. I get rewarded for completing these tasks. Some of the tasks I do are for Company X.” This trend emerged several years ago under the definition of the “Gig Economy”,which is definedas an arrangement where organisations and independent workers engage via a digital platform in short-term work arrangements. The changes brought about by the Covid-19 pandemic will see this trend accelerate rapidly and will bring a larger variety of tasks into this mode of working.
Management philosophies will be dramatically impacted by new human capital data
Many of the changes brought about by remote working and a redefinition of the notions of “a job” and a “workplace” will increase the importance of data to manage the organisation. We are destined to see a transition from human-to-machine interaction to far more machine-to-machine (M2M) activity. This type of communication results in the generation and use of large amounts of data. Although this is not new, it will become far more pervasive.
Given the importance of data, all organisations will need to develop very clear strategies on the collection, storage, use and management of data. This is called “data governance” and it will become a central requirement in our new way of working.
Automation will become widespread
We have touched on automation in relation to redefining jobs and sequences of tasks, some of which might be automated, or performed by robots. Social distancing and the WFH will result in society adapting to working more interactively with chatbots, robots and other forms of automation. An important prerequisite for wide-scale automation is the availability of data. This seems set to become a reality, based partly on the increased use of M2M communication and the Internet of Things (IoT).
Covid-19 flattens the world
In his 2005 book “The World is Flat” Thomas L Friedman writes about small companies accessing advanced skill sets from around the world. If this is used correctly it will be one of the most powerful tools a company can have. It will allow small companies to compete globally and gain access to advanced skill sets (especially in areas such as engineering design) at a reduced cost for a temporary period of time. This allows small local companies to produce globally competitive products without the long-term expenses and risk of employing a large team. This can only be accomplished if done correctly.
In the post-Covid-19 “new-normal”, businesses that reject outsourcing will simply not scale at the same speed as the ones that do. For the first time, a piece of work done by an individual in South Africa vs someone outside of our country will only be differentiated by quality, speed and cost. While this might not be creating local employment, it does put South Africa in the position to start exporting technology globally, which will have a significant impact on the local economy.
Reflections on 4IR
While South Africa’s Presidential Commission on 4IR submitted its recommendations to government early this year, these will need to be rewritten in the light of Covid-19.
One of the key principles at the heart of the commission, and much of the discussion that has taken place around 4IR, is “technological determinism”, ie, technology drives change. The response to Covid-19 implies that rather than technological determinism we are seeing the opposite driver for change, namely “social determinism”. At the same time, core concepts such as the notion of “jobs” and “workplaces” are being redefined.
It has become critical that the Presidential Commission on 4IR should re-examine its recommendation from the perspective of social determinism and in the light of redefining some core concepts. While a new 4IR strategy will be required for the post-Covid-19 South Africa, it will need to take account of the many changes currently happening outside of any strategic framework.
Professor Barry Dwolatzky is Emeritus Professor at the University of the Witwatersrand and director of the Joburg Centre for Software Engineering. Mark Harris is CEO of Altron Nexus. This article first appeared in Daily Maverick/Business Maverick.
Top nuclear physicist to lead Wits
- Wits University
Professor Zeblon Vilakazi appointed as the Wits Vice-Chancellor and Principal from 1 January 2021
The Council of the University of the Witwatersrand today announced the appointment of Professor Zeblon Vilakazi as the Vice-Chancellor and Principal of the University from 1 January 2021. He takes the reins from Professor Adam Habib who leaves Wits at the end of the year to lead the School of Oriental and African Studies in London.
Professor Vilakazi is the current Vice-Principal and Deputy Vice-Chancellor for Research and Postgraduate Studies at Wits. Under his leadership, Wits’ research output has more than doubled, with the University increasingly producing more research with impact. He is widely published (325 papers) and highly cited with an h-index of 70.
“Professor Zeblon Vilakazi is the epitome of a world-class researcher who is globally recognised for his scientific work, and for his contribution towards developing higher education in Africa. He is a truly talented individual who is an inspiring exemplar for all Africans,” says Mr Isaac Shongwe, Chairperson of the Wits Council, the highest decision-making body of the University. “We are confident that Professor Vilakazi will ably lead Wits to its centenary in 2022 and beyond, steward a new vision for the academy, and reinvigorate the academic project in a higher education context that is rapidly changing.”
“It is an honour for me to have been appointed to this prestigious position,” says Professor Vilakazi. “I am committed to working with my esteemed colleagues, fellow academics and smart, savvy students to create new knowledge, and to develop the high level skills required to move South Africa, and our economy forward. We also need to continue to develop the originators, innovators and critical thinkers who can help us solve the problems of the 21st Century.”
Professor Zeblon Zenzele Vilakazi joined Wits in January 2014 as the Deputy Vice-Chancellor: Research and Postgraduate Affairs and was promoted to the position of Vice-Principal in April 2020.
He has served as the Group Executive for Research and Development at the Nuclear Energy Corporation of South Africa (NECSA) and as the Director of iThemba LABS.
Born in Katlehong, a township located on the East Rand, Professor Vilakazi obtained his PhD from Wits 1998.
He was one of the first students from Africa to conduct PhD research at the European Centre for Nuclear Research (CERN) in Geneva, Switzerland. This was followed by a National Research Foundation postdoctoral fellowship at CERN.
Upon his return to South Africa he lectured at the University of Cape Town (UCT), where he was instrumental in establishing South Africa’s first experimental high-energy physics research group focusing on the development of the High-level Trigger for the CERN-ALICE experiment at the Large Hadron Collider.
Under his leadership, Vilakazi enabled the University to achieve its strategic objective of creating an enabling environment for a research-intensive and postgraduate-oriented university. This includes achieving one of the fastest growth rates in subsidy research outputs and the doubling of research income. He increased the number of postgraduate students to realise the University’s vision of becoming a research-intensive African university.
His international profile opened opportunities to serve as a visiting scientist at the Atomic Energy Commission and Alternative Energy in Saclay, France. Professor Vilakazi served as chairperson of the International Atomic Energy Agency’s Standing Advisory Committee on Nuclear Applications from 2009 to 2011.
He also served as a member of the International Union of Pure and Applied Physics’ Working Group for Nuclear Physics.
In 2010, Professor Vilakazi was nominated by the World Economic Forum as a Young Global Leader.
He is a Fellow of the African Academy of Sciences.
Professor Vilakazi is currently a member of the Programme Advisory Committee for Nuclear Physics at the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research in Russia.
Technology brings change but labour can shape its direction
- Alex Mohubetswane Mashilo
Increased capital investment and productivity need not result in job losses. Industrial policy can link investment incentives to job preservation and creation.
Technology is a product of human labour. The working class and society can therefore shape its direction. According to the International Labour Organisation (ILO), long-term technological change has created more employment than it has destroyed, and has pushed overall living standards to new levels, notwithstanding the disruption that it inevitably brings.
What’s more, the ILO concludes in a 2017 report, there’s no “clear sense that this will be otherwise in the foreseeable future”.
The Southern Centre for Inequality Studies has embarked on a research project comparing countries across the global South to explore, through global production networks, the impact of new technology on the future of work and workers. Global production networks have gained increased importance in global production organisation, co-ordination and associated international trade. Using global production networks to anchor an analytical framework enables a focus on the actors involved in the geographically dispersed, multi-scale, multi-dimensional, globalised structures of production and trade.
This includes a focus on workers.
My research focuses on the automotive manufacturing sector – South Africa’s leading manufacturing sector. The research shows that, while technology is indeed a powerful determinant of change, it is important to recognise the role that worker organisation and the state, through its industrial policy, play in shaping the direction of change.
Technological change and job disruption
My findings indicate a decline in employment in the final vehicle assembly segment by 8,600 workers, from 38,600 in 1995 to 30,000 in 2017.
During the same period, investment by final vehicle companies, known as original equipment manufacturers, increased from R0.8 billion in 1995 to R8.2 billion in 2017.
Figure 1 below shows the relationship between the investment and employment trends.
Author’s own design.
The role of the state’s industrial policy through the Motor Industry Development Programme played a key role from September 1995 to December 2012 in attracting increased investment. The plan offered incentives, including import rebate credit certificates. The incentives gave automotive exporting companies reduced import duty, or duty-free imports, on the components that they did not source locally or vehicle models they did not produce in the country.
Increased automation of production, a key part of investment by original equipment manufacturers, wasn’t introduced in isolation. With it came global production systems, new methods of work and ways of co-ordinating production, all more effective than the previous ones.
The changes included rationalisation of vehicle model platforms, in certain instances down to single vehicle platform assembly plant operations.
From January 2013 investment in the automotive manufacturing sector was led by the Automotive Production and Development Programme. This was made up of several incentives. These included a cash grant of 25%–30% of the value of qualifying investment for the vehicle assembly segment and 25%–35% for the components manufacturing segment, payable over three years.
The global economic crisis of 2008 badly affected investment, production and employment in original equipment manufacturers. This is reflected in Figure 1 above, and Figure 2 below.
Yet these manufacturers achieved remarkable productivity from 1995, as a result of technological change and the accompanying work reorganisation and restructuring.
During the period 1995 to 2017, they gained double the capacity of output per worker. Figure 2 below shows their total production volumes divided by their total employment.
Author’s own design.
The 38,600 workers employed by the manufacturers in 1995 produced 388,442 vehicles, averaging an output of 10 vehicles per worker. The rise in production surpassed half a million, reaching a peak of 652,965 vehicles in 2008. These were produced by a reduced workforce of 35,900 workers – that is the 1995 workforce less 2,700 workers.
The average output per worker increased to about 16 vehicles in 2008. The increase reached double capacity in 2014 from that of 1995, to an average of 20 vehicles per worker. In 2014 the manufacturers’ workforce was reduced to 27,715 – that is the 1995 workforce less 10,885 workers.
The trends presented here reflect the original equipment manufacturers’ specific reality. The research findings show that there are production conditions that, if strong enough, can counteract the reduction in the workforce, and even result in an increase in the workforce, which is important for industrial policy. This is clearly demonstrated by the case of VW, highlighted below.
Worker agency
In 2015, VW decided to invest R6.1 billion, including R564 million for 330 new robots, at its vehicle body construction plant in Uitenhage, Eastern Cape province.
The new robots resulted in 40 qualified fitters being declared redundant (not to speak of less skilled workers). VW served the National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (NUMSA) with a retrenchment notice. The union challenged VW, resulting in an agreement for the retraining of the fitters as electricians. This paved the way for their jobs to be saved.
VW globally also allocated more production volumes to its Uitenhage plant. This helped save the jobs of (less skilled) production workers that could otherwise have been disrupted by the use of robots. And it resulted in an additional 300 production workers being required.
The plant’s production increased to 133,000 vehicles in 2018, of which 83,000 were for export markets. The 2018 output reflected an increase of 23,000 vehicles from 110,000 in 2017. In 2019 the plant reached its target of 160,000 vehicles, 27,000 more than in 2018.
Conclusion
The decline in overall manufacturers’ employment from 1995 to 2017 in the context of increased capital investment and productivity underlines the necessity of increasing local production to save jobs and create additional employment. This social upgrading through the targeting of employment creation is an important industrial policy consideration and can be linked with the investment incentives given by the state.
The VW case shows that increased production localisation in global production networks can benefit employment in two important ways, despite technological disruption. Firstly, it counteracts retrenchments consequent on the way new technology is adopted. Secondly, it creates additional employment. As the role played by NUMSA at VW indicates, organised labour can shape the direction of new technology and its impact on workers.
Kenya’s internet balloons could help to bridge the digital divide
- Nixon Muganda
Kenya's new internet balloons could help to get more Kenyans online and drive new industry.
Kenya has, in partnership with Google’s sister firm, Loon, launched a fleet of 35 internet balloons that will provide internet services to remote areas of the country. This is the first balloon-powered internet to launch in Africa. Nixon Muganda explains how these will work and the opportunities they can bring.
How do internet balloons work and do many countries use them?
Google’s internet balloons are wireless Internet connectivity towers that float in the stratosphere. They beam Internet signals to earth-based stations, which then transmit the internet to users through internet service providers.
These floating giant balloons are made from plastic. They are fitted with solar panels which power the gadgets that control the balloon’s operations and beam internet signals to earth. Using a special crane, the balloons are propelled to the stratosphere – a height of about 20km above the earth. Artificial intelligence software installed in the balloons’ computers controls the floating movements using wind power.
A single balloon can provide internet connectivity to an area of about 80km in diameter and serve about 1,000 users on the ground.
It’s expected that the signal strength users get will be similar to 4G browsing speeds.
What does internet connectivity look like in Kenya?
Kenya has a wide variety of connectivity infrastructure. About 39 million Kenyans are hooked up to wireless subscriptions, mostly through mobile phones, which depend on signals from a mast. Wired subscriptions stand at about 458,000.
This is impressive for a population of about 51 million people. Internet connectivity in Tanzania, by comparison, reached an estimated 27 million people (out of about 56 million people) by March 2020.
Kenya also continues to deepen its connectivity infrastructure through a national fibre optic cable. To date, close to 6,000km of the fibre optic backbone has been laid down and plans are to reach all 47 counties.
Despite impressive developments, more can be done. Most people in Kenya access the internet through their mobile phones. When looking at how well mobile phone providers cover the country geographically, we see that large areas of the country, particularly in the north and northeast, don’t have much coverage. Most internet coverage is around towns in the central, coastal, and western areas and along major roadways.
This state of coverage is partly attributable to internet privatisation and electricity coverage.
Commercially, it does not make sense for internet service providers to cover areas of low population density, since the cost of physical internet infrastructure outweighs the benefits from subscriptions.
Market competition also affects connectivity. Two mobile network operators – Safaricom and Airtel – have a stranglehold on the market. They have not provided internet users with choice in terms of price, service variety and quality. And over about 20 years, the telecoms market has seen the demise of close to 70 internet service providers.
How will the balloons change this?
As countries aim for universal internet connectivity, Google’s Internet balloons are a welcome addition.
If the balloons are directed towards the currently underserved areas, their presence could reduce the digital exclusion of those areas.
Their entry in the market may also jolt the current market players to reconsider their pricing models and become more innovative in their service offerings. There could be a reduction in data rates, or bundling of more services at the current price. That’s good for internet users.
But every big entrant into the market could have an impact on smaller players, some of which continue to provide “last mile” internet coverage, even in commercially less attractive regions. Poorly resourced and weakly capitalised internet service providers might fold, unless they reimagine their business models.
This is a new venture, and it’s too early to know exactly what effect these balloons will have or the types of social changes they’ll bring.
What type of opportunities could these balloons bring to Kenya’s remote areas?
There are a number of opportunities that these balloons can bring, particularly to rural areas. The balloons don’t have the physical limitations of wired connections, such as installations in sometimes inaccessible regions.
The balloons could give more people access to information and communication technology infrastructure and services. They could help create more industry around e-commerce, e-learning and e-government.
Given the involvement of the government of Kenya in the project, we should expect a push for increased internet use in the key sectors of rural areas such as health, education and agriculture. For instance, the balloons could allow more children in rural areas to have the option of online learning. Also, new telemedicine technology has been launched and the balloons are expected to facilitate long-distance patient and clinician contact, care and monitoring.
Hopefully, as the benefits of Google’s internet balloons unfold, we should also see faster development of local digital applications, supported by local digital infrastructure platforms. That might spur the development of content.
With better and improved internet connectivity, there is also an opportunity to reimagine public service delivery.
Wits students dominate global supercomputing competition
- Wits University
Despite Covid-19, Wits students won second place with their applications to aide analysis of Covid-19 data in the competition held online for the first time.
Students in the School of Computer Science and Applied Mathematics (CSAM) and the School of Electrical and Information Engineering (EIE), nabbed a well-deserved second place at the 2020 final leg of the International Supercomputing Competition (ISC) Student Cluster Competition.
The Student Cluster Competition is open to all students in South Africa, and to students from universities globally.
The international finals have on average 82 university students from 11 countries competing to reign as world supercomputing champions. Since its inception seven years ago, South African students have dominated the ISC Student Cluster Competition and made it onto the podium in every single leg of the competition.
Here is a brief look at Wits’ track record:
First place awards: 2013, 2014, 2016 and 2019
Second place awards: 2015, 2017, and 2020
Third place awards: 2018
With this heavy legacy to live up to, the Wits teams prepared to dominate in the 2019 leg of the Student Cluster Competition.
The teams consisted of four undergraduate students from the Computer Science and Applied Mathematics (CSAM) and one student from the School of Electrical and Information Engineering (EIE) who spent endless hours in a specially prepared venue provided by TW Kambule Mathematical Sciences Laboratories.
These hard-working students paved the way to the regional finals and were tasked with designing a low budget cluster with a R190 000 budget constrain.
In true Wits fashion the students overcame all obstacles before them and won the regional competitions thrusting them further into the final leg of the country wide competition.
December 2019 saw Wits earn first place by completely dominating the competition and earning a spot in the 2020 final leg of the International Supercomputing Competition (ISC) 2020 Student Cluster Competition.
With the team having earned the right to represent South Africa on the world stage, the Witsies dominated the Centre for High Performance Computing’s (CHPC) national team. However, due to the Covid-19 pandemic the competition could no longer be held in Germany and the international finals were moved online.
The rules of the international leg need each participating country to have 6 members and 2 reserve members. The South African team consisted of:
Michael Beukman (CSAM-Wits)
Guy Axelrod (CSAM-Wits)
Victoria Bench (EE-Wits)
Donald Alungile Tshangela (CSAM-Wits)
Sivenathi Madlokazi (CSAM-Wits)
Mikhail Vink (UWC)
With reserves:
Stephanie Agenbag (UWC)
Kalreen Govender (UKZN)
Moving online meant all the work that went into preparing a cluster for the finals had to be shelved and the team had to adapt to a new focus on a display of skills using the same resources as everyone else.
The virtual stage was prepared and the tasks were given: students had to optimise resource heavy applications that aided with analysis of Covid-19 data in real time and the effects of global warming around the world (Tinker HP and Elmer/Ice respectively).
To make the competition even more exciting the judges threw in two additional challenges to see if the students could adapt to the field’s ever-changing terrain, an advanced coding challenge and the creation of an Artificial Intelligence.
Thanks to the many hours of training with Avraham Bank (teaching and training coach) and the coordination of Brian Maistry (MSS HPC and Cybersecurity coordinator) the Wits students managed to secure a second place finish.
The team acknowledges the support and contribution of the Mathematical Sciences Support team, HoS Professor Raseelo Moitsheki, Dell , CHPC and the Texas Advanced Computing Centre.
Fast tracking the critical task of building South Africa’s digital economy
- Barry Dwolatzky and Mark Harris
South Africa lags behind the rest of the world when it comes to embracing the digital economy.
There are five critical areas we need to address to bring us up to speed.
In this article, we discuss the feasibility of a successful digital transformation in South Africa. Are our economy and society ready to embrace digital so that it will fill the dominant role suggested by Coleman and others?
In a recent report from the World Bank Group, digital transformation and the growth of the digital economy in South East Asia is analysed. The authors point to some of the successes that have been achieved, but also highlight some of the key gaps that have hindered the development of the digital economy in that region. The report identifies five factors that influence the successful development of the digital economy. These are: connectivity; digital payments; skills; logistics; policies and regulations.
Digital readiness
Global technology company Cisco has developed a “Digital Readiness Index”, which provides a measure of how likely countries are to successfully achieve digital transformation. The five key factors identified in the World Bank report are included in this index, together with other factors such as basic human needs and ease of doing business.
Cisco’s 2019 report covers more than 100 countries. The following extract shows the index and its components for South Africa. For comparison, we have included the scores for New Zealand, Chile and Vietnam (one of the countries discussed in the World Bank Report). It is interesting to note that South Africa is less “digitally ready” than peer middle-income countries (Chile and New Zealand), and even lags behind Vietnam, an emerging economy.
Building a market for our own products
Before analysing the five factors in the World Bank Report, we will introduce an additional factor that we believe is missing. This is a strong domestic market for local products. One of the greatest weaknesses in the South African economy is the fact that consumers are drawn to imported products rather than home-grown ones.
For many years, our local economy has struggled to achieve and sustain industrialisation. A strong domestic market for locally manufactured goods encourages foreign investment and boosts exports of products that have been tried and tested at home. This would lead to strong economic growth, something which we have failed to achieve in recent years.
With respect to the digital economy, South Africa fares equally poorly in terms of locally developed products, both hardware and software. Almost all digital equipment, from processing and storage devices in data centres, to digital communication networks, to end-user devices, are imported. The same is true for software systems. The current international software scene is dominated by large multinational platform vendors such as Microsoft, Google, IBM and Amazon. There is the potential for domestic software developers to create applications which run on these platforms. While there are some examples of these, our local software sector has failed to use the local user-base as a springboard to capture international markets for such niche applications.
Connectivity
The “General Household Survey”, conducted by StatsSA in 2016 found that just under 60% of South Africans had access to the internet. More than half of these only connected to the internet via a mobile device, while only 9.5% had a connection at home. In Gauteng and the Western Cape, about 70% of people have internet connections, while in Limpopo this number was 42% with only 1.6% of people connected at home. There was also a huge gap between metropolitan and rural areas in terms of internet access.
The Covid-19 pandemic has shone a spotlight on the significant digital divide in South Africa. The country is divided into “digital haves” and “digital have-nots”. With respect to those on the “haves” side of the digital divide, South Africa is in a good position to drive a vibrant digital economy.
Businesses and homes in metropolitan areas have high-speed fibre connections. While the cost of data is seen as an inhibitor to digital communication, connectivity is well developed. However, on the “have-nots” side of the digital divide, the situation is entirely different. As can be seen from the numbers quoted above, a significant majority of South Africans are excluded from participation in the digital economy due to lack of connectivity and access.
Digital payments
At the heart of a digital economy is the ability of people to transact digitally. Compared to other parts of sub-Saharan Africa and other developing regions in the world, South Africa is well-provided with modern financial systems supported by secure and pervasive digital networks. There is, however, still room for improvement as we move towards a cashless economy.
Much has been written about cashless payment systems in Africa, such as M-Pesa in Kenya. The reason that M-Pesa, or something similar, never took off in South Africa was partly due to the highly regulated nature of the SA banking sector. Another reason was that there was less need for such solutions since the cash economy remains ubiquitous and well-organised.
There is, however, a great deal of innovation and creative thinking in SA around the digital financial ecosystem. A number of fintech start-ups have been launched recently. In addition, after a slow start, e-commerce is taking off and is growing.
Digital skills
Skills are a critical building block in developing the digital economy. Much has been written about digital skills in South Africa. To enable a growing digital economy, it is necessary for there to be both widespread digital literacy among all citizens and a strong cohort of people with the ability to code, work with data and develop new applications, and systems.
As with connectivity, there is a significant digital divide in South Africa between a relatively small segment of the population with an excellent level of digital literacy and a large majority of those without. We have also struggled to train sufficient numbers of digital professionals to meet the needs of our digital economy. As a result, work is outsourced to India and elsewhere, or foreign workers are employed locally to fill the gap.
Logistics
Logistics is an important bridge between the digital economy and the physical economy. If, for example, one orders food via an online platform, how efficiently is this food delivered? The US is a good example of best practice. An important factor in the US is that there is a high level of trust with respect to logistics. Deliveries are made in a highly dependable and predictable way. Orders can be accurately tracked and other information is available via a digital platform.
The problem faced in South Africa is that, since e-commerce has been slow to develop, our related logistics systems deal with low volumes and low levels of densification, i.e. the more affluent parts of our major cities are spread over relatively large areas. There are also low levels of trust with respect to predictability and accuracy of information. However, improvements are being made. Some of these improvements are being driven by the Covid-19 lockdown.
Policies and regulation
The World Bank report cited above places much emphasis on the role of government in creating a policy and regulatory framework that supports and enables the growth of the digital economy. In South Africa, the government has failed to adequately create this supportive framework. Issues such as spectrum allocation, lack of appropriate regulations and adverse effects of taxation laws have inhibited the growth of the digital economy. In addition, some of the negative effects of BBBEE policies have slowed progress in the growth of our digital economy.
In conclusion, like most other economies, South Africa’s success in the 21st century will largely be determined by our ability to grow our digital economy. This needs to become the focus both of our domestic economy and how South Africa engages with the rest of the world. Using factors identified in a World Bank Report, we have discussed South Africa’s strengths and weaknesses in relation to these factors. We have also highlighted some additional factors which will influence our ability to grow our digital economy.
This should provide some insights for those in business and in government, responsible for enabling the growth and development of our digital economy.
Professor Barry Dwolatzky is Emeritus Professor at the University of the Witwatersrand and director of the Joburg Centre for Software Engineering. Mark Harris is CEO of Altron Nexus. This article was originally published in the Daily Maverick.
Engineering student’s book wins award
- Wits University
Wits student, Musawenkosi Nyati has published an award-winning book, Mobile App Development.
Musawenkosi Nyati, a second year civil engineering student received the recognition at the 2020 AfriCAN Authors Awards, which took place on 31 July 2020.
The tech-savvy student says he published the book after receiving numerous questions from people on how to develop apps. The book took him two months to write.
His interest in app development was spurred three years ago when he was selected to represent South Africa in the Commonwealth Chess Championships but was unable to attend due to financial challenges.
Nyati, a former South African junior chess champion says when he could not participate in the competition, he “decided he wanted to bring the game into a digital arena”. This is a project he is currently working on and hopes it will enable other people with financial challenges to participate virtually. He holds over 60 trophies and 108 medals from his time as a chess champion.
Talking about the award, Nyati says he was ecstatic to receive the recognition for his book, which was published more than a month ago. “I feel very happy because it is my first author award ever, so I am motivated to do more,” he said.
Nyati has launched over 22 apps to date including his social media chat app, Flensi Connect, which he says is inexpensive due to its low data usage. “It allows people to communicate with less data and it has very good privacy and also has a built-in diary,” he says.
Aside from his love for computer programming, the 18 year-old student has a passion for motivational talking, poetry and short story writing. He follows a strict timetable that enables him to juggle his academics, businesses interest and other passions. “I make sure to discipline myself to follow it, making school the priority of course.”
Nyati, who aspires to be the South African version of Elon Musk says hard work and consistency is key in everything he does. He advises other youngsters not to be discouraged when they encounter challenges. “It will get tough, but you have to be confident and consistent.”
His book is sold at R279.99 per copy and can be delivered free of charge nationwide. The book can be ordered directly from him via email on musanyathi20@gmail.comor on 083 340 7224.
Sharing a secret … the quantum way
- Wits University
Wits Researchers demonstrate a new quantum approach for sharing a secret amongst many parties, setting a new record for the highest dimensions and parties.
Researchers at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa, have demonstrated a record setting quantum protocol for sharing a secret amongst many parties. The team created an 11-dimensional quantum state and used it to share a secret amongst 10 parties. By using quantum tricks, the secret can only be unlocked if the parties trust one another. The work sets a new record for the dimension of the state (which impacts on how big the secret can be) and the number of parties with whom it is shared and is an important step towards distributing information securely across many nodes in a quantum network.
Laser & Photonics Reviewspublished online the research by the Wits team led by Professor Andrew Forbes from the School of Physics at Wits University. In their paper titled: Experimental Demonstration of 11-Dimensional 10-Party Quantum Secret Sharing, the Wits team beat all prior records to share a quantum secret.
“In traditional secure quantum communication, information is sent securely from one party to another, often named Alice and Bob. In the language of networks, this would be considered peer-to-peer communication and by definition has only the two nodes: sender and receiver,” says Forbes.
“Anyone who has sent an email will know that often information must be sent to several people: one sender and many receiving parties. Traditional quantum communication such as quantum key distribution (QKD) does not allow this, and is only of the peer-to-peer form.”
Using structured light as quantum photon states, the Wits team showed how to distribute information from one sender to 10 parties. Then, by using some nifty quantum tricks, they could engineer the protocol so that only if the parties trust one another can the secret be revealed.
“In essence, each party has no useful information, but if they trust one another then the secret can be revealed. The level of trust can be set from just a few of the parties to all of them,” says Forbes. Importantly, at no stage is the secret ever revealed through communication between the parties: they don’t have to reveal any secrets. In this way a secret can be shared in a fundamentally secure manner across many nodes of a network: quantum secret sharing.
“Our work pushes the state-of-the-art and brings quantum communication closer to true network implementation,” says Forbes. “When you think of networks you think of many connections, many parties, who wish to share information and not just two. Now we know how to do this the quantum way.”
The team used structured photons to reach high dimensions. Structured light means ‘’Patterns of light” and here the team could use many patterns to push the dimension limit. More dimensions mean more information in the light, and translates directly to larger secrets.
The work was performed by students Jonathan Pinnell, Isaac Nape and Michael de Oliveira, and post-doctoral fellow Najmeh Tabebordbar.
Wits, GCRO, IBM and Gauteng Province opens Covid-19 dashboard to public
- Solomon Assefa and Zeblon Vilakazi
The Gauteng Province has been using data and cloud technologies to monitor and respond to Covid-19, and now they are sharing access with the public.
As of20 August 2020 the Gauteng Province in South Africa has 33% of the national cases for COVID-19 with 202,000 confirmed cases — and the numbers continue to rise.
To address this challenge, the Gauteng Province has been using a visual analytics platform developed by IBM Research Africa in collaboration with the University of the Witwatersrand (Wits University) and the Gauteng City-Region Observatory (GCRO). The dashboard visualizes anonymous data from multiple sources, including the University of Pretoria and GCRO, to help officials create policy based on data-driven decisions and to help the public understand their risk when they leave home.
The dashboard was designed to address three key questions for policy makers:
Where are the current hot spots of infection?
What are the predictions for the spread of the virus?
What are the risk factors that make certain communities more susceptible than others?
For example, using the dashboard we can see that the initial locations of the pandemic hot spots were in and around Sandton as business travellers returned from overseas. In April the virus began to spread to other districts in the province, and thereafter we can see that the hotspots have appeared in the Joburg CBD, Tembisa and Soweto. Such insights can help officials decide where health workers are needed and the type of intervention strategy.
Mduduzi Mbada, Head: Policy Research & Advisory Services Unit, Office of The Premier, Gauteng Province recorded a video for the Think Summit stating: “We believe this pioneering initiative will help us win the fight on flattening the curve, but also to build a strong public health system and bring back the economy because of the impact of COVID-19.”
In addition to data visualization, the dashboard also has a “what-if” prediction engine developed by epidemiologists and data scientists at Wits University. The engine provides predictions for different lockdown levels for non-pharmaceutical intervention control strategies. Highly sophisticated data analytics such as these can give officials the appropriate instruments of estimating how many beds and ventilators will be needed at the peak of the wave based on level of alert.
Policy makers can see the expected usage of hospital beds and the different kinds of health care setting using data from the Gauteng Province. Thanks to inputs from the Gauteng Province Department of Health, the dashboard gives a detailed account of the needs of the province as a function of time and location.
Starting today the platform isnow available for free to the public via the IBM Cloud. Using the latest Chrome or Firefox web-browsers anyone can access the dashboard to learn:
How many active cases are there in my neighbourhood?
When is the predicted peak for my neighbourhood?
Are the number of cases rising or falling in the area of my local supermarket?
“I am thrilled to see a U.S. company like IBM collaborate with Wits University to assist with the public-health response in the battle to defeat the COVID-19 pandemic. This is a best practice on how society benefits when government, academic and business collaborate. The All-of-America response reflects the generosity of American spirit and the importance of our partnership with South Africa in the long-run,” said Lana Marks, U.S. Ambassador to South Africa.
The research behind the predictive engine has been submitted for peer-review and is currently available in themedRxivoffers the following conclusion:
While lockdown measures have been successful in curbing the spread, ourstudy indicates that removing them too swiftly will result in the resurgenceof the spread within one to two months. Reducing the stringency index by 10will delay reaching the apex by about 6 months, where reducing it by 20 willdelay by only four. This indicates that post-lockdown measures should be stagedand the reduction of the stringency index should be slow.
Now in its seventh year, Fak’ugesi is a celebration of technology and creativity by Africans for Africa. Under the theme #POWERTOTHEPIXEL, the 2020 festival aims to bring regional and international audiences together through three major focus areas of
AFRICAN DIGITAL ART
HERITAGE & TECHNOLOGY
FAK’UGESI ARCADE
A major festival highlight is the work of anonymous South African artist a.k.a Xopher Wallace, who is the Fak’ugesi Festival 2020 #POWERTOTHEPIXEL featured Augmented Reality (AR) artist. Not only is he a winner of one of the curatorial commissions for Digital Art with exhibition titled The AFRIDELIC trip: Faces of mixed realities but is also the featured artist for the official 2020 #POWERTOTHEPIXEL face filter for Instagram, Facebook and Snap Camera. Using the Fak’ugesi iconography, Wallace’s face filter allows users to change between ‘Cyborg’ and ‘Third Eye’ to encapsulate the meeting of technology, culture, and the spirit of Fak’ugesi, try it out on Fak’ugesi’s Instagram. (video)
The exciting virtual programme launches with the opening of 8 online digital art exhibitions which will be Always On and Free, taking place online, on Instagram, Facebook and WhatsApp. These and other contributions in the African Digital Art line-up will explore everything in digital culture today from the lives of South African teenagers in matric living through a global pandemic, to the premiere screenings of short animations from the Tshimologong Development Studio’s Young Director Program.
Special commissions
The exhibitions include five special commissions by five extraordinary new African digital art curators and are the outcome of an Africa-wide curator bootcamp led by Fak’ugesi in June and July this year and include:
Time, the Earth, and Death are Living Things, as Stories areby Ghanaian curator Elisabeth Efua Sutherland - co-created digital storytelling exhibition which maps the North, South, East & West of the continent into a rich, interactive platform that explores a collective understanding of what it means to be African in the digital age.
#DearUs, Matric 2020by Faye Kabali-Kagwa, South African / Uganda curator - a WhatsApp driven exhibition that speaks to the lives of six South African teenagers living through a global pandemic at what should be the pinnacle of their schooling career.
Misavaby South African curator and artist Nkhensani Mkhari - an online exhibition that seeks to refigure the digital as a site for radical healing and the manifestation of new metaphors of consciousness.
Spatial Fabrications: An Uninhabitable Worldby Soweto based PRE-EMPT Group Collective, a nonlinear Web VR orbiting around three animated films within a 360 environment. These views strive to warp politics and representations through various decolonial interventions.
The AFRIDELIC trip: Faces of mixed realities is curated by our feature face-filter artist Durban based Xopher Wallace presents themes influenced by African mysticism, using augmented reality as a realm of interaction between humanity and the spiritual or cosmic realms.
Winners
Other unmissable highlights in the African Digital Art leg of Fak’ugesi 2020 include industry pitches from the winners of this year’s Digital Lab Africa in Immersive Media, Animation, Gaming, Interactive Media, Digital Music and Digital Art. The programme will include various industry panels, skills exchanges and networking opportunities like ‘Meet the Digital Creatives’.
HERITAGE & TECHNOLOGY
From 23 October the Festival shifts focus towards HERITAGE & TECHNOLOGY with an inspiring line-up including:
Prize giving and closing ceremony of the #HackUrCulture Hack-a-thon – a month-long starting on Heritage Day 24 Sept. and commencing on 23 Oct. an initiative led by Fak’ugesi partners Credipple and Goethe Johannesburg beginning on Heritage Day.
Panel discussions starting with The New Media Business of Heritage Stories featuring panellists from the South African History Archive, District Six Museum, the SABC and Kalushi producer Mandla Dube. This will be followed by an international panel titled Digitising Africa: Sustaining Access & Empowerment in Digitising African Archives with partners from the French National Audio-visual Institute INA, with Robben Island Museum and the Kenyan organisations Open Restitution and African Digital Heritage.
FAK'UGESI ARCADE
The much anticipated FAK’UGESI ARCADE kicks off in November with the exhibition People of Play: African Game Developers,curated by Games Industry Africa writer Vic Bassey which aims to celebrate and acknowledge gaming’s growing foothold across the African continent as well as the game developers, producers, writers and digital artists behind the industry.
This year’s gaming programme will include industry talks, skills exchanges, and will also see Fak’ugesi partner, French Institute of South Africa’s Novembre Numerique hosting a game-jam with a particular focus on South African game development.
Pre-Register for early access and tickets to limited and special events at Fakugesi.co.za.
Partners & Funders
Fak’ugesi Festival Online 2020 is brought to you by the Tshimologong Innovation Precinct in collaboration with the Wits School of Arts. Its offering in 2020 is supported by the AFD Agence française de développement, Pro Helvetia Johannesburg and the Swiss Agency for Cooperation and Development, Department of Sports, Arts and Culture, National Arts Council, Gauteng Film Commission, Wits School of Arts - Arts Research Africa, French Institute of South Africa.
Partners include:Goethe Institut Johannesburg, Credipple, AnimationSA, Digital Lab Africa, WeAreVR and Games Industry Africa.
About Fak’ugesi African Digital Innovation Festival
Fak’ugesi, which means “Switch it on” or “add power” in urban Zulu, is focused on culture, technology and innovation in Africa. It is an opportunity for young adults, with or without formal education, to learn or engage with tomorrow’s technology.
According to an Impact Report commissioned by the British Council ConnectZA- Fak’ugesi is believed to be the most important digital creativity festival in Africa.
The Tshimologong Precinct, founded by Wits University, is a true "Silicon Valley" in Johannesburg that aims to realise African digital innovation for global markets. Its ecosystem propels entrepreneurship and grows the skills pipeline for the digital economy through collaboration with academia, corporates, government and entrepreneurs.
Driven by common goals, including the desire to combine technology, innovation and creative content, Tshimologong and the French Embassy in South Africa have joined forces to create a Digital Content Hub (DCH) - and integrate and sustain the existing Digital Lab Africa Programme – the first support programming for the production of digital content across sub-Saharan Africa initiated in 2016 by the French Embassy in South Africa. The DCH is the first project from cultural industries in Africa to have obtained funding from the Agence française de développement (AFD) since the extension of their mandate to these sectors.
Created in 2016, Digital Lab Africa is an initiative of the French Institute and the French Embassy in South Africa, managed by the South African innovation hub Tshimologong Digital Innovation Precinct since 2018.
Digital Lab Africa (DLA) is the first platform dedicated to creative content (immersive realities, video game, animation, music, digital art) linked with innovation in Africa. The very idea of DLA is to incubate emerging talent by offering them a springboard to fast track their projects development with the support and expertise of DLA creative industries ecosystem in France and in Sub-Saharan African countries.
The discovery of triplet spin superconductivity in diamonds has the potential to revolutionise the high-tech industry.
Diamonds have a firm foothold in our lexicon. Their many properties often serve as superlatives for quality, clarity and hardiness. Aside from the popularity of this rare material in ornamental and decorative use, these precious stones are also highly valued in industry where they are used to cut and polish other hard materials and build radiation detectors.
More than a decade ago, a new property was uncovered in diamonds when high concentrations of boron are introduced to it – superconductivity. Superconductivity occurs when two electrons with opposite spin form a pair (called a Cooper pair), resulting in the electrical resistance of the material being zero. This means a large supercurrent can flow in the material, bringing with it the potential for advanced technological applications. Yet, little work has been done since to investigate and characterise the nature of a diamond’s superconductivity and therefore its potential applications.
New research led by Professor Somnath Bhattacharyya in the Nano-Scale Transport Physics Laboratory (NSTPL) in the School of Physics at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa, details the phenomenon of what is called “triplet superconductivity” in diamond. Triplet superconductivity occurs when electrons move in a composite spin state rather than as a single pair. This is an extremely rare, yet efficient form of superconductivity that until now has only been known to occur in one or two other materials, and only theoretically in diamonds.
“In a conventional superconducting material such as aluminium, superconductivity is destroyed by magnetic fields and magnetic impurities, however triplet superconductivity in a diamond can exist even when combined with magnetic materials. This leads to more efficient and multifunctional operation of the material,” explains Bhattacharyya.
The team’s work has recently been published in an article in the New Journal of Physics, titled “Effects of Rashba-spin-orbit coupling on superconducting boron-doped nanocrystalline diamond films: evidence of interfacial triplet superconductivity”. This research was done in collaboration with Oxford University (UK) and Diamond Light Source (UK). Through these collaborations, beautiful atomic arrangement of diamond crystals and interfaces that have never been seen before could be visualised, supporting the first claims of ‘triplet’ superconductivity.
Practical proof of triplet superconductivity in diamonds came with much excitement for Bhattacharyya and his team. “We were even working on Christmas day, we were so excited,” says Davie Mtsuko. “This is something that has never been before been claimed in diamond,” adds Christopher Coleman. Both Mtsuko and Coleman are co-authors of the paper.
Despite diamonds’ reputation as a highly rare and expensive resource, they can be manufactured in a laboratory using a specialised piece of equipment called a vapour deposition chamber. The Wits NSTPL has developed their own plasma deposition chamber which allows them to grow diamonds of a higher than normal quality – making them ideal for this kind of advanced research.
This finding expands the potential uses of diamond, which is already well-regarded as a quantum material. “All conventional technology is based on semiconductors associated with electron charge. Thus far, we have a decent understanding of how they interact, and how to control them. But when we have control over quantum states such as superconductivity and entanglement, there is a lot more physics to the charge and spin of electrons, and this also comes with new properties,” says Bhattacharyya. “With the new surge of superconducting materials such as diamond, traditional silicon technology can be replaced by cost effective and low power consumption solutions”.
The induction of triplet superconductivity in diamond is important for more than just its potential applications. It speaks to our fundamental understanding of physics. “Thus far, triplet superconductivity exists mostly in theory, and our study gives us an opportunity to test these models in a practical way,” says Bhattacharyya.
We can prevent procurement fraud by deploying 4IR technologies
- Tshilidzi Marwala and Loyiso Nongxa
The Covid-19 pandemic has brought to the fore just how endemic corruption has become.
The twin scourges of fraud and corruption are among the most significant purveyors of unemployment, inequality and poverty. Fraud and corruption result in the misallocation of resources, which are often squandered on expensive luxury goods and do not contribute to economic production. On the other hand, entrepreneurs and other vital and productive parts of our economy are denied investments, thus also resulting in poverty, unemployment and inequality.
Fraud in the public sector can also be viewed as a form of redistribution of scarce public resources, from the poor and the marginalised to those with social and political capital. According to the 2016 United Nations Economic Commission for Africa report, $100-million was awarded to ghost companies in 2005 in Kenya. Another report, by Global Financial Integrity in 2013, shows that more than $1-trillion flows out of the African continent annually through illicit and corrupt means.
Here in South Africa, the Covid-19 pandemic has brought to the fore just how endemic corruption has become. Companies that have never traded with anyone from the health sectors were awarded multimillion-rand tenders. In some instances, face masks were sold at 50 times their retail prices. It is inconceivable how in the world a country such as South Africa still imports instead of manufactures face masks. The R500-billion relief fund intended to offset the economic losses from the national lockdown necessitated by the Covid-19 pandemic is being investigated following cries of corruption in the region of R3-billion.
Corruption was rife long before this. Statistics from Transparency International indicate that 64% of South Africans thought corruption increased between 2018 and 2019. The country scored 44 points out of 100 on the 2019 Corruption Perceptions Index, with zero seen as highly corrupt and 100 seen as clean. Of the 180 countries analysed, South Africa emerged as the 70th most corrupt. According to Gain Integrity, corruption in public procurement is among the highest risks for businesses in South Africa as public funds are frequently diverted due to corruption.
So what really is the cause of fraud and corruption? It is human beings and their insatiable greed, which leads to the unfettered desire for money and wealth. It is a cruel form of self-interest when human beings want to unduly maximise their utilities or wants at the expense of others. What then do we do to these human beings to make them stay away from corruption and refrain from indulging in fraudulent activities? One way, albeit proven ineffective, is to educate them that corruption is toxic, corrosive and damaging. Unfortunately, people who participate in fraud and corruption know very well that their actions are improper, and as such, educating them would be inconsequential. So, the most effective way of combating this scourge is to put in place mechanisms, whether legal, technological or otherwise, to prevent them from participating in corruption.
There is a strong argument to be made for the efficacy of AI and data analytics in preventing fraud, particularly in the public sector. Already, large datasets exist at local, provincial and national levels.
It is not only individuals from the public sector who are participants in corruption. The private sector has its fair share of willing participants. In fact, fraud and corruption are driven by the unholy trinity of the public, private and societal sectors. The interplay between these three sectors and the resulting dynamics fall within the realm of a mathematical field called game theory which was popularised by John Nash, a recipient of the Nobel prize in Economic Sciences, who was the subject of the movieA Beautiful Mind.
It can be posited that we cannot tackle fraud and corruption without the application of ideas and concepts from the mathematical sciences. Corruption and fraud vary from the smallest scale, such as bribing a police officer to avoid a traffic fine, to the most sophisticated, such as altering financial statements of a company to drive up the share price. Those who are supposed to police us, such as auditing companies sometimes become participants, as has been reported in recent years.
What is to be done to tackle fraud and corruption?
First, we need to strengthen our legal and regulatory sectors in order to improve governance and compliance.
Second, we need to apply the latest tools developed in behavioural psychology, such as nudging, to tackle this scourge. Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR) technologies, together with psychological concepts such as nudging, can be used to predict and prevent fraud before it happens. Nudging is the behavioural concept where human beings are nudged to behave in a particular manner, instead of coercing them. Richard Thaler, who coined the term, won the Nobel prize in Economic Sciences for behavioural economics.
Third, we need to use technology to prevent fraud and corruption. For example, in public procurement, Blockchain can be used to decrease fraud. Blockchain is a secure ledger that has been used to create digital currencies such as Bitcoin. Furthermore, AI, a technology that makes machines intelligent, can be used to prevent things such as insider trading and collusion to drive prices up. An AI verification system that would estimate the cost of goods and services can be used to make procurement prices more competitive.
Additionally, introducing 4IR technologies will make procurement processes more efficient. 4IR technologies can detect patterns that are impossible for humans to see and can handle vast volumes of data that humans cannot possibly control.
Through AI and data science, we can analyse and integrate publicly available data, and build models that look at past history and submitted bids and predict the reliability of each potential supplier. This way, technology is used not just to detect fraud but to predict the future performance of potential suppliers. Robotics can be used to automate procurement systems, thereby minimising the role of human beings in the procurement system, thus reducing the likelihood of potential fraud. 4IR technologies can be used to detect relationships between the bidders and adjudicators. This would require mining social networking data and using data collected in telecommunication.
There is a strong argument to be made for the efficacy of AI and data analytics in preventing fraud, particularly in the public sector. Already, large datasets exist at local, provincial and national levels. These AI systems can be deployed to analyse data from multiple sources and identify irregular activity associated with third parties, employees and customers. Algorithms can be trained to detect patterns by wading through emails, text messages or audio files. In recognising patterns, these algorithms can identify anomalies and thus predict future risks and identify fault lines where fraud is possible.
The World Bank, together with Microsoft’s Research Group, has already started to use AI to detect patterns of corruption and fraud. The examination of datasets from other national procurement data, international organisations, and corporate information could feed into AI to assist in making better public spending decisions, which could eventually be scaled down for governments.
Data anonymisation, a process of protecting private or sensitive information by erasing or encrypting identifiers that connect an individual to stored data, has potential for minimising collusion and of course, providing a safer platform for whistle-blowers. The takeaway is that prevention is better than cure! There is a need to introduce preventative measures and deploy the power and efficacy of 4IR technologies to minimise public procurement fraud.
Additionally, introducing 4IR technologies will make procurement processes more efficient. 4IR technologies can detect patterns that are impossible for humans to see and can handle vast volumes of data that humans cannot possibly control.To paraphrase Kenyan cabinet secretary Joe Mucheru, corruption is the biggest obstacle to our nation-building endeavours, but through emerging technologies, it can be defeated.
Professor Tshilidzi Marwala is the Vice-Chancellor and Principal of the University of Johannesburg. Professor Loyiso Nongxa is the former Vice-Chancellor and Principal of the University of the Witwatersrand. This article was first published in Daily Maverick/Business Maverick.
Work from home reserved for the privileged few in SA
- Ruth Castel-Branco, Sandiswa Mapukata and Edward Webster
Digital divides ensure that only 11% of households have access to the internet.
Working from home is not new. Until the industrial revolution, most economic activities took place within the household. With industrialisation, the household remained a site of production, and employers outsourced tasks to homeworkers under the putting-out system.
The problem for the employer was the lack of control over the pace of work. The factory emerged as the solution; workers now had to travel to the factory and clock in. Though production became spatially separated from reproduction, they were tightly interlinked. As time became a commodity, the early struggles of factory workers were over the length of the working day.
Of course, in Africa, where 90% of workersare in the informal economy, factory work was always the exception. Though SA is comparatively more industrialised, home-based work remained widespread. Today, home-based workers are spaza shop owners, hair salon operators and outsourced textile workers. They are also crowd workers who use online platforms to connect with customers. And they are teleworkers in clerical, professional and managerial positions.
With the Covid-19 pandemic, home-based work has become pervasive. The shift enabled companies to continue to operate and workers to be paid. It also allowed for greater flexibility and more time with family. But working from home also poses risks including a return to task-based work, characterised by low and irregular income and benefits; an increased burden of paid and unpaid care work, particularly for women; and the risk of gender-based violence.
Ultimately, the ability to work from home is mediated by underlying structural conditions, including the nature of the labour market, the availability of affordable housing, and the accessibility of digital technologies. Across Africa, access to mobile phones, financial services and the internet reflect broader patterns of socioeconomic inequality between and within countries.
For instance, in SA more than80% of the populationhas access to a mobile phone. In Mozambique this figure is just more than a third. Access to cellphones is highest among men in urban centres and lowest among women in rural areas, though the degree of inequality varies. In SA, for example, men are 4% more likely to have cellphones than women, whereas in Mozambique the gender gap is as high as 14%.
When it comes to access to mobile banking and financial services, more SA women have access (70%) than SA men (68%). This runs counter to trends across Africa and may be due to the expansive nature of social grants, weighted towards women, which highlights the importance of government policy in bridging the digital divide.
Disparities are even larger when one looks at internet usage. In SA, 56% of the population has access to the internet. Men are 7% more likely than women to have access to the internet. However, if one looks at coverage at the household level, 11% of households have access. Though SA has higher levels of internet coverage than most countries on the continent, access to the internet is concentrated in a minority of households.
Unequal access to mobile phone and internet services prevents workers from meaningfully participating in online-based remote work. According to a survey conducted by Research ICT Africa,reasons for the digital divide include the exorbitant cost of mobile phones and data, inadequate network coverage and access to electricity, users’ limited literacy, and gender norms that discourage women from using cellphones.
The International Labour Organisation (ILO) estimatesthat less than 10% of SA can telework from home. It is still unclear how long the Covid-19 crisis will last. If working from home is to become a “new normal” states will have to invest resources in inclusive digital infrastructures. It will also be essential to ensure that home-based workers’ labour and social rights are protected. Theseinclude the application of the prevailing minimum wage, the correct employment classification and opportunities for career progression, freedom of association and collective bargaining rights, and the provision of social security benefits and maternity protection.
Of course, the nature of home-based work varies. Some workers are self-employed, others self-employed but dependent on intermediaries, and yet others effectively employed, even if the employment relationship is disguised as a commercial one. Concerned with the lack of regulation of home-based work the ILO extended worker rights to all home workers in 1996 (Convention 177).
Data on the scope, size and conditions of home-based work in SA is still minimal. However, if the Covid-19 crisis continues, home-based work may well become the next terrain of worker struggle.
The authors are researchers on the Future of Work(ers) project at Wits University's Southern Centre for Inequality Studies. This article first appeared in Business Day.
A new app helps COVID-19 frontline workers with mental health
- Ashraf Coovadia and Shaegan Irusen
Pasha 80: Fighting the coronavirus can put severe strain on a person’s mental health.
Frontline workers in healthcare constantly have to deal with challenges of life and death importance. With this in mind, a team of researchers and health experts in South Africa developed an app to help healthcare professionals cope with anxiety and stress. The app connects healthcare workers to information, resources and each other. It recognises the importance of holistic protection.
In today’s episode of Pasha, Professor Ashraf Coovadia and Dr Shaegan Irusen, paediatric specialists at the University of the Witwatersrand, explain how the app works. They emphasise the importance of connecting with people and feeling more in control over an evolving situation.
Fak’ugesi Festival 2020 unveils exciting Heritage & Technology Programme
- Wits University
The 2020 Fak’ugesi African Digital Innovation Festival will run for one month from 20 October to 20 November 2020.
The 2020 edition of Fak’ugesi Festival, proudly hosted by the Tshimologong Digital Innovation Precinct and Wits School of Arts in Johannesburg has officially announced its exciting Heritage & Technology programme as part of festivities at this year’s live, virtual and online line-up.
The Heritage & Technology programme is one of three themed focus areas of Fak’ugesi 2020 and will run alongside the African Digital Art theme and the ever-popular gaming-centred Fak’ugesi Arcade.
The special Heritage & Technology programme also partners with leading lights in the creative technology and GLAM (galleries, libraries, archives and museums) spaces. Dr. Tegan Bristow, Fak’ugesi African Digital Innovation Festival director, says that this year’s festival is aimed at digital artists, illustrators, and creatives across the continent under the theme of #POWERTOTHEPIXEL Powering Up Africa’s Resolution. “Under the Heritage & Technology theme we’ll be asking critical questions of how the digital creative industries and GLAM spaces can begin working together to build world class interactions with our extraordinary heritage.”
Programme highlights include Hack-Your-Culture virtual digital exhibition of hackathon outcomes. Hack-Your-Culture is a month-long hack-a-thon that began on Heritage Day on 24 September aimed at enabling various collaborations and interesting innovations, all while bringing African cultural heritage to the forefront of virtual experiences. Fak’ugesi Festival, long-time partner Goethe-Institut South Africa, and the South African digital startup Credipple, will co-host the Hack-Your-Culture closing ceremony and prize giving on 30 October 2020.
Commenting on the collaboration, Stefanie Kastner, Regional Head of Information at the Goethe-Institut South Africa says, “This is an opportunity for brave young minds to lead in the development of innovative solutions that will be used by some of the continent’s most reputable GLAM institutions. As we begin taking the first steps in recovering from the Covid-19 pandemic, we are all responsible for building a new normal that will shape our future.”
The Heritage & Technology programme then shifts gear with an inspiring panel discussion series aptly titled Challenging the Business of Digital Heritage – made possible by festival partners Goethe-Institut South Africa, Creddiple, CAV - Creative Economies Platform, National Film & Video Foundation, French Institute of South Africa, AnimationSA, and the Gauteng Film Commission.
This extraordinary line-up of critical panel discussions includes:
An exciting exploration of the support and development of young animation directors in Africa. The panel will include a premier release of two short animations produced through the Tshimologong Digital Innovation Precinct’s Young Directors Programme (supported by Agence Française de Développement (AFD).
Panellists include:
Kgomotso Zebediela, Gauteng Film Commission (South Africa)
Lesego Vorster, Tshimologong Development Studio Lead (South Africa)
Terence Maluleke, extraordinary South African animator (South Africa)
A look at the need for new business models to be considered in order to ensure the future sustainability of GLAMS. This panel will be led by the National Film & Video Foundation and will include insights from:
Dr. Geraldine Frieslaar, South African History Archive (South Africa)
Chrsichene Julius, District Six Museum (South Africa)
Mandla Dube, Producer of Kalushi (South Africa)
Vincent Moloi, Filmmaker (South Africa)
Digitising Immersive African Stories – 4 November
This panel explores the mechanics of the rich oral traditions from Africa alongside immersive and interactive technologies. We will explore how traditional content can be reconstructed and how the essence of these traditions can be applied to create digital stories relevant to Africans.
An exciting collaboration with the Goethe Institutes, CAV Platform, and AnimationSA featuring:
Francina Ntsimane, Deputy Director: Gauteng Department of Economic Development within the Sector and Industry Development Branch (South Africa)
Melisa Allela, Lecturer, Technical University of Kenya; Project Lead, LESO Stories
Daliso Ngoma, MD, African Technopreneurs (South Africa)
Digitising Africa: Sustaining Access & Empowerment in Digitising African Archives – 4 November
A conversation with Robben Island Museum, French Institut National de l'Audiovisuel, and Kenyan African Digital Heritage on digitising African archives as well as an exploration of the conceptual and commercial models being put in place to achieve this. Panellists include:
Chao Tayiana Maina, Founder of African Digital Heritage (Kenya)
Delphine Wibaux, INA Deputy Head of International Affairs (France)
Thabo Seshoka, Head of Heritage and Research at Robben Island Museum (South Africa)
Digital Transformation & Cultural Heritage in the Global South - 6 November
As an extension of the Hack-Your-Culture programme, this is a fully global South Conversation with contributors from Africa, Indonesia and Brazil. Led by the Goethe Institute this panel asks: ‘What could cultural institutions gain from the Open Data movement?’
The 2020 Fak’ugesi African Digital Innovation Festival will run for one month from 20 October to 20 November 2020. To register for access and book tickets for special events visit Fak’ugesi.co.za
Partners & Funders
Fak’ugesi Festival Online 2020 is brought to you by the Tshimologong Innovation Precinct in collaboration with the Wits School of Arts. Its offering in 2020 is supported by the AFD Agence française de développement, Pro Helvetia Johannesburg and the Swiss Agency for Cooperation and Development, Department of Sports, Arts and Culture, National Arts Council, Gauteng Film Commission, Wits School of Arts - Arts Research Africa, French Institute of South Africa.
Partners include: Goethe-Institut Johannesburg, Credipple, AnimationSA, Digital Lab Africa, WeAreVR and Games Industry Africa.
About Fak’ugesi African Digital Innovation Festival
Fak’ugesi, which means “Switch it on” or “add power” in urban Zulu, is focused on culture, technology and innovation in Africa. It is an opportunity for young adults, with or without formal education, to learn or engage with tomorrow’s technology.
According to an Impact Report commissioned by the British Council ConnectZA- Fak’ugesi is believed to be the most important digital creativity festival in Africa.
The Tshimologong Precinct, founded by Wits University, is a true "Silicon Valley" in Johannesburg that aims to realise African digital innovation for global markets. Its ecosystem propels entrepreneurship and grows the skills pipeline for the digital economy through collaboration with academia, corporates, government and entrepreneurs.
Driven by common goals, including the desire to combine technology, innovation and creative content, Tshimologong and the French Embassy in South Africa have joined forces to create a Digital Content Hub (DCH) - and integrate and sustain the existing Digital Lab Africa Programme – the first support programming for the production of digital content across sub-Saharan Africa initiated in 2016 by the French Embassy in South Africa. The DCH is the first project from cultural industries in Africa to have obtained funding from the Agence Française de Développement (AFD) since the extension of their mandate to these sectors.
Now in its seventh year, Fak’ugesi is a celebration of technology and creativity by Africans for Africa. Under the theme #POWERTOTHEPIXEL, the 2020 festival brings regional and international audiences together to connect on three areas - AFRICAN DIGITAL ART, HERITAGE & TECHNOLOGY and the ever-popular gaming-centred FAK’UGESI ARCADE.
This year, Fak’ugesi Festival, in partnership with the French Institute of South Africa, together with the Gauteng Film Commission, have invited Vic Bassey to curate a special programme titled PEOPLE OF PLAY: African Game Developers, which focuses on 13 top African games studios and a Game Jam driven by the French Institute of South Africa’s November Numérique focus. The Festival will also host Early Access – a department grad show, hosted in collaboration with Wits University’s Digital Arts Department, featuring games, interactive arts, and animation.
Vic Bassey is the curator of the People of Play programme. He is a regular fixture in the European and African games industries and currently works as a Business Development strategist at a global publisher - Raw Fury. He is also the founder and editor of Games Industry Africa. Bassey says, “In an increasingly digital world, video games have established themselves as a pastime that is easily accessible and digestible to people of all creeds, races and colours. To celebrate that and to acknowledge its growing foothold across the African continent PEOPLE OF PLAY: AFRICAN GAME DEVELOPERS celebrates the spaces they are creating for us to play in and the people behind an essential industry today: game developers, producers, writers and digital artists and more.”
The 2020 Fak’ugesi Arcade aims to raise the profile of the people and studios across the continent at the forefront of the African gaming revolution. The 13 top African games studios represented include:
West Africa:
Teddy Kossoko is a Nigerian video games and technology entrepreneur.. He created Masseka Game Studio, the first game studio in Europe to create content exclusively on African myths and legends.
Hugo Obi is the founder of Maliyo Games, the first Nigerian indigenous gaming company and one of the early pioneers of mobile gaming in sub-Saharan Africa.
Joy Ajayi is a gameplay programmer with experience in game engines such as Unity and Unreal engine. She is also a Women in Games Ambassador and advocates for women in the gaming scene in Nigeria and Africa.
Eyram Tawia from Ghana is the CEO and co-founder of Leti Arts, an interactive digital studio that creates Afrocentric mobile games and comics.
After working for Candy Crush developer King and narrative games studio Wooga, Italian-Ghanaian Game Designer Allan Cudicio founded his own company, Twin Drums. He is currently working on the PC game “The Wagadu Chronicles”, the first online Afrofantasy rpg.
Cameroonian Michel Nkuindja, is the creative director and founder of Noohkema Interactive, a company based in Cameroon that specialises in digital and artistic creation.
From Senegal, Julien Herbin is a Video Game industry veteran and has worked as a programmer for Ubisoft. Julien is co-founder and CEO of Kayfo Games, a Dakar-based studio founded in June 2019, which focuses on delivering innovative and non-violent African themed games.
North Africa:
Walid Sultan Midani is the founder and CEO of DigitalMania Studio, the first video game development studio in Tunisia that specialises in VR and AR games for team buildings. Walid is also the founder of YouRun, a video game studio and publisher based in Malta, which focuses 100% on casual competitive games with the game: Warshmallows.
East Africa:
Jake Manion is a BAFTA-nominated creative director for games and interactive based in Nairobi, Kenya. He is Head of Product at Internet of Elephants, a games studio in Kenya that leverages the power of games to benefit wildlife and nature.
Dawit Abrahim is an award-winning game developer and the co-founder and CEO of Ethiopian based gaming studio, Qene Games. Dawit and his team launched Kukulu, a Pan-African 3D runner mobile game, which won the 2018 AppsAfrica Award for Best Entertainment App.
Southern Africa:
Tutaleni Ilonga is a game developer, VFX artist, writer, filmmaker, upcoming comic book writer and the founder of TL Studios Entertainment. He is the first Namibian game developer to host a Global Game Jam and Game Jam Plus event in Namibia.
South African, Limpho Moeti previously worked at Free Lives (Broforce, Gorn) and was deputy festival director of South Africa’s playful media festival, Playtopia. She currently works as a producer at Nyamakop, developing African-inspired video games.
Estelle Mmathapelo Makhoba is an indie game developer based in Pretoria, South Africa, and works on games systems and artificial intelligence.
The 2020 Fak’ugesi African Digital Innovation Festival runs until 20 November 2020. To register for access and book tickets for special events visit Fak’ugesi.co.za.
Partners & Funders
Fak’ugesi Festival Online 2020 is brought to you by the Tshimologong Innovation Precinct in collaboration with the Wits School of Arts. Its offering in 2020 is supported by the AFD Agence française de développement, Pro Helvetia Johannesburg and the Swiss Agency for Cooperation and Development, Department of Sports, Arts and Culture, National Arts Council, Gauteng Film Commission, Wits School of Arts - Arts Research Africa, French Institute of South Africa.
Partners include: Goethe-Institut Johannesburg, Credipple, AnimationSA, Digital Lab Africa, WeAreVR and Games Industry Africa.
About Fak’ugesi African Digital Innovation Festival
Fak’ugesi, which means “Switch it on” or “add power” in urban Zulu, is focused on culture, technology and innovation in Africa. It is an opportunity for young adults, with or without formal education, to learn or engage with tomorrow’s technology.
According to an Impact Report commissioned by the British Council ConnectZA- Fak’ugesi is believed to be the most important digital creativity festival in Africa.
The Tshimologong Precinct, founded by Wits University, is a true "Silicon Valley" in Johannesburg that aims to realise African digital innovation for global markets. Its ecosystem propels entrepreneurship and grows the skills pipeline for the digital economy through collaboration with academia, corporates, government and entrepreneurs.
Driven by common goals, including the desire to combine technology, innovation and creative content, Tshimologong and the French Embassy in South Africa have joined forces to create a Digital Content Hub (DCH) - and integrate and sustain the existing Digital Lab Africa Programme – the first support programming for the production of digital content across sub-Saharan Africa initiated in 2016 by the French Embassy in South Africa. The DCH is the first project from cultural industries in Africa to have obtained funding from the Agence Française de Développement (AFD) since the extension of their mandate to these sectors.
Wits, Huawei and rain jointly launch Africa's first 5G laboratory at the Wits Tshimologong Digital Innovation Precinct.
The collaboration gives students access to a live 5G environment to build knowledge of the revolutionary technology’s applications for the local market.
The 5G Innovation Lab, situated at the Wits Tshimologong Digital Innovation Precinct, is part of a longer-term joint innovation programme between business and the leading academic institution. It is aimed at driving innovations to promote social progress for South Africa in the digital era or fourth industrial revolution (4IR).
In terms of the collaboration, Huawei provides its end to end 5G solution, supported by rain’s 5G network. The lab will initially showcase two 5G applications, namely smart/safe campus and virtual reality (VR) remote education.
“The purpose of this exciting partnership is to give students early access to 5G technology,” said Huawei Southern Africa Region VP, Yang Chen. “This will allow them to experiment and interact with the 5G platforms that will enable the 4IR.”
Minister of Higher Education, Science and Technology, Dr. Blade Nzimande, says the facility will give students an opportunity to innovate solutions for local problems. He added that 5G could support a number of applications that would help South Africans.
“We are very encouraged by the efforts of Huawei, rain and Wits to establish academic R&D capabilities, this is very important as we move into the digital economy. As a leading ICT company Huawei, also runs various cutting edge ICT programmes at several South African universities and colleges, and this gives our youth a foothold into the fast changing technology space.”
Wits Vice-Chancellor and Principal, Professor Adam Habib says he has high expectations for the partnership with Huawei and rain. “We are working with the pioneers in digital innovation to train a generation of smart, savvy scholars who will transform the world, using the latest technology available to effect beneficial change in our world. We are not reimagining the future, we are creating a better future for all today.”
Supporting African local innovation is also a key consideration for 5G service provider, rain.
“We are proud to partner with Huawei and Wits University to build the first 5G Innovation Lab in Africa, we believe that young innovators will use the 5G Innovation Lab to push the boundaries for the next technological leaps right here on the African continent. The Instagram, TikTok or self-driving car innovation of the next generation could be born here by a young mind at Wits,” says rain’s Chief Strategy Officer and co-founder Brandon Leigh.
Short for “fifth generation wireless technology” 5G provides digital cellular networks featuring faster upload and download speeds with numerous applications in the Internet of Things (IoT), enterprise networking, and critical communications.
It is predicted that during the 4IR era, most applications will run in a 5G network environment.
Among other 5G applications, the Lab will investigate live, virtual-reality (VR) e-learning broadcasts of lectures and classes. The Lab will also feature a hub relaying feeds from cross-campus safety and security camera networks. The lab is supported by 5G base station installed by rain.
Prof Habib adds, “Wits is proud to partner with Huawei and rain on the establishment of this 5G Lab – it is a first for Africa and the South African higher education sector.”
“We are immensely proud be part of rolling out this capacity in South Africa, to give students and academics a place to innovate and turn their ideas into reality, we look forward to ground-breaking 5G applications coming out of Wits,” added Huawei’s Yang Chen.
Wits-French partnerships strengthened
- Wits University
Commitments focus on innovation and the creative engagement with new technologies.
A French delegation of CEO’s in innovation, technology and health, and the French Minister for Foreign Trade and Economic Attractiveness, Franck Riester, visited the Wits Tshimologong Digital Innovation Precinct this week.
The aim of the visit was to meet business leaders and entrepreneurs from Digital Lab Africa, a joint initiative of the French Institute and the French Embassy in South Africa with Tshimologong, Wits’ flagship digital innovation hub.
In welcoming Riester and the delegation to Tshimologong, Professor Zeblon Vilakazi, Wits’ newly appointed Vice-Chancellor and Principal, praised the close collaboration between South Africa and France, especially in the development of digital skills and innovation.
Vilakazi said Wits is celebrating it centenary in 2022 and part of the University’s vision for the next 10 years is to establish the Tshimologong Precinct as the creative innovation hub in Africa “where we can harness the energy and talent of young people”.
“We do this through partnerships with friendly and leading nations such as France, to ensure that we as a global community are able to solve today’s problems and unique challenges,” Vilakazi said.
Riester said the Digital Lab Africa partnership is but one example of how the two countries can work closely together in innovation and new technologies.
“We are here to deepen our relationship with Africa, and South Africa, in different ways on governmental level and with young entrepreneurs, innovators and creatives. We all win if we invest in young people and their future,” Riester said.
The delegation toured Tshimologong’s different areas of innovation and was introduced to some of the startup entrepreneurs and creatives.
About Digital Lab Africa
Digital Lab Africa (DLA) is the first platform dedicated to creative content (immersive realities, video game, animation, music, digital art) linked with innovation in Africa. The very idea of DLA is to incubate emerging talent by offering them a springboard to fast track their projects development with the support and expertise of DLA creative industries ecosystem in France and in Sub-Saharan African countries.
The postgraduate blueprint for a future that works
- Wits University
Register for postgraduate study at Wits University and be part of the future of exciting possibilities.
The imperative to wear many hats to solve problems and advance in every field needs a multidisciplinary approach, often in one turnkey role, which makes multiskilling the new multitasking in a multirole workplace. Postgraduate study is a powerful career enabler in this environment.
As Wits University law professor Tumai Murombo says: “The silos need to be broken down. We have reached a point where law is not law, engineering is not engineering, and science is not science.” Fields such asartificial intelligence (AI), robotics, machine learning and law are at the forefront of breaking down these silos to create future professions.
This reality validates the value of postgraduate study as we see professionals re-equip themselves to deliver on emerging demands.While roles such as technology ethicist, extinct species revivalist, weather control engineer and pharmaceutical artisan may sound more Spielberg than certain, the depth of honours, masters and doctoral study unlocks new careers.
Apply next-level machine learning
Operating deeply in the future forge of AI, robotics and machine learning, associate professor at Wits School of Computer Science and Applied Mathematics Dr Benjamin Rosman, says: “AI is the last big problem humans will ever solve and is the most important problem we can ever work on — this field is the convergence point to enable the future.”
Machine learning is the modern powerhouse of AI as it is about systems improving themselves based on the data within these systems. “It’s inherently about making predictions, and the reason you do that is to make better decisions. Every field is being touched by this technology and wherever you are, there is potential to bring in different ideas,” he says.
We are at the intersection of new technologies, says Rosman. “Many of our research students are hired to join research teams at large technology companies, which generally distinguish between research science positions and research engineering positions.” Banking, telecommunications and medical industries are further destinations for many of these postgraduates.
Murombo agrees with the view that technology is an enabler of new careers. He observes a stronger connection today between science and regulation from within his specialisation of environmental law, not only in hard sciences, but in social science areas of social justice and public decision-making.
In this shifting environment, he points out that universities are a platform to connect new knowledge and expertise with the area of work where people are needing these new skills. “We are at the point where science and technology must provide social solutions,” he says, adding that lawyers and those who develop policy and regulation need to understand the scientific ground.
Navigate new legal landscapes
The government would benefit from partnering with and mobilising the postgraduate process in the pursuit of a transition to a low-carbon economy, says Murombo.
He sees a marked opportunity for collaboration in the convergence between African mining, the fourth industrial revolution (4IR) and law and adds that academia is often driving change. Wits was the first university to offer a postgraduate degree inrenewable energy lawand is advancing to focus on extractive issues and sustainable methods in mining and sustainable development.
With a rise in the imperative to manage risk and ethics, a course such as the Wits energy law postgraduate programme is proving to be valuable to engineers and financiers alike. “In the near future we will have sustainability experts who are neither lawyers nor scientists, but are experts who know the law and policy, and are grounded in the sciences and research,” he says.
The speed of evolution to a multiskilled workforce is moving forward in quantum leaps. Universities are at the core of this convergence, both as enablers of future organisational and societal dynamics and to empower us to step onto this new ground with confidence.
Are you looking to upskill or reskill in a multidisciplinary way? Study your postgraduate degree at Wits University and be part of the future of exciting possibilities.
AI helps to identify new Covid-19 hotspots in Gauteng
- Wits University
Gauteng Government, IBM Research and Wits University are fighting the pandemic with artificial intelligence.
Accurate modelling is one of the tools being used to fight the Covid-19 pandemic globally. It is essential for policy makers, experts and the population to get access to reliable information on the evolution and severity of the pandemic based on relevant and robust advanced analytics and modelling.
In the last two weeks there has been a large increase in the daily number of cases throughout South Africa. These increases show clear signs of being the beginning of the second surge experienced in many countries around the world. In order to manage the rapidly growing numbers in Gauteng, it is vital to be able to target areas where the spread of the virus is growing fast and can be categorised as a hotspot. The determination and modelling of hotspots are complex tasks that require the use of techniques derived from artificial intelligence (AI).
In order to make this exercise possible, back in August the Gauteng Government launched a dashboard with IBM Research, Wits University and other stakeholders to visualise the data and modelling for the province. The partners have now updated the dashboard to visualise hotspots in the Gauteng Province. The tool provides information about the location, the number of cases, the area, affected administrative regions and the level of severity for each hotspot.
In order to fully characterise the danger that may be associated with a hotspot it is essential to assign to it an index in addition to its location and other characteristics. This index is referred to as the index of severity. This index is intended to enable policy makers and authorities on the ground to determine the best course of action to most efficiently curb the hotspots.
The Wits Institute for Collider Particle Physics (ICPP) applies analytical methods and tools used at the CERN (European Organization for Nuclear Research), to develop indexes that help policy makers and other stakeholders track the evolution of the pandemic. These indexes are developed on the basis of extensive research and observations of how the pandemic is evolving in South Africa and internationally.
“One of the indexes that our team developed is the risk index for the second wave. This index is a tool for the early detection of the second wave and it can be visualised and tracked for the different administrative regions of South Africa. The development of the severity index for hotspots is a continuation of earlier studies,” says Thuso Mathaha and Kgomotso Monnakgotla, researchers at the ICPP.
“We are observing a sharp increase in the number of infections across the province. We identified hotspots and the active ones are mapped in our dashboard that is available for free to the public, researchers and policy makers. We encourage public use of this information as it is relevant for following the movement of the pandemic and to be alerted to emerging hotspots. We urge the public to continue to adhere to the regulations so that we can reduce infections and save lives,” says Mduduzi Mbada, Head of Policy at the Gauteng Office of the Premier.
“This dashboard contributes to the Covid-19 pandemic response by making data on the spatial location of active hotspots in Gauteng readily available to the public, researchers and policy makers. It is anticipated being able to visualize the specific locations of hotspots will influence people's perceptions of Covid-19 risk and potentially shape personal protective behaviour. The dashboard also provides data useful for the Advisory Committee to guide policy makers on where to target interventions for mitigating the pandemic. Further, the dashboard provides policy makers granular data useful for planning and monitoring the pandemic response at ward level,” says Dr Mary Kawonga, Public health Medicine Consultant at Wits University and Chair of the Gauteng Premier Covid-19 Advisory Committee.
“The problem is how to identify areas of high activity of coronavirus. Given the locations of Covid-19 patients provided by the Health Department, we must group the cases into severely infectious zones, or clusters. We are able to find these clusters optimally within the Gauteng region, by using technologies in artificial intelligence. With this information, we can compare the growth of a cluster to epidemiological models derived for infectious disease spread, thereby giving accurate predictions for the evolution of any cluster. This means we can now describe the severity of coronavirus cases for various locations within the province. The success of this integration of AI algorithms with standard epidemiological models is a powerful example of how 4IR research can be used to aid South Africa,” says Roy Gusinow, a researcher at the ICPP.
“Hotspots areas are defined thorough a thorough analysis of the first wave using AI together with advanced analytics we are able to examine each cluster of cases geographically and through epidemiological modelling. Once the dynamics of normal clusters and hot-spot clusters is clearly understood we are able to extract potentially vulnerable and volatile clusters as hot-spots and/or developing hot-spots and visualise them through IBM’s specially developed platform. Through the gpcoronavirus platform, stakeholders in all industries are able to identify hot-spots and enforce appropriate measures, distribute necessary resources and/or provide guidance to the area’s population to control the spread of Covid-19,” says Benjamin Lieberman, a researcher at the ICPP.
This fruitful collaboration between the Gauteng Department of Health, and other stakeholders in Gauteng, IBM and Wits University involves many individuals from diverse backgrounds. This includes policy makers, practitioners and researchers from a wide range of disciplines.
“The new hotspot visualization in the dashboard includes the severity of infectiousness in an area and is grounded on epidemiological models that capture the dynamics of the spread of the disease,” says Dr Sibusisiwe Makhanya, a research scientist at IBM Research – Africa.
“Artificial intelligence is a versatile set of tools in modern analytics that allows us to tackle modelling of complex system through learning from experience. AI has proven to be very effective in the inter-disciplinary ecosystem established to tackle a this major crisis,” says Professor Bruce Mellado, Director of the Wits ICPP, who is also a senior scientist at iThemba LABS and a member of the Gauteng Premier Covid-19 Advisory Committee.
The dashboard is available via the IBM Cloud using the latest Chrome or Firefox web-browsers at https://gpcoronavirus.co.za.
Map of the active Hot Spots in the Gauteng Province
The Wits ICPP is grateful for the continued support by the Department of Science and Innovation and the National Research Foundation. The ICPP is also grateful for grant awards from the IEEE, the International Development Research Centre (IDRC) and the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (SIDA).
Building Africa's AI initiative
- Cirrus Initiative
Considerations behind the largest and most complex undertaking of its kind in Africa’s history.
In collaboration with academia,Cirrusis a private sector led initiative bringing together academia and industry for the establishment of a world class artificial intelligence (AI) research and application capability for Africa. Althoughlaunched in 2019, work on Cirrus started several years earlier which included laying the ground work forWits Universityto host the Cirrus infrastructure.
History
Cirrus was conceived over a decade ago but work on the first formal proposal started in 2017. At the time, Dr Dean Barrett, who works at theBrazilian Synchrotron Light Laboratory(LNLS), was seeking a way to apply machine learning to the vast amount of data they were producing.
Working with his fellow collaborator at Wits University, Dr Roy Forbes, it soon became apparent that Wits had similar needs and should be incorporated into the requirement. This was detailed in aproposal documentand in early 2018 presented to Wits.
Following meetings with stakeholders from across the university, Professor Dean Brady, Head of the School of Chemistry and Director of the Molecular Science Institute, with the support of Professor Zeblon Vilakazi, Wits Vice-Chancellor and Principal, took the lead on pushing Cirrus forward within Wits with the intention that this should benefit not only Wits University but all academic and research institutions in Africa.
1) Cirrus itself houses the cooperation programs, the state-of-the-art computing infrastructure and the open learning programs.
2) The Cirrus FOUNDRY is equipped with everything needed to bridge what is called the “Valley of Death”, and that is overcoming the challenge of turning a start-up idea or scientific research into large-scale commercial application. Simply, the business of the Cirrus FOUNDRY is building other businesses.
The Cirrus FOUNDRY is characterised by:
ideation generally carried out by the in-house team
the use of in-house staff in product creation
building multiple products centered around AI
with the objective of being standalone businesses
retaining some ownership stake and has a capital fund
For these reasons it is not an incubator or accelerator and referred to as a foundry.
3) The third component, the Cirrus FOUNDRY Fund is the in-house fund to support start-ups in the Cirrus FOUNDRY to ensure they are not wholly dependent on outside capital.
The Cirrus FOUNDRY Fund has a target capitalization of 35 million dollars and will undertake pre-seed and seed stage investments. For most investments, capital will be allocated at the pre-seed stage with investments of up to 3.7 million South African rand. The FOUNDRY Fund will also follow a lead investor in seed rounds, with investments of up to 7.5 million South African rand.
Mining's immediate future is to be impacted not just by economic cycles or established trends, but by structural issues demanding urgent and deep innovation.
Mining remains a significant sector in the global economy, but there are several significant issues facing the industry at the end of 2020. Most of these are either cyclical or part of an established trend, and require learning from the past and the application of limited innovation. These include how the sector is dealing with resource nationalism and the spread of infectious diseases like Covid -19. Other issues, however, are structural – such as the sector’s response to automation and climate change – and demand deeper levels of innovation.
Not all issues have underlying trends that lead to predictable futures. In fact, it is sometimes not possible to influence the trend because the issue is mostly outside the control of the mining sector; examples include poverty, macroeconomic uncertainty and global trade wars.
Within the control of the sector
Among the key trends and issues that are mostly within the control of the mining sector are the world’s continued demand for minerals, the derisking of supply chains, and increased competition for scarce capital – as well as resource management and compliance. These trends are listed below, along with the related issues that the sector will be confronting in 2021.
The world needs more minerals
Search for (new) 21st century mineral products
Remote mining
Mining at extreme depths
Derisking of supply chains
Diversified and global mineral supply and demand pipelines
Infrastructure bottlenecks
Production disruption
Increased competition for scarce capital
Partnerships and joint ventures contributing to return on capital
High capital and insurance costs
Better pricing arrangements
Value-add asset and resources management
Mine modernisation to achieve better mine plan certainty
Balance between regulations and change management needs
More compliance and reporting requirements
Governance and regulatory non-compliance a critical risk
Sustainable development goals becoming a form of 'soft' international law
Local content adoption and shared value approach to mining
Structural shifts
In addition to dealing with these cyclical issues and established trends, there are other trends of a more serious nature, resulting from structural shifts in the economy. These will require urgent innovation by the sector in 2021, and include:
structural shifts in risk management practices; growing climate change concerns;
a growing resistance to carbon; the increasing pace of technology adoption; and
disruption of mining and its future of work.
Risk management is shifting from a mindset that asks the question “What is our risk?” to the question of “What risk do we present to others?” This is both controversial and fundamentally different from the past. Imagine a situation where stakeholders will determine and quantify some risks in the future – with less control for companies. This is not only likely but fully anticipated.
Technology and skills
The next shift is a global mining ‘pull’ for relevant technology and skills, away from “What or who is in the market?” to “What do we need and who can we partner with to get it?” The technology and 4IR trend is unstoppable and automation of the entire mining value chain is fast becoming the major driver of value. With this come risks like cyberattacks, information breaches and theft of data and intellectual property. In addition, the adoption of more technology will create a new future of mining with a more human-centred future of work.
In conclusion, we are expecting a future in which artificial intelligence and human skill-sets will determine how we mine, while climate change issues will determine where and when we mine. Further, carbon content and the ability to control its release into the atmosphere will influence what we mine.
Huge gap between SA's 4IR strategy and what commission recommends
- Barry Dwolatzky and Mark Harris
Huge gap between SA's 4IR strategy and what commission recommends
How will the recommendations of the Presidential Commission on the Fourth Industrial Revolution catapult South Africa? We find a huge gap between what we see on the ground and the recommendations of the commission.
The much-anticipated final report and recommendations of the Presidential Commission on the Fourth Industrial Revolution were officially gazetted and made available for public scrutiny in October 2020. In summary, thecommission’s recommendationswere:
Invest in human capital development;
Establish an Artificial Intelligence Institute;
Establish a platform for advanced manufacturing and new materials;
Secure and avail data to enable innovation;
Provide incentives for future industries, platforms and applications of Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR) technologies;
Build 4IR infrastructure;
Review and amend (or create) policy and legislation; and
Establish a 4IR Strategy Implementation Coordination Council in the presidency.
Reading these proposals together with the far more detailed description of each in the final report, we ask the question: How will this catapult South Africa into the 4IR? We find a huge gap between what we see on the ground and the recommendations of the commission.
What is it that we see on the ground? Let us look through one of many specific lenses. We have chosen to examine our criminal justice system.
The Integrated Justice System
Penuell Maduna was minister of justice in President Nelson Mandela’s Cabinet between 1994 and 1998. In 1996, he presented his department’s vision for an integrated “E-Justice” system at a local IT conference. It was the first time that some of us, who are now veterans of the South African IT industry, heard about the “Integrated Justice System”.
“The Integrated Justice System aims to increase the efficiency and effectiveness of the entire criminal justice process by increasing the probability of successful investigation, prosecution, punishment for priority crimes and, ultimately, rehabilitation of offenders. Further issues receiving specific attention include overcrowding in prisons and awaiting-trial prisoner problems, as well as bail, sentencing and plea bargaining.”
What should an “integrated justice system” in 2021 look like? Imagine the following hypothetical scenario:
My car was stolen while I was visiting a friend in Norwood, Johannesburg. As soon as I noticed it was missing, I phoned the emergency call centre. I spoke to a chatbot, which captured the relevant information in less than a minute. A digital crime report was logged in a central cloud-based system and I received an SMS with my case number. I forwarded this to my insurance company. My licence plate number was uploaded on to the centralised “stolen vehicle” database and an alert was issued to hundreds of smart cameras in the area. Each camera is equipped with Licence Plate Recognition software.
Within a few seconds, an operator at the Johannesburg central control centre was alerted to the fact that my stolen vehicle was parked outside a small industrial building in Jeppestown, east of the city centre. A live image was brought up on her screen showing two men standing next to the vehicle. She zoomed in on their faces and sent their images to the integrated facial recognition system. Within two minutes, she had information on one of the two men. He had a previous conviction in Durban for receiving stolen vehicles. The system had already automatically dispatched a police patrol car and connected the crew via a secure radio link to the control centre operator.
Five minutes later, the patrol vehicle reached the building in Jeppestown. The control centre operator, still watching the scene live on her screen, directed them to a lane at the side of the building where they found a group of men beginning to strip down my vehicle for spare parts. Three men were arrested and two escaped through a back entrance. These two were identified via images received from the bodycams worn by the police officers. They were arrested later in the day.
When the men appeared in court a week later, the prosecutor pulled up the digital docket on his laptop. He had video and stills images captured by security cameras and from the bodycams of the police officers. He also had full details of previous convictions of some of the accused. Within an hour all accused had been convicted and sentenced.
The diagram in Figure 1 represents the technology and systems that would need to be in place to make the scenario set out here a reality.
From this diagram one will see, at the lowest level, first responders, namely police officers and patrol vehicles, are equipped with mobile critical communications infrastructure. They have access to digital radio communication using the Tetra (Terrestrial Trunked Radio) standard, which provides highly secure two-way voice with GPS location and limited data communication independent of public mobile networks.
Officers also wear bodycams that can be viewed live and vehicles are equipped with dashcams. Officers may also carry wearable Internet of Things-based sensors (for example, GPS). The onboard computer in the patrol vehicle has access to Licence Plate Recognition software and a variety of data sources on the cloud.
At the next level is surveillance technology consisting of smart cameras and Internet of Things sensors. The smart cameras have built-in artificial intelligence (AI) capability, such as Licence Plate Recognition, and can access information via the cloud. They can also detect “unusual behaviour”, such as the same car passing several times, and will trigger an event that notifies the operations centre.
At the highest level is the Intelligence Operations Centre. It is equipped with AI-based software systems and a sophisticated video management system. Personnel in the centre include dispatchers and commanders who can coordinate first responders and back-up teams, and detectives who coordinate collection of evidence.
All of these systems, from the first responders on the ground to the Intelligence Operations Centre, require reliable, secure communications and high-capacity broadband connectivity.
Anyone who has engaged with the South African criminal justice system will know that the description above remains a distant vision. Have you tried reporting a burglary or a stolen car at your local police station? And what if the burglar is apprehended? Have you sat in court months later ready to give evidence only to hear that either the docket or the accused is “missing”?
In our current system, processes are largely paper-based and manual. Where digital systems are in place, they are outdated and non-integrated. In terms of technology used in crime-fighting, our police systems lie somewhere between the representation in Figure 2 and Figure 3.
The scenario above and the representation in Figure 1 is, however, not fanciful and futuristic. Cities around the world implemented such systems several years ago and some are in the process of adding further levels of integration and intelligence.
Using technologies such as AI, machine learning, Internet of Things, cloud computing, robotic process automation, drones and advanced image processing, coupled with the drawing in of data from multiple sources including cellphone networks and social media platforms, the fight against crime is reaching the highest level of sophistication.
We would argue that the scenario we have presented here, together with its future possibilities, is what the 4IR would look like through our lens of the criminal justice system.
We do acknowledge, however, that while our focus is on the advantages derived from the technology described, there is another side to the coin of increased surveillance and monitoring. The disadvantages of these technologies in terms of civil liberties and privacy might in some cases outweigh their advantages.
The gap between where we are and the 4IR
Why is South Africa lagging behind, and why is it that 25 years after Maduna announced the launch of the Integrated Justice System for South Africa, we still read about it as a statement of future intent on our government’s website?
There are several reasons for the lack of progress on the implementation of the Integrated Justice System.
The vision doesn’t go far enough. Government is still working painfully slowly to deliver a system offering the level of functionality that might have been seen as cutting edge in 2010. The vision, design and architecture of the system need to be constantly updated to reflect rapidly emerging technology trends.
There is a reluctance on the part of staff in the relevant departments and their labour unions to adopt new technology. There is also a shortage in these departments of the relevant skills.
At the heart of an integrated system such as the Integrated Justice System is the need for excellent connectivity at a low cost. Every point of contact in the system, from police stations to court rooms to prisons to patrol vehicles and individual officers, to cameras and central control rooms, must be equipped with a fast and reliable broadband connection. These links must be secure.
Such connectivity does not exist, even in our major metropolitan areas. Many implementation projects have failed due to connectivity issues.
The other need is for data management. The integration of the Integrated Justice System is its most important requirement. For this to be achieved, common data standards and management protocols must be defined and implemented.
Tendering and procurement processes within government tend to slow down and block innovation and implementation. Red tape, inefficiency and – sometimes – corruption have bedevilled many critical government IT projects over the past 25 years.
What does this say about the 4IR in SA and the recommendations of the presidential commission?
We would argue that a successful transition to the 4IR would look like the vision we have painted for the Integrated Justice System.
One could create similar scenarios for other clusters in our economy, such as education, health, logistics, and so on. In each case, we would expect to see seamless integration of processes supported by data, automation and advanced technologies such as AI.
We do not believe that the recommendations submitted by the Presidential Commission on the Fourth Industrial Revolution provide a road map for moving us from where we currently are (somewhere between Figure 2 and Figure 3) to where we want to be (Figure 1 and beyond).
Let us very briefly consider each of the commission’s eight recommendations in relation to the advanced Integrated Justice System outlined above:
Invest in human capital development: while skills are a constraint in implementing the full Integrated Justice System, the reluctance of existing staff, supported by their unions and associations, to adopt new digital technology and accept reskilling is the bigger constraint;
Establish an Artificial Intelligence Institute: the role of such an institute would be developing skills (see previous point) and new cutting-edge AI-based technology. As we have shown, existing technologies exist and while it would be important in the future to develop our own technological solutions, we have struggled to even adopt off-the-shelf AI technologies;
Establish a platform for advanced manufacturing and new materials (this is not relevant to the Integrated Justice System scenario);
Secure and avail data to enable innovation: availability, management and integration of data would move us closer to our 4IR goal;
Provide incentives for future industries, platforms and applications of 4IR technologies: again, the problem is not innovation, but is rather implementation;
Build 4IR infrastructure: Since this includes fast and affordable broadband connectivity and cloud infrastructure, this is an important and relevant recommendation;
Review and amend (or create) policy and legislation: one of the constraints in the Integrated Justice System has to do with procurement and tendering. This is a relevant recommendation; and
Establish a 4IR Strategy Implementation Coordination Council in the presidency: while this might help, its mandate and powers are unclear. Would this council, for example, be able to unblock obstacles that have made the implementation of the Integrated Justice System so difficult? We are not convinced.
We believe that the presidential commission should have looked through specific lenses, as we have done in this article, and developed concrete recommendations on how to move rapidly to the 4IR scenarios, such as the one we have presented.
Professor Barry Dwolatzky is Emeritus Professor at the University of the Witwatersrand and Director of the Joburg Centre for Software Engineering. Mark Harris is CEO of Altron Nexus. This article was first published in Daily Maverick/Business Maverick.
Wits develops AI project with York University to tackle COVID-19 in Africa
- Wits University
The International Development and Research Centre (IDRC) grants $1.25 Million to the project.
The Africa-Canada Artificial Intelligence and Public Health Data Modelling Consortium has secured a $1.25 million grant from the International Development and Research Centre (IDRC) for the Predictive modelling and forecasting of the transmission of COVID-19 in Africa using Artificial Intelligence project.
The Consortium will be co-chaired by Prof. Jianhong Wu of York University and Prof. Bruce Mellado of the University of the Witwatersrand (Wits) in South Africa. It will build on an existing South African-led COVID-19 dashboard developed by Mellado’s Institute for Collider Particle Physics, and transmission models and simulation technologies that have been developed both at York University and the University of the Witwatersrand. These technologies have been widely adopted by government agencies and international organisations in recent months, including the Gauteng Department of Health in South Africa.
Mellado adds: “Particle physics harnesses large amounts of data and uses artificial intelligence to understand the data. These skills are transferrable to the problem solving of complex systems, such as the modelling of the COVID-19 pandemic or future crises.
“Artificial Intelligence through machine learning provides a unique suite of tools and methodologies that allows analysts to learn from it. This is essential in solving complex modelling problems,” explains Mellado. “We view this exercise as a form of technology transfer revolving around skills and knowledge developed in solving problems of fundamental interactions in nature. In solving these problems we are also able to create an ecosystem of knowledge in Artificial Intelligence that feeds back into Particle Physics as well.”
“The COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted life as we know it, but it has also galvanised our rapid adaptation to change and the adoption of new technologies,” says Professor Zeblon Vilakazi, incoming Vice-Chancellor and Principal of the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa. “Wits is proud to collaborate with leading scholars from York University on this multidisciplinary project to develop new technologies to strengthen the fight against COVID-19. We are in a crucial moment in the life of this pandemic and it is important that we work as a collective for the benefit of society.”
“This important and timely collaboration will combine York’s research strength in disease modelling, global health, artificial intelligence and emergency management, with AI and modelling expertise in Africa and the practical skills and sensitivity that only local organisations can provide,” says Rhonda L. Lenton, President and Vice-Chancellor of York University. “We are excited to join with colleagues in Africa as part of the global effort to contain this devastating pandemic.”
Prof. Jude Kong, an Assistant Professor in the Department of Mathematics and Statistics in the Faculty of Science and a member of the National COVID-19 Modelling Rapid Response Task Force at York is the Canadian Principal Investigator.
“Working with organisations in Africa, we will develop models and simulations of COVID-19 that are relevant to specific cities and the areas adjacent to them,” says Kong. “This will give municipal and national health authorities, and policy-makers from across Africa the practical tools that they need to suppress subsequent waves of infections or mitigate their impact. It will enable us to look at the effectiveness of public health interventions to determine if a particular intervention is appropriate, equitable, feasible and cost-efficient.”
About Professor Bruce Mellado
Bruce Mellado is a Professor at the University of the Witwatersrand, a Senior Researcher of iThemba LABS and serves as the Director of the Institute for Collider Particle Physics. Mellado is the National Contact Physicist of South Africa at the ATLAS experiment at CERN and is the co-Chair of the Nuclear Particle and Radiation Division of South African Institute of Physics. He is a B1 rated researcher of the National Research Foundation and a member of the Gauteng Premier’s COVID-19 Advisory Committee, where he leads work on predictions for the Provincial Government. Mellado holds a PhD from Columbia University
Tshimologong announces the 5th edition of Digital Lab Africa
- Wits University
Digital content creators called to participate in fully online DLA#5.
The fifth edition of Digital Lab Africa(DLA), the first mentorship and incubation program for African creatives in innovative and digital content, has launched its next call for applications. DLA is calling on artists, producers, designers, collectives, students or entrepreneurs from both creative and cultural industries, including from across Sub-Saharan Africa to apply.
DLA aims to incubate emerging talent by offering them a springboard to jump-start and accelerate their projects with the support and expertise of the DLA ecosystem. Led and managed by Wits University’s Tshimologong Digital Innovation Precinct, and supported by the AFD (Agence Française de Développement).
The Pan-African accelerator focuses on 5 key categories: Immersive Experience, Video Games, Music, Animation and Digital Art. The programme initiated five years ago by the French Institute in South Africa (IFAS) counts SACEM, TRACE, TV5 Monde Afrique, the French Embassy in Nigeria, amongst others, as partners. Applications for the animation and immersive experience (XR) categories are now open and close on 4 April, while applications for video, digital art, and music categories can be submitted between 17 May and 11 July.
In 2020, DLA received more than 500 applications from over 32 countries. For its fifth edition, Digital Lab Africa is switching to a fully online format. The incubation and mentorship programs followed by the DLA#5 laureates will include online activities, online mentorship, and participation to online industry events.
Chief Executive of the Tshimologong Precinct, Lesley Donna Williams, says the DLA applications reflect the vitality and uniqueness of the African continent in the field of digital cultures and new technologies. “Each year the level innovation in terms of form, storytelling, content and technologies gets better. We expect DLA#5 to once again exceed our expectations and look forward to receiving quality applications.”
Created in 2016, Digital Lab Africa is an initiative of the French Institute and the French Embassy in South Africa, managed by the South African innovation hub Tshimologong Digital Innovation Precinct since 2018.
Digital Lab Africa (DLA) is the first platform dedicated to creative content (immersive realities, video game, animation, music, digital art) linked with innovation in Africa. The very idea of DLA is to incubate emerging talent by offering them a springboard to fast track their projects development with the support and expertise of DLA creative industries ecosystem in France and in Sub-Saharan African countries.
Founded in September of 2016, as a Wits University investment in the tech and digital future of South Africa and the continent, Tshimologong Digital Innovation Precinct works with academia, corporates, international agencies and government across all spheres to unearth, upskill and promote digital talent. Tshimologong Precinct focusses its efforts in three areas: incubation of enterprises, digital skills training and creating a marketplace for start-ups.
Driven by common goals, including the desire to combine technology, innovation and creative content, Tshimologong and the French Embassy in South Africa have joined forces to create a Digital Content Hub (DCH) - and integrate and sustain the existing Digital Lab Africa Programme – the first support programming for the production of digital content across sub-Saharan Africa initiated in 2016 by the French Embassy in South Africa. The DCH is the first project from cultural industries in Africa to have obtained funding from the Agence française de développement (AFD) since the extension of their mandate to these sectors.
Removing the technology fear factor from digital transformation
- Barry Dwolatzky and Mark Harris
Digital transformation: Technology shouldn’t be a source of fear, but rather an ally and key business tool.
To all but the most technically astute executives, digital technology is seen as something of a minefield. Many large organisations fail in their digital transformation strategies because they embark on massive projects that take too long, cost too much and fail to yield any business value. In this article, we unravel the layers of technology that need to be navigated.
“Digital Transformation” – these words have featured prominently in boardroom meetings and strategy sessions in organisations large and small in recent years.
“Going digital”, closely associated with the buzzwords “Fourth Industrial Revolution”, or 4IR, has become a business imperative for almost every industry, company and government entity. Executives are having to deal with the strategy, execution and impact of implementing – or not implementing – a digital transformation programme.
In anarticleinForbesmagazine in September 2019, Blake Morgan notes that 70% of digital transformation programmes fail. While the reasons for this vary, she identifies a common cause: namely, a lack of buy-in by key stakeholders. At the root of the reluctance from senior executives is uncertainty and fear about the technology aspects of digital transformation.
One of the biggest challenges that executives face is that there are so many layers of technology and platforms that need to be evaluated and navigated.
Executives ask, “How do I deal with this complexity? How do I make the right selections to maximise the business benefits? What is affordable?” They fear the risks inherent in having to fund and manage massive technology projects that are expensive and could take years before the business benefits are derived.
To all but the most technically astute executives, digital technology is seen as something of a minefield. Many large organisations fail in their digital transformation strategies because they embark on massive projects that take too long, cost too much and fail to yield any business value.
In this article we unravel the layers of technology that need to be navigated. We offer some broad suggestions and a useful framework for understanding and assessing the technology choices faced by those tasked with running a business in the 2020s.
They explain that key drivers for digital transformation are: developing a closer relationship with customers; redesigning and innovating key business processes; building “smarter” products and services; and being willing to take on greater levels of risk.
These objectives are delivered by redesigning the customer experience; using the tools and methods from data science; and being “agile at scale”.
It is this latter attribute that many organisations fail to appreciate. It advises against the “big bang” approach to digital transformation, i.e. large, expensive and risky initiatives, and calls for small, iterative and incremental steps in the adoption of digital technologies.
Figure 1 also highlights laying down a strong foundation of technology to support a “data backbone” for the organisation, supported by good cybersecurity.
Organisations should also consider migrating to the cloud, using “software as a service”, and adopting the Internet of Things (IoT) as a way of enriching its access to relevant real-time information.
Figure 1: Four keys to successful digital transformation in healthcare, 25 April 2017. Source: McKinsey Digital
There are several specific business drivers that may necessitate digital transformation. Three of the most important of these are:
Increasing revenue and accessing new markets
If a company is focused on increasing revenue, accessing new markets and improving its “Know Your Customer” environment, it would need to focus on digital technologies that would create a strong digital presence. This would require creating world-class websites, maximising social media presence, digital marketing and potentially an e-commerce platform. There are specific technologies and platforms that underpin each of these.
Efficiencies and reducing costs
If a company is aiming to improve effectiveness and reduce costs, many executives fear that implementing new digital technology has the opposite effect. They believe that new digital platforms are costly and create huge capex requirements. This risk may be significantly mitigated by opting to use Cloud-based platforms and easy-to-use RPA (Robotic Process Automation) technologies.
Innovating and becoming a data-driven organisation
A more advanced technology-driven approach to digital transformation is required for improving functions like supply chains, asset management, changing business models and gaining deeper customer insights.
Some businesses already have huge amounts of information that can be utilised to innovate and support new business models and product innovations. Other businesses would need to create and access data that could dramatically improve the visibility of their operational environment.
Technologies such as IoT (Internet of Things) and Scada (Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition) can facilitate the collection of relevant data.
For example, by implementing an IoT platform and adding sensors to remote devices, businesses can gain enormous insights into supply chains, customer behaviour, asset control and the management and control of remote environments.
Enabling technologies
Depending on the specific business driver, digital technologies are deployed to achieve that driver. Figure 2 below shows some of these technologies in relation to the three drivers listed above. All of these technologies are, however, underpinned by a common core of “enabling technologies”.
Figure 2: Enabling technologies that support specific business drivers
Most digital transformation strategies are undertaken to drive some level of automation. In the modern context, automation is usually based on implementation of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in some shape or form. But what needs to be in place to support automation and AI? In Figure 2 these are listed as “enabling technologies”.
Some form of “machine-to-machine” (M2M) communication usually underpins AI and automation. This is necessary because automation usually involves reducing or eliminating human engagement in business processes and operations.
Automating an insurance claim, for example, might mean that information currently filled in by the claimant on a paper form and then entered into a computer system by a human clerk, would be replaced by an app on the claimant’s phone that communicates directly with the insurance company’s computer.
While M2M communication is almost as old as computing itself, modern protocols and technologies have introduced opportunities to exchange an increasing amount of information between systems and devices.
“Big Data” is the next important “enabling technology”. Introducing M2M communication within an organisation’s business processes results in the conversion of information flows into a digital format.
Whereas an old-fashioned analogue business might have information flows consisting of paper records, hand-written memos, telephone conversations and cash transactions, a digital business will convert all of these into a digital format. The quantity and variety of digital data that moves around a modern organisation, even a relatively small organisation, is large.
Organisations also have the ability to draw in and use digital data from other sources. This falls under the heading “Big Data”.
Rather than investing in its own on-site hardware infrastructure to store and process data, the modern digital business uses resources in the Cloud. This is another layer of technology that an organisation needs to manage.
Deploying AI to drive automation in a business depends on successfully managing and using this Cloud-based Big Data repository. This is where “Analytics”, and particularly “Predictive Analytics”, comes into play. This not only requires technology, but also depends heavily on appropriate skills.
“Data Scientist” is the modern label attached to a person with the prerequisite set of skills required to use predictive analytics and AI to automate a business’s operations.
Other technologies deployed in digital businesses are RPA (i.e “Robotic Process Automation”), IoT and robotics. These latter two are particularly necessary when business operations need to interact with the physical world.
Removing the technology fear factor from digital transformation
As we noted in the introduction, many executives responsible for managing a digital transformation strategy for their organisation fear that it will unleash a fearsome ogre into their business. This ogre comes in the form of a big disruptive technology project with budgets and timelines that soon spiral out of control.
In this article we have identified some of the core enabling technologies that need to be selected and implemented. Our key message is that the technology aspect of the digital transformation journey should be “right-sized” and implemented in an agile, incremental and appropriate manner.
Technology should not be a source of fear, but rather an enabler to rapidly achieve tangible benefits.
Professor Barry Dwolatzky is Emeritus Professor at the University of the Witwatersrand and Director of the Joburg Centre for Software Engineering. Mark Harris is CEO of Altron Nexus. This article first appeared in Daily Maverick/Business Maverick.
Wits announces team to advance AI research in Africa
- Wits University
The team, led by Professor Zeblon Vilakazi, will lead Africa’s effort to advance artificial intelligence research and its application across the continent.
Wits University has announced its team that will advance Africa’s AI initiative, Cirrus, a private sector led initiative bringing together academia and industry for the establishment of a world class artificial intelligence (AI) research and application capability for Africa.
The university team will be led by Professor Zeblon Vilakazi, Vice-Chancellor and Principal, with Professor Emeritus Barry Dwolatzky (project lead), Professor Nithaya Chetty, Dean of the Faculty of Science, as the champion for scientific engagement, and Dr Roy Forbes as the engagement coordinator.
The university team (Biographies) will work closely with the Cirrus team (Biographies) that was announced at AI Expo Africa in 2020.
Priorities and challenges
The university team is focused on two key priorities:
Academic: Supporting the establishment of the AI Africa (AIA) Consortium which provides the mechanism for bringing together academic and research institutions with a vested interested in the success and sustainability of Cirrus as Africa’s artificial intelligence effort.
Government: Lead engagement and coordination with government on:
the adoption of Cirrus and;
support for local academic and research institutions to invigorate AI research and to further the application of AI across various academic and industrial domains.
Cirrus is the largest and most complex undertaking of its kind in Africa’s history; however, the major challenges are neither financial nor technological. Rather, it is rallying the academic and research institutions in Africa for there to be a critical mass of research and applications that can fully leverage the capabilities that will be established with Cirrus. Most of the institutions participating in the AIA Consortium will be publicly funded academic institutions from across the continent.
With Wits University, Cirrus now has a leading university on the continent and a competent team to spearhead this important work.
South African and numerous other African universities currently host various academic and industrial research groups. These groups are involved in, amongst other things, activities ranging from environmental and climate change research, medical research to materials research and energy storage development and design.
“Most if not all these existing research thrusts could benefit significantly from incorporating AI methodologies in their research activities. Furthermore, in working together as opposed to working in isolated groups the impact of the research will also be improved,” says Gregg Barrett, Founder of Cirrus.
The establishment of Cirrus is therefore a rallying call to the academic and research institutions in Africa for there to be a critical mass of research and applications that can fully leverage the capabilities that will be established with Cirrus.
“We at Wits have been on a long journey with Cirrus to bring all of the elements of this ambitious partnership into place. We are hoping to soon begin to sign up members of the AI Africa (AIA) Consortium and to see tangible benefits flowing from our engagement with Cirrus,” says Dwolatzky.
Wits University’s endeavours extend beyond the AIA Consortium and includes catalysing necessary strategic policy engagements with government to ensure impact on important research and societal objectives.
“The critical strategic steps that need to be taken in Africa have long been spoken about and now is the time for action. AsMarc Andreessenrecently pointed out, a takeaway from the COVID-19 pandemic is that people need to think about their occupation and contribution to society. If you are not helping people directly, and your occupation does not lead to something being built and contributes little to society, you are failing yourself. Cirrus represents Africa’s collective opportunity to move past the talk and get building on solving real problems with significant societal impacts,” says Barrett.
Wits students develop unique cannabis cultivation tech
- Wits University
Two master’s students are developing new technologies aimed at disrupting the booming cannabis, or so called ‘green gold’, industry.
Their novel cannabis cultivation technologies, uniquely developed for the African climate, have earned Constant Beckerling and Anlo van Wyk special recognition in the Biosciences category of the Gauteng Accelerator Programme (GAP) – an annual competition held by the Innovation Hub, a subsidiary of the Gauteng Development Agency. The competition is aimed at tech entrepreneurs who develop technologies that can benefit the Gauteng, South African and African economies.
Even though they are both passionate cannabis growers, their focus is on developing agri-tech for the sector. To do this they have created a startup called AgriSmart Engineering (Pty) Ltd during Covid-19 lockdown last year. With a focus on closed-loop hydroponics and aquaponics, the AgriSmart team specialises in the design and implementation of automated smart growing systems.
Growing for gold
Beckerling and Van Wyk are approaching their speciality of cannabis cultivation as an engineering problem and marrying their growers experience and intuition with their engineering and technical backgrounds.
“There is a matrix of factors for cannabis cultivation that we consider. As an engineering startup we are developing cultivation technologies for the African climate. For cannabis cultivation, South Africa faces shortcomings such as water stress and irregular electricity supply at a high cost. But the country also has strengths such as superior solar radiation and being one of the first countries that are in the process of commercialising cannabis,” Beckerling says.
To strike ‘green gold’ early, Beckerling and Van Wyk, both doing their MSc in Electrical Engineering, entered a blueprint for a cannabis cultivation research facility they designed in the GAP competition. Their entry also included two main agro-processing offerings:
cannabis specific LED grow lights in an automated Internet of Things (IoT) environment, customised for the research facility to accommodate the photobiology of the cannabis plants;
and proprietary organic hydroponic nutrient, which they formulate based on the respective hormonal growth cycles of the plants.
“Our novel LED lighting is a technology which is set to disrupt the cannabis industry. This technology is brought about by combining one of South Africa’s unique strengths, which is solar radiation, with engineering disciplines like artificial intelligence, electronic and mechanical engineering,” says van Wyk.
The industry standard is currently to use High Intensity Discharge Lighting (HID) lighting.
“Our LED lighting tech runs 2.5 times more efficient on electricity than High Pressure Sodium (HPS) lights and even more so compared to Metal Halide (MH) fixtures. The lifetime of our LED fixtures is also significantly longer than that of HID – about 15 times at the upper-end. This translates to about 80 000 hours of light compared to about 5 000 hours lifetime for the HID – leading to significantly lower maintenance costs.” explains Beckerling.
According to Van Wyk the LED lighting fixtures are also dimmable. “So we could implement an artificial intelligence algorithm that takes in environmental input and based on those inputs it controls what the lighting output should be in that specific moment. This leads to optimisation of power consumption which brings down electricity costs.”
For the competition they had to do financial projections around their fixtures and the potential benefits of their disruptive tech. The bottom line is that over 5 years the cultivator stands to save R 25 million per hectare in electricity costs just on the lighting alone, compared to industry standard HID fixtures.
The two engineers are also formulating their own organic hydroponic nutrients for cannabis. “Besides electricity, your biggest running cost in your facility is going to be your nutrient cost which increases with scale. It’s therefor crucial to get the right nutrients that tailor to your plants’ specific hormonal growth phases,” says Beckerling.
Cannabis plants require different nutrients in different stages of their development and require these nutrients in different concentrations as they mature. “We are doing a cannabis-specific hydroponic nutrient that we formulate completely organically, and we are planning to register it as a type 2 organic fertilizer in line with the regulations of South African law,” Beckerling explains.
The research and development of this nutrient takes time and money. Securing funding to develop and commercialise this nutrient, while producing it at more than 10 times cheaper than the current direct market competition, is one of their biggest stumbling blocks.
Into the near future
Their next aim is to build a demonstration facility to show how their technologies are working on the ground. “The current growing technology is very archaic, so if one party does decide to use this new tech, it will force the rest of the industry to follow suite if they want to compete on price,” Van Wyk says.
Beckerling adds: “We believe the market will settle at who can produce the most consistently at the cheapest price and at the highest quality.”
The research facility will also provide an immense scope of research, particularly in engineering (chemical, electrical, mechanical and civil); computer science (machine learning, AI, big data, bio-informatics, robotics, software development and others); plant and biological sciences; physical sciences; and pharmacology, psychology and medicine. They estimate that many companies can spawn from this facility through the commercialisation of new technologies.
Biopark, a division of The Innovation Hub, recently offered AgriSmart a contract to help incubate the startup, which they accepted.
WhatsApp + maths tutors = a solution for poor learners
- Daily Maverick
An innovative maths WhatsApp hotline threw high school teens an educational lifeline during 2020.
When the Covid-19 pandemic ensured that old ways of reaching learners wouldn’t work any more. The hotline is still playing a crucial role in 2021.
In this article by Kim Maxwell, first published in the Daily Maverick 168 weekly newspaper, Dr Lynn Bowie, visiting research associate, shares how the OLICO/Two Minute Tango app developed at Wits University is helping young maths learners to build confidence and competence in Addition, Subtraction, Multiplication and Division. READ THE FULL ARTICLE.
Pandemic impact on ICT skills in the spotlight in 2021 ICT Skills Survey
- Wits University
The JCSE-IITPSA Skills Survey assesses skills demand and supply from both a corporate and practitioner perspective.
The impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on ICT skills is expected to be revealed by the 2021 ICT Skills Survey carried out by Wits University’s Joburg Centre for Software Engineering (JCSE) in partnership with the Institute of Information Technology Professionals South Africa (IITPSA), which has now gone live for the first time since 2019.
The survey, an important guide to the state of ICT skills in South Africa, did not take place in 2020 due to the disruptions caused by the pandemic. It is expected that this year’s survey will highlight the changes that have been wrought on ICT skills demand and supply over the past 18 months.
Adrian Schofield, production consultant at the IITPSA and co-author of the JCSE-IITPSA ICT Skills Survey report, says: “The clear message coming out of the past 18 months is that the world of work for everybody has changed. For the ICT skills environment this means two things – the way in which ICTs are used across the board in any working environment has changed, impacting the need for support for people working from home. The other is the ongoing need for developing systems that are appropriate in the Covid-19 world and the ability to manage those systems in a more distributed environment than many organisations – SMBs in particular – are accustomed to.”
Schofield says: “While we cannot predict the outcomes, the 2021 ICT Skills Survey might find the demand for skills remains constant, possibly increasing in some areas; but the way in which people acquire those skills may be changing from the traditional meeting in a fixed environment to learning things on a more remote basis. The travel restrictions do have an impact on the mobility of skills across borders, and we hope to get some indication of how that is affecting our market.”
Professor Barry Dwolatzky, Director of the JCSE and co-author of the report, says: “What the Covid-19 pandemic has done has given huge impetus to digital transformation. The acceleration has been huge, so we might be seeing people in different sectors or job descriptions now seeing themselves as digital professionals. An interesting thing that has happened over the last year is that almost all learning has moved from being face-to-face, to virtual. In the past we made a distinction between in-person learning and virtual learning, and it will be interesting to see how this impacts the findings on how companies source and grow skills now.”
The JCSE-IITPSA Skills Survey assesses skills demand and supply from both a corporate and practitioner perspective. Its objective is to identify the most pressing skills needs from the corporate perspective, balanced with the view of current skills capacity of the practitioners and their intentions for future skills development. The questionnaire is in a consistent format to track trends and is published as an on-line survey.
In the corporate survey, the research looks at digital skills shortages and capabilities across key technologies in 20 industry sectors; as well as the ICT skills organisations expect to need in the next 12 months and how organisations plan to meet these needs. In this year’s survey, organisations will also be asked how the Covid-19 pandemic affected skills availability, and what impact the pandemic has had on workforces. The ICT practitioner survey will assess the qualifications practitioners have, their approach to further skills development, and how the pandemic has affected their work.
The two questionnaires are now live and can be accessed here where respondents can register and then login to select either or both of the surveys.
The Wits Quantum Initiative launches at Wits
- Wits University
WitsQ will provide first a forum for quantum scientists in all fields across the continent to connect.
The Wits Quantum Initiative, WitsQ, has launched today with its brand new website as the first step in creating a forum for quantum scientists in all fields to connect.
WitsQ is a strategic initiative of the University to be a driver of quantum technologies, making Wits the leading quantum institute on the continent.
Led by Professor Andrew Forbes, from the Wits School of Physics, as Director, WitsQ’s vision is to strategically promote and advance Quantum Technology at Wits, with a focus on the research, innovation, business, education and outreach, and ethics of quantum technologies.
The aim is to create a collaborative forum that includes the sciences, engineering, social sciences, humanities, health and business.
“The Initiative will grow a vibrant and productive quantum community at Wits, engage with relevant national and international entities across sectors, and provide a forum for experts and non-experts to interact,” says Forbes. The focus on Quantum technology is a strategic leg of Wits’ centenary celebrations and one of the fields Wits intends to use to launch South Africa – and Africa – into the new technology revolution.
“South Africa and Africa have missed the rise of the electronic industry. Our focus on Quantum technology gives us the opportunity to leapfrog into the Quantum world and be a major player in the field,” says Forbes, who co-authored the country’s Quantum Roadmap, which was approved by the Department of Science and Technology in March.
Wits Vice-Chancellor and Principal, Professor Zeblon Vilakazi – himself a nuclear physicist – sees Quantum technology as key player in both the economics and security of the country, and as a key research area for Wits.
“The focus on Quantum technology is crucial in a whole range of aspects of South Africa’s future, whether it is water security, communication, banking and finance or in the military space,” says Vilakazi. “Our research focus in this area will set Wits apart as a research institution on the continent and make South Africa a key player in setting the pace for the application of Quantum technologies in the future.”
Quantum mechanics is a theory that has been in existence for over a century, with the first quantum revolution giving birth to disruptive technologies such as the laser and the transistor, both at the very heart of our digital world. Despite being a venerable topic, quantum mechanics is experiencing a resurgence of late, spurring new technologies based on quantum entanglement, that “spooky” action at a distance so abhorred by Einstein. This has given rise to a “second quantum revolution”, promising new disruptive technologies.
“By harnessing the quantum world, we open an exciting future that is developing before our eyes: seeing smaller, better and with less light for enhanced medical imaging (quantum ghost imaging), networks that are fundamentally secure and unbreakable taking cybersecurity beyond its man-made limitations (quantum secure communication) and exponentially faster computers (quantum computing) to solve assumed “unsolvable” problems, from finance to drug design,” says Forbes.
Quantum technologies are closely integrated with artificial intelligence and machine learning, and considered a core security component of devices that will fuel the fourth industrial revolution. WitsQ sees the university as the main driver of South Africa’s Quantum Technology Initiative (SA QuTI), launched in March 2021 to move South Africa into the quantum future.
Wits University’s future hub of Quantum Technology is switched on.
Quantum light has a bright future that is being seen in the progressive application of light at the Structured Light Laboratory of Wits University. It is redefining the future of data connectivity and heightening efficiencies in manufacturing while it could open up novel scientific diagnostic tools in health care, amongst other sectors.
The Wits Structured Light Laboratory is primarily a photonics laboratory that has chosen to work in application within the field of Communications as it seeks to solve real world communications needs.
This is a laboratory for change makers with laser focus – literally - as here Distinguished Professor Andrew Forbes and his team of Wits School of Physics students discover, translate and innovate using patterns of light. Forbes is the youngest winner of the Gold Medal from the South African Institute of Physics (SAIP).
Next level potential of photonics
Photonics is enabling the next quantum leap for the world, says Forbes. “We are moving into the Century of the Photon with implications of a brighter future. In the past century it was about controlling electrons, giving rise to micro-electronics (Silicon Valley and the like) but today our focus is on controlling the light. Photonic devices control this light and therefore we are steadily seeing photonics replace electronics.”
The dream is to create a “Silicon Valley” for quantum photonics here in South Africa.
He explains that while quantum mechanics is a theory that has been in existence for over a century and has given birth to disruptive technologies such as the laser and the transistor, recent advances in the engineering of quantum states have given hope for a “second quantum revolution” to realise new technologies.
These next level technologies include enhanced medical imaging, efficient light-harvesting materials (clean energy), secure optical communication networks, exponentially faster computers (cyber security), and more precise measurement systems (metrology).
Building on the science of structured light
The lab’s team of scientists broke through a catalytical barrier in 2016 when they discovered “ways to increase the bandwidth of communication systems”. At that time, Wits and the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) “demonstrated that more than 100 patterns of light in an optical communications link could potentially increase the bandwidth of communication systems by a factor of 100.”
Not stopping at a factor of 100, the team went on to interrogate the next level by taking it to a factor of 1 000.
With a vision to see new frontiers in communications, Forbes explains: “We want to make the communication channels faster. If you can get 1 000 patterns to work in the channel and each pattern is carrying the same capacity as today’s communications system, then you have instantly increased the bandwidth by 1 000.”
Not satisfied just with speed, Wits brought in the toolkit of quantum light (how to control single photons) and entangled states. “By bringing the two together we can make communications systems not only fast by using many patterns but also fundamentally secure by bringing in the quantum toolkit.”
New secret of secure information
With everything being cyber and online it is necessary to make engagements and transactions secure. Forbes confirms the role of quantum physics in this equation, saying:
“Knowing that no one can break a security code is imperative. The final piece of this puzzle is to use the quantum aspects of light to make information fundamentally secure. We use the laws of physics to make data more secure so that someone would have to break the laws of nature to break the code.”
Wits made a bold contribution in this space this year through pioneering a new quantum approach for sharing a secret amongst many parties, setting a new record for the highest dimensions and parties.
''When you think of networks you think of many connections, many parties who wish to share information and not just two. Now we know how to do this the quantum way," he says. The result here is an example of the team pushing the state-of-the-art and bringing quantum communications closer to true network implementation.
Progressive postgraduate qualifications in Quantum Technology
Quantum technology is a new growth industry for South Africa, Africa and worldwide. Wits University has taken its first steps to enable the industry through an initiative known as WitsQ.
The initiative, says Forbes will strategically promote and advance Quantum Technology, bringing together stakeholders that are actively involved in this specialist field and those who wish to engage in Quantum related activities.
WitsQ has a focus on the research, innovation, business, education and outreach, and ethics of quantum technologies, creating a collaborative forum that includes the sciences, engineering, social sciences/humanities, health and business. It will also contribute to training the next generation of scientists and researchers.
One of the ultimate goals of the Wits Structured Light Laboratory is to innovate, creating new industries and companies. We are not ‘training students’ but rather building a quantum ‘work force’ for South Africa”, says Forbes. This requires a focus that gives students a high-tech environment in which to generate their new ideas and translate them into devices, and then a business model from which we enable them to deliver that pipeline of devices to the market – a balance that will be sought through WitsQ.
“We must try to maximise impact, make a lasting impression on our field, and translate that into new economies for the country. The hope is for critical commercial and economic impact for the generations to come, and one through which we see a brilliant new spectrum of light ahead,” concludes Forbes.
Dream team heads for world robotics soccer cup
- Wits University
For the first time, a Wits University team will compete in the international RoboCup tournament.
RoboCup, the world cup for soccer robots, is a major annual event on the artificial intelligence (AI) and robotics calendar with a goal to advance the state of the art of intelligent robots. It sees teams from across the globe competing in different soccer leagues to show their mastery in AI and machine learning. The soccer robots can either be working physical robots or simulation robots.
Wits will be participating in the 3D simulation league and this year’s tournament takes place virtually next week from 22 – 28 June 2021.
“RoboCup presents a great opportunity for students to work together as a team and then compete against other students from around the world. Representation from Africa has always been minimal, at best. For our team to be able to compete in the tournament is important both for Wits’ representation internationally, and for providing our students with more exposure to international AI and robotics,” says Rosman.
“These kinds of activities help promote science and technology by providing our students with a fun application of the theory in which they are so deeply immersed in their studies, and it is an accessible means of outreach to the general public as many of the challenges we tackle in research can be explained in relatable terms.”
3D Soccer Simulation League
Up to 24 teams will participate in this league that focuses on AI and team strategy. These teams are all required to develop and submit a team of independent intelligent moving agents (players) that play soccer on a virtual field inside a computer.
Ingram and Bingani explain: “The 3D league increases the realism of the simulated environment by adding an extra dimension and more complex physics. We didn’t create the simulation but had to develop the AI and strategy for a group of agents which play within the simulated environment. In other words, we tell the players what to do given a certain situation, but we did not build the stadium they play in”.
The goal is that if they can develop intelligent players in the simulated domain, this information can then be utilised in the real world where such information is not so easily obtained. “Our focus in this first iteration of competing was on adding our own high-level behaviours, which enabled the agent to make appropriate decisions according to different situations. Specifically, one component we implemented was a position assignment algorithm that seeks to optimise which agent goes to which position in a defined formation.”
The Wits FC robotics team have been in development for roughly two years. According to Ingram and Bingani it was ‘slow going’ in the beginning as they first had to understand what is available to them to develop their entry. Then installing the necessary software packages was difficult at the start but has been worthwhile, they say, because the experienced gained has resulted in them being able to create a far simpler method of doing things. These processes were then captured in tutorials that can benefit future Wits teams.
Learning and research application
Teams are also required to submit a conference-style paper which is reviewed by the RoboCup committee.
In order for development and innovation to be promoted there is an added requirement that each teams’ contribution contains some element of a novel approach on the problem of RoboCup. The code itself should also demonstrate the use and benefit of this new approach.
“Being new to RoboCup meant the task of implementing a unique way of solving some problem was in itself a difficult problem. However, through working together and individually, we were able to identify problems which we were also able to solve in creative ways. Specifically, our approaches to Formation assignment and Passing in the soccer game,” explain Ingram and Bingani.
A dream team
According to Rosman, RoboCup is a “wonderfully concrete application of many of the concepts that the students explore in their courses, and provides exciting open-ended challenges to be solved”.
For example, they have applied ideas taught in second year algorithms courses and postgraduate machine learning courses, while also thinking about the structure of code required for a larger project with many contributors. It also allows students of various levels the opportunity to work together in a fun and competitive environment.
“I am really proud of these students, particularly in that they are a team of undergraduates and postgraduates working together. I believe that they have managed this, especially during the difficult times over the last year, because of the combination of their passion and strong technical skills. They have been working exceptionally hard, often meeting virtually over weekends to hold mini tournaments to test out different ideas.”
Rosman says by taking part in RoboCup they are also hoping to use their experience to help other local universities start their own teams, and then to stablish local leagues and tournaments to further advance science and technology in the region.
Fak’ugesi Festival 2021 #BUILDCOZYOUHAVETO
- Fak'ugesi Festival
This year’s Fak’ugesi Festival will be a hybrid event and takes place from 14 to 24 October 2021.
The annual celebration of tech-powered African creativity is hitting reset with a phygital format - a blend of the physical and the digital – and social sculptor dillion s. phiri is in the curator’s seat.
Fak’ugesi 2021 will continue to bring industry, researchers and creators together to celebrate how technology enables creativity while zooming in on the ways this relationship shapes our lives.
The Festival will be exploring what building currently means for creatives using tech, under the banner of this year’s theme:#BuildCozYouHaveTo.
“Fak’ugesi agitates the status quo by showcasing the new realities that become possible when technology and creativity fuse,” says Lesley Donna Williams, Chief Executive Officer of Tshimologong. “It provokes new perspectives on both problems and opportunities in society, one can’t help but respond energetically. It’s a gathering place to channel youthful action, for corporates with a focus on R&D and for public sector agents who are championing the design of future cities.”
Newly appointed Festival curator and social sculptor dillion s. phiri, best known for founding Creative Nestlings, brings you this year’s programme which is set to inspire and equip the next generation to build homegrown creative solutions across our 6 digital creative building areas:
Digital Music
Digital Art
Immersive media (AR, VR & IR)
Gaming
Animation
Maker Culture (from robotics to the internet of things)
“On an endless digital landscape, construction never really ends,” says phiri. “From low-code tools and virtual goods to digital collaboration and the creator economy, the possibilities are endless and the barriers to entry have never been lower. While key structures in today’s digital world may belong to a select few, tomorrow’s world belongs to everyone, especially African creators. If you want to build, the timing will never be better than right now.”
The new phygital format festival will take place online with some in-person interventions in Johannesburg (details to follow), but don’t expect a handful of Zoom panels. Expect an immersive, multifaceted virtual experience, including workshops, a conference, screenings and exhibitions, a new virtual expo, and a full slate of awards for young creators breaking the mould in digital creativity.
Dr Tegan Bristow, founder and outgoing director of the Fak’ugesi Festival, states: “This is an electrifying new phase for Fak’ugesi Festival’s history with dillion s. phiri at the curatorial helm bringing in a new era for African digital creatives.”
Bristow returns to her work at Wits in a new role that aims to develop a stronger link between academia and industry for the digital creative industries through the Wits School of Arts & Tshimologong partnership in industry linked research and development. In 2021, apart from lending her extensive expertise to the event as a member of Fak’ugesi Festival steering committee, Bristow will focus on developing an alumni-focused programme celebrating the extraordinary talent and work that Fak’ugesi Festival has had the pleasure of showcasing and developing over the last seven years.
Registration to attend Fak’ugesi Festival 2021 will be available soon.
The Fak’ugesi African Digital Innovation Festival is rooted in showcasing and developing skills in technology, art and culture in Africa. Founded in 2014 as a collaboration between the Tshimologong Digital Innovation Precinct and the Wits School of Arts, Digital Arts Department, the festival takes as it starting point the idea that in order for innovation with technology to succeed, a strong connection needs to be made to African cultural practices and creative encounters. Fak’ugesi means “switch it on ” or “add power” in urban Zulu, and was initially named by the late Shonisani Lethole, a kind, generous and inspiring entrepreneur and friend of industry.
About Wits University’s Tshimologong Digital Innovation Precinct
Tshimologong Precinct aims to create world leading African digital entrepreneurs. It is a digital hub based in the inner-city district of Braamfontein, where the incubation of start-ups, the commercialization of research and the development of high level digital skills for students, working professionals and unemployed youth takes place.
Setswana for “new beginnings”, Tshimologong catalyses the transformation of Braamfontein into a premier technology destination to raise the profile of African digital innovation by inspiring new talent and addressing rising youth unemployment. As a university-based incubator, Tshimologong Precinct further aims to commercialise research done by Wits University students.
Re-inventing the Doppler effect
- Wits University
Wits and HUST researchers report a new form of the Doppler effect.
The research was published this weekend in Nature Communications, a prestigious on-line journal of the Nature group.
Contributing author Professor Andrew Forbes from the Wits School of Physics explains how their findings paves the way for enhanced metrology and measurement of moving objects with structured light.
“Measuring the speed of a moving object would seem a simple task, but surprisingly, we can’t measure speeds directly. GPS systems, popular with runners and cyclists, measure a distance and a time to work out the speed, while laser speed traps used by traffic police use a frequency shift in light to infer the speed.”
The latter exploits what is known as the “Doppler effect”, that change in tone/pitch of a siren that you hear as an ambulance zooms past. Discovered in 1842, the Doppler effect is a universal wave phenomenon that has been widely applied to acoustic and optical metrology in astronomy, oceanography, medicine, engineering, and many other fields. In particular, as for light wave, because of its ultra-high velocity, large bandwidth, and perfect directionality, the Doppler effect of light has spurred a myriad of applications, from cooling atoms to monitoring traffic flow. This effect originates from the relative motion between a wave source and an observer, resulting in a shift of the wave frequency.
The problem is that the Doppler effect only tells you how fast the object is moving, but not in what direction it is moving in.
“It only measures speeds of things coming towards or away from you, not objects moving sideways or on some weird trajectory, for example, a rocket tracing a curve in space. This is why the traffic police officers are always facing you head-on when they take the measurement. There are many applications where the direction matters, such as telling the difference between spinning, orbiting and lateral movements of objects,” says Forbes.
The HUST-Wits team added a vectorial twist to the tale, structuring the light in how it looks so that it can extract more information from the moving object.
“What we have done is to re-invent this old idea and add more functionality to it, so that now we have a Doppler approach that can measure the speed in all directions,” says Forbes.
The team realised that to know the “directions of the speeds”, what physicists call a velocity vector, the light itself would have to be a vector, imbued with lots of local directions in the electric field. The team showed that they could track a micro-particle moving across the beam, at each instant knowing both its position and speed, crucial for monitoring flow in micro-fluidic systems used in health care and for fluid flow in 3D.
The work is a collaboration between the top optics university in China, the Wuhan National Laboratory for Optoelectronics and School of Optical and Electronic Information, Huazhong University of Science and Technology (HUST) and the Wits School of Physics.
Forbes is a Distinguished Professor in the School of Physics at Wits and holds an honorary professorship at HUST. He is also heads up the Structured Light Laboratory at Wits and has recently been appointed as Director of WitsQ, a strategic initiative of Wits to be a driver of quantum technologies in Africa.
'Grand Geek' to lead Wits’ Innovation Strategy
- Wits University
Professor Barry Dwolatzky has been contracted as Director of Innovation Strategy.
“Professor Dwolatzky brings a wealth of experience and knowledge, as well as a network of local and international collaborators, that will help drive the strategy that supports the important relationship between research, innovation and entrepreneurship at Wits,” says Morris.
He plans to consult with various stakeholders and experts to aid in developing an effective innovation strategy for Wits. “I will draw on the Wits community and the large network of collaborators and friends I have around South Africa and the world to develop an innovation strategy that is suitable for Wits as we enter our second century,” says Dwolatzky.
He echoes the bold agenda for Wits set by Professor Zeblon Vilakazi, the Vice-Chancellor and Principal, that now is the time for the University’s ‘moonshot moment’ to be a leader of change both in the continent and in the world.
“The next 100 years will not simply be a continuation of the last 100 years. All organisations and institutions, including universities, will change and the change will be rapid and profound. The best of these will position themselves to lead this change both internally and externally,” he adds.
Moving beyond the digital
Wits alumni, researchers and students have shaped the digital landscape locally and abroad through major digital innovations outside of the University. “Wits has some of the brightest and most creative digital innovators in the world. An innovation strategy would nurture and grow them further,” he says.
A Wits alumnus, Dwolatzky has a wealth of experience in the digital field. He started his studies at Wits in Electrical Engineering in 1971, and after a 10 year stint in the 1980s as a postdoctoral researcher in the UK he joined Wits again as an academic. “I’ve travelled extensively and had the opportunity to develop an understanding of where, how and why innovation within an academic institution works best. I’ve also seen many examples of where it works least,” he adds.
Using this experience and his huge institutional knowledge as a guide, he now wants to step out of the bubble of digital innovation to develop a much broader scope that covers all of Wits’ diverse disciplines and communities. “We need a dedicated strategy to encourage innovation within Wits.”
He says innovation has a different meaning to different people and through his new role hopes to define it. “I want to develop a working definition for innovation within the Wits context that spans all research and innovation entities at the University. The aim is to draw on Wits’ huge world-class research output to convert some of it into a form that can directly meet the needs of society. This will include products, services, policies, processes or new organisations and businesses,” he says.
The aim is that the Innovation Strategy will contribute to the new strategic plan for Wits, the development of which is being spearheaded by Professor Martin Veller, former Dean of the Faculty of Health Sciences.
Dwolatzky remains Director of the JCSE and will divide his time between that role and his new role as Director of Innovation Strategy.
Wits graduates awarded start-up capital for pharmacy innovation
- Wits University
Wits Pharmacy graduates were awarded seed funding for their automated, antimicrobial-surface coated pill-dispensing innovation, Ra-Pill.
Ra-Pill is an automated, digital small-scale, countertop, tablet and capsule counter for pharmacies. It assists in the rapid and accurate counting of tablets/capsules dispensed to patients, reduces the risk of human error and the potential for contamination in the dispensing process, through self-cleaning mechanisms.
Mbuso Thwala and Mpho Maake secured the top prize of R100 000 in seed funding as part of the Prospector@Wits course run by Wits Enterprise. The Ra-Pill innovation trumped five other pitches with its novel self-cleaning mechanism, laser counting accuracy, and antimicrobial coating.
This achievement builds on the success of the initial conceptualisation and prototype development of Ra-Pill, from the (then) students’ BPharm 3 project for the PharmApprentice programme.
The initial Ra-Pill student group, comprising Mbuso Thwala, Mpho Maake, Zinitha Mahlangu, Nabeelah Lambat and Salehah Moola, were runners-up in the PharmApprentice programme in 2019.
PharmApprentice programme instigates innovation
The PharmApprentice programme is implemented by the Division of Pharmacy Practice including Mr. David Bayever, Ms. Zelna Booth, Ms. Stephanie Leigh De Rapper, Mr. Andrew Jones, Dr. Gillian Mahumane and Ms. Rubina Shaikh, in partnership with Aspen Pharmacare, to facilitate pharmaceutical business leadership development and a growth mind-set for entrepreneurship and innovation in pharmacy.
Since early 2019, during the PharmApprentice programme, Ra-Pill’s development has been a collaborative effort, demonstrating Wits’ emphasis on nurturing cross-disciplinary innovation and entrepreneurship. For example:
The self-cleaning aspect of the device was proposed by Professor Pradeep Kumar and Mr. David Bayever in the Wits Department of Pharmacy in the Faculty of Health Sciences.
Wits Enterprise, through adjudicator assistance and provision of a lecture on pitching skills and intellectual property searching.
Ms. Zelna Booth introduced the Ra-Pill concept to Dr. Michael Lucas in the Faculty of Engineering and the Built Environment, who had just won the prestigious Prix Hubert Tuor Innovation Award in Switzerland for his Antimicrobial Coating Technology as part of his PhD with Professor Sandy van Vuuren in the Department of Pharmacy.
Lucas provided inputs on how the Ra-Pill design would facilitate efficient coating of the device.
Financial support from the Wits Department of Pharmacy and Aspen Pharmacare enabled the purchase of the materials needed for the 3D printing of the Minimum Viable Product prototype.
Prospector@Wits course enables entrepreneurship
Pharmacy graduates Maake and Thwala decided to take the Ra-Pill innovation further and applied to participate in the Prospector@WITS course. The course exposes researchers and postgraduate students to innovation and entrepreneurship, focuses their attention on better appreciating end-users’ needs, and raises awareness of the journey towards successfully commercialised products and services based on their research.
The Prospector@Wits course provides an introduction to key tools – such as unpacking the value proposition through the Business Model Canvas – and directs participants to engage in structured engagements with end-users and stakeholders by using Design Thinking and Customer Discovery methodologies.
Both Maake and Thwala, who graduated from Wits with a Bachelor of Pharmacy degree in 2020, agreed that the PharmApprentice programme geared them toward success in the Prospector@Wits course, where PharmApprentice adjudicators – both academic staff in the Department of Pharmacy, as well as external entrepreneurs, experts and practicing pharmacists – gave input to improve their innovation:
Professor Yahya Choonara, Chair and Head of the Department of Pharmacy and Pharmacology at Wits, says: “PharmApprentice is a new curriculum innovation on our BPharm degree at Wits – a first on the African continent – to build the spirit of innovative thinking in solving real-world challenges.”
Dr Stavros Nicolaou , Group Senior Executive: Strategic Trade, at Aspen Pharmacare, has supported the PharmApprentice programme from its inception by providing a series of commercialization lectures, entrepreneurial mentorship, and sponsoring prizes.
Nicolaou says: “It lays the foundation for aspiring pharmacists to embrace entrepreneurship. Aspen is committed to youth empowerment and economic growth, and the PharmApprentice programme builds business capability among pharmacy graduates.”
Ms Anne Gabathuse, Senior Innovation Support Manager at Wits Enterprise, says: “We congratulate the Ra-Pill team on their success so far. They earned their spot as runner-up in the 2019 PharmApprentice Programme, and naturally progressed to participate in the Prospector@Wits course. The team clearly benefitted from the Prospector course, and really impressed the Prospector@Wits pitching panel. It is also exciting to see that within the University there is a continuum from entrepreneurship development at undergraduate level, to the development of commercialisable products that draws on the rich and diverse research conducted at Wits”.
Maake was surprised that their innovative idea won in the Prospector@Wits course: ‘‘I did not expect it but I was super happy about it!” says Maake.
The budding entrepreneurs plan to be making a profit within the next two years, however, they are realistic about what it will take.
“We feel like we just finished the easy part. Now the hard work begins; we have to justify the funding to the investors,” says Thwala.
With support from Wits Enterprise and the Wits Department of Pharmacy, the next step is to secure further funding and a partner to help them build a working prototype.
Social media regulation: Can we trust the tech giants?
- Ufuoma Akpojivi
Some scholars consider these ‘liberating technologies’ because they empower citizens to speak back to power and hold leaders accountable.
In postcolonial African countries, the impact of this liberating technology is evident from the Arab Spring, to #RhodesMustFall, #FeesMustFall, and OccupyGhana and Nigeria, when citizens have leveraged technologies to challenge inherent colonial and postcolonial issues.
Yet despite these benefits, concerns have been raised about the use of these liberating technologies for perpetuating online abuse through trolling, spreading misinformation, disinformation, and conspiracy theories, and for manipulating elections – as observed in Kenya and Nigeria by Cambridge Analytica.
These concerns are legitimate and worrying due to the consequences on citizens and threats to nation states. For instance, Thierry Henry, a former footballer and coach, recently announced that he will be quitting social media due to online abuse and that he will only consider re-joining when social media is regulated with the ‘same vigour and ferocity that copyright infringements are’.
Similarly, earlier this year, the world watched with shock how supporters of former US President Donald Trump stormed the Capitol in an attempt to overturn the November presidential election results. The former president himself was accused of inciting this incident through his posts on social media. These issues raise the question of how best to regulate these technologies such as Twitter, Facebook, etc.
Regulation vs freedom of speech
Freedom of speech is considered a universal human right and it is covered in most international treaties, including the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the African Charter on Human Rights. Nation states are appraised based on their abilities to protect this inalienable human right.
However, this does not confer absolute [negative] freedom on every individual. Some philosophers argue that freedom is essential in any society because truth can only be derived from tolerance of different views. Furthermore, the democratic process is enriched as citizens can make an informed decision due to the market of ideas.
Conversely, they state that freedom of speech should only be regulated when national interests or security is at stake, bringing about the idea of positive freedom – which calls for some restraint or intervention – potentially from the state, since freedom is not absolute.
Weaponised communications
The idea of regulation as a restriction has always met with resistance and continues to generate complex debates. Nevertheless, regulation is needed to promote fair rules of engagement and check excesses from both the tech giants and the public. The state cannot always be trusted to equitably regulate the media or social media due to vested interests, for example, using regulation as a tool to curtail and suppress critical views and opposition.
Nation states including Ethiopia, Zimbabwe, Uganda and Cameroon have politicised and weaponised the internet to achieve their own objectives. Likewise, attempts by states to formulate social media legislation as happened in Uganda and Nigeria, have raised serious concerns over the end goal of such bills.
In the capitalist’s environment in which these technologies operate, tech giants cannot be trusted to effectively regulate platform content as they are either slow to take necessary action, or take excessive or disproportionate actions and/or responses, which threaten the very basis of freedom that such platforms are supposed to promote.
For instance, the recent banning of former president Donald Trump by social media platforms (Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and Instagram) raises the question of who makes these decisions and if these decisions are in the public interest.
The rules of engagement
Is the decision to ban an individual from using these technologies or limiting/restricting news sharing by tech giants the solution? To address this problem a more robust approach is needed at both the governance and individual levels.
Firstly, the governance of tech giants and their content should not be left to corporate organisations. The telecommunication regulatory bodies of nation states should engage with tech giants to identify mechanisms that will help flag hateful, mis/disinformation and the like on these platforms.
This should go beyond reviewing regulatory decisions already made, and include the involvement in content moderation, formation, expansion, and empowerment of oversight across all platforms. Expanding the oversight board and their powers to content moderation and regulation will help address the bureaucratic imperative, highlight the complex framework and rules with which they work and build a structure that is transparent to all.
Secondly, there is need for rules of engagement on social media platforms. Just as in mainstream media, which has frameworks that govern engagement, there should be rules to which individuals who subscribe to social media adhere.
Ufuoma Akpojivi is an Associate Professor and Head of the Department of Media Studies at Wits. He holds a PhD in Communications Studies from the University of Leeds, UK. His research interests are in the areas of media policy, democratisation, citizenship, new media, and activism and he has authored many academic articles in these areas. He is the recipient of the Wits Friedel Sellschop Research Award, amongst others, and many teaching awards.
Read more in the 12th issue, themed: #Solutions. We explore #WitsForGood solutions to the structural, political and socioeconomic challenges that persist in South Africa, and we are encouraged by astounding ‘moonshot moments’ where Witsies are advancing science, health, engineering, technology and innovation.
Engineering empathy
- Deborah Minors
In search of ways to help his father recover from injuries suffered in a motorbike accident, Nabeel Vandayar enrolled at Wits to study medicine.
He soon switched to biomedical engineering after realising that this field holds promising solutions to his father’s speech and mobility challenges.
The field of biomedical engineering would be poorer if Nabeel Vandayar, 26, had pursued his boyhood passion for cricket rather than medicine.
The promising Gauteng Schools batsman matriculated from Jeppe Boys High – where he “took far too many extra subjects!” – and enrolled at Wits in 2013 for the MBBCh degree.
“The reason I chose medicine was personal,” says Vandayar – his father had been left partially disabled after a motorbike accident in 2011.
More than medicine
“By the end of my first year of medicine, my father had made a significant recovery after months of rehabilitation, but I realised then that medicine can only do so much,” says Vandayar. “There’s certain things that medicine cannot do. My Dad still couldn’t ride his bike, for example, and medicine couldn’t give him the quality of life he enjoyed before the accident.”
Vandayar finished first-year medicine and then switched to the School of Electrical and Information Engineering to study biomedical engineering.
“Biomed is probably the most challenging undergraduate degree at Wits because the courses you study are so different. You could start off the day with physiology and anatomy with the medical students, by lunch time you have created software to interface with an electric circuit, and that afternoon you have done complex mathematics in signals and systems.” says Vandayar.
“The interesting thing is that these different courses build skills which, when combined, contribute to a biomedical solution in the real world. Biomed is not just about solving a problem, it’s about changing lives.”
3 idiots and an epiphany
In his final year of biomedical engineering, Vandayar was awarded a bursary by Health Tech, a subsidiary of IT service management company, Altron. While doing vacation work as a data analyst, he was exposed to machine learning for the first time and its potential to be applied to an individual.
Machine learning is the study of computer algorithms that improve automatically through experience, and by the use of data. It is seen as a part of artificial intelligence (AI).
Vandayar came up with a predictive model to establish if a patient will become diabetic, based on the patient’s medical aid claims history.
There’s an Indian movie called 3 Idiots, Vandayar says, which is a satirical film about “a mechanical engineer, like my brother, who designs a vacuum device to help a mother deliver her baby during a difficult birth – kind of like MacGyver”.
That movie, along with the many TEDx Talks on AI that Vandayar watched at the time, showed him the potential for AI to solve medical problems.
Inspired AI
Vandayar’s fourth year information engineering research project was a low-cost hand gesture recognition system. Its design and use enables people with certain movement disabilities – such as the inability to type due to decreased finger dexterity – to use a computer by performing other gestures that they can do comfortably.
“Disability has different ranges,” says Vandayar. “For example, my Dad can’t type on a computer as well as he used to. So I created a customisable system that enables people with specific disabilities to perform movements that they are able to perform.”
Vandayar presented this research at the SAUPEC/RobMech/PRASA conference (Southern African Universities Power and Engineering/Robotics and Mechatronics/Pattern Recognition Association of SA), with co-author and fellow Witsie, Timothy McBride. Their research was published in 2019.
“My motivation for all this comes back to my Dad. He had suffered head injuries during his accident, which resulted in a tendency to stutter in stressful situations – for example, when meeting new people or speaking on the phone. This inability to speak fluently is very inhibiting compared to how he used to speak.”
Recognising Vandayar’s motivation “to solve problems using engineering and empathy”, Nixon recommended a joint supervision with Dr Victor de Andrade, Senior Lecturer in the Audiology Division, Department of Speech Pathology and Audiology, in the School of Human and Community Development at Wits.
Superman and a stutter
“Autonomy and self-sufficiency is something people take for granted until they lose it,” says Vandayar, and references the actor Christopher Reeve who played Superman in the film adaptation of the comic book superhero. In 1995, Reeve was thrown from a horse and broke his neck. The injury paralysed him from the shoulders down. Superman, ironically, was confined to a wheelchair and used a mechanical ventilator for the rest of his life.
“My Dad is my superhero,” says Vandayar. “He dropped out of varsity to become a taxi driver, he opened bottle stores, he was a successful businessman. After the accident, he was doing stuff on the computer, and he always asked me for help, or got me to speak for him on a call because of his stutter. Even though I was always happy to help, the best way to help was to give him a way to do these things on his own.”
Vandayar’s master’s research focuses on providing a ‘speech filter’ for stuttered speech that delivers a fluent voice to a listener.
The idea is to apply machine learning algorithms to an audio recording of a person’s voice to detect if a stutter is occurring. If it is, the next word is predicted based on the context of the sentence up until that point, and passed to a programme called Tacotron (developed by Google). Tacotron generates audio of what the person is trying to say. The corrected audio is then transmitted to the listener and sounds more coherent because it does not include the stutter.
“Tacotron not only takes written text and converts it to speech but makes speech sound like the original person. You give Tacotron a sample of what you sound like and it can then generate sentences you give it using your voice,” says Vandayar. “The amazing Stephen Hawking could possibly have given lectures in his original voice if Tacotron had been connected to his computer."
Vandayar acknowledges that it would be ambitious for his master’s research to actually solve a stutter. “My research is about taking the building blocks that exist, putting them together in a new way, and hopefully coming up with a solution that reduces the anxiety that a stutterer experiences, by recreating their speech in a way that makes it easier for others to understand them.”
His aim is to enable some humanity, autonomy and less anxiety for the stutterer by making the listener understand the person who is stuttering. “Instead of giving the person who stutters an additional technology crutch to adapt to, such as delayed auditory feedback, why not get the technology to do the heavy lifting so that the person can just speak freely and be understood?“
Open source solutions
Vandayar now works as a data engineer at a financial services tech company, where he is establishing a healthcare division.
He’s also co-founded an open source research group, comprising of doctors, nurses, biomed engineers and non-technical stakeholders in the African healthcare space, to encourage research collaboration and innovation.
“People don’t work on these technologies unless they have a vested interest – as I do – and I think this needs to change. Right now what I’m most passionate about is improving public health using AI,” he says.
Indeed, engineering with empathy.
Deborah Minors is Senior Communications Officer for Wits University.
Read more in the 12th issue, themed: #Solutions. We explore #WitsForGood solutions to the structural, political and socioeconomic challenges that persist in South Africa, and we are encouraged by astounding ‘moonshot moments’ where Witsies are advancing science, health, engineering, technology and innovation.
Photographing ghosts in space
- Shaun Smillie
Photographing a black hole in space, 55 million light years from Earth, seems an impossible task but scientists went to unprecedented lengths to achieve this.
Black holes are probably some of the most mysterious, scary and fascinating phenomena in space. These dark lords of the cosmos have the power to give birth to or destroy stars – or even prevent them from forming. Being invisible, they pose a challenge to find, and an even bigger challenge to photograph.
A multinational team of 300 scientists put their minds together to find their way around the problem: how do you photograph an object that is 55 million light years away, that you are not even able to see?
The team included Wits Professor Roger Deane, South African Radio Astronomy Observatory (SARAO)/National Research Foundation Chair in Radio Astronomy in the School of Physics and Wits/SARAO postdoctoral fellow, Dr Iniyan Natarajan – the only two scientists from Africa that were part of the collaboration.
Black holes are regions of spacetime where gravity is so strong that nothing can escape from them – even light. The gravity is so strong because large amounts of matter is squeezed into a tiny space, creating an extremely dense body. This can happen when a star is dying, or is found at the dense centre of a galaxy.
Mathematical mysteries
As the gravity is so strong, black holes emit no light. They have been mathematical mysteries since Albert Einstein published his theory of general relativity. According to this theory, a sufficiently compact mass can deform spacetime to form a black hole.
Black holes remained mere mathematical theories until the early 1970s. Then, several researchers independent of each other, identified the first black hole called Cygnus X-1, that is located about 6 070 light years from Earth.
Over the past three decades it has become clear that black holes are not some fantastical interesting, exotic thought, but they actually influence the growth of our galaxies dramatically.
“If a black hole gets all violent and angry, it can shut off all star formation in its galaxy. But it can also trigger some star formation,” says Deane.
Research has shown that there is a clear correlation between the mass of a central black hole and the speed at which stars and gas move around within the galaxy.
As black holes cannot be seen, scientists study the behaviour of objects – such as stars – around them to locate them. Each galaxy has a supermassive black hole at its centre. The one in our galaxy – the Milky Way – has a black hole called Sagittarius A*. It has a mass equal to about four million suns and could fit a few billion earths in its space.
In their attempt to capture the first ever image of a black hole, the group of scientists that collaborated to form the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) focused their attention on a black hole, called M87*. This black hole sits in a galaxy about 55 million light years from Earth.
The team selected it because of its enormous mass and its relative proximity on cosmic scales. This combination gives it one of the largest black hole shadow sizes in the sky. M87* is 300 million times more massive than the first black hole discovered, Cygnus X-1. It is also 6.5 billion times the mass of our sun, and roughly the same size as our solar system.
Telescope as big as Earth
The sheer size of M87* demanded an imaging system that has never been seen before. The team virtually connected an array of eight telescopes, situated at very dry sites around the earth, to create the EHT.
The telescopes were able to synchronise their recorded data and exploit the rotation of the Earth. By stitching together the data streams caught by the telescopes, the EHT formed a virtual telescope that could be equated to the size of Earth.
“The sharpness of the images [that] a network of antennas can make is determined by two things, how far apart they are, and the wavelength of light they are tuned to. So while the Square Kilometre Array in the Karoo will make images of similar sharpness to the Hubble Space Telescope, the EHT sees details 1 000 times finer by placing antennas across the globe and capturing light waves barely one millimetre in size,” says Deane.
The synchronisation of the telescopes had to be so precise that atomic clocks were used. Each telescope produced about 350 terabytes of data per day, which was then fed into specialised supercomputers to synthesise the data streams. EHT members then used the data to reconstruct the image with purpose-built algorithms.
“The resulting EHT achieved mind-boggling resolution. It would be the equivalent of the ability to read a newspaper in Cairo, while sitting in Johannesburg,” says Deane.
In creating the actual image of M87*, the scientists decided to focus not on the black hole itself, but on capturing its shadow. They did this by imaging the halo-like ring of hot material that encircles M87* as light is bent around it or disappears into it.
“The problem is that the shadow feature or the deficit of light caused by M87* is so small against the sky it is basically like trying to photograph a doughnut on the moon.”
Making history
On 10 April 2019, the EHT collaboration released the first ever image of M87*. The image shows a large dark spot in the centre of a ring of light. It could be said that the image captured is 55 million years old – almost as old as the oldest dinosaurs – as that is the time that it would have taken the light to travel to Earth, for us to witness it.
In March this year, the EHT team went a step further, and announced that they had once again taken an image of M87*, this time catching the black hole as it appears in polarised light.
This image will help to understand how magnetic fields behave around black holes and help explain the mysterious jets associated with these galactic objects.
For Deane, studying black holes is just one of many projects that he is involved in that examines the bigger picture of the evolution of galaxies.
One day these mystery objects might even assist in humankind’s great quest to find life in the universe.
“The radiation from a black hole could break down any complex life, and that may give us a sense of where best to look,” says Deane.
Read more in the 12th issue, themed: #Solutions. We explore #WitsForGood solutions to the structural, political and socioeconomic challenges that persist in South Africa, and we are encouraged by astounding ‘moonshot moments’ where Witsies are advancing science, health, engineering, technology and innovation.
Zoom in. Team up. The new era of therapy
- Tamsin Oxford
Can online platforms help therapists and tutors transform teaching and care beyond the pandemic?
The Covid-19 pandemic transformed the world. It shoved organisations into a digital space, it thrust students and tutors into online learning, and it shifted global goalposts on everything from therapy to care to business.
Tools such as Zoom and Microsoft Teams became the de facto meeting standard as the world leveraged connectivity and technology to stay in business, online and engaged. Over the past year, these tools and their usage have evolved and mushroomed. They have become more than just the sum of the connectivity parts, providing people with access to services and solutions that they never had in the past. From speech-language therapists to individuals discovering their potential working from home, these new platforms are opening doors and creating opportunities, but they have come with their fair share of complexities.
Change leads to opportunity
“This is a novel and exciting period for speech language therapists,” says Dr Joanne Neille, Senior Lecturer in the Department of Speech Pathology and Audiology. “Online wasn’t something we really engaged with prior to Covid-19 and we needed to embrace these platforms quite suddenly and make significant adjustments. We’ve made some significant achievements, but there are challenges that [we] continue to encounter, and some ethical dilemmas.”
For Neille, online teaching and supervision have opened many doors, specifically with regards to training, teaching, and providing students with fresh skills sets that equip them to work in different contexts. It has improved students’ and lecturers’ abilities to approach teaching and learning from a global perspective, and given them more access to conferences and continuous professional development (CPD) events that previously may have been too expensive or out of reach.
Jennifer Watermeyer, Associate Professor and Director of the Health Communication Research Unit, agrees: “The American Speech Language Hearing Association (ASHA) had an online conference together with our local South African Speech Language Hearing Association (SASLHA) in November 2020, with local and international speakers and input that normally wouldn’t happen without huge funding and costs. This has opened up other opportunities for learning and CPD that were not necessarily that easily accessible or affordable in the past.”
Currently, students in the Speech Pathology department are learning about cleft palate care on an international online course that is immediately accessible and that does not require the department to hunt for local lecturers at cost.
Virtual therapy
Online teaching and training have handed local students a global perspective on a virtual and accessible plate. It has also allowed for therapists to potentially engage with, and treat, people who previously couldn’t access therapy due to distance, time and logistical limitations.
“Being able to offer therapy face-to-face online has broadened the scope for enlarging [the] practice as we can target anybody, anywhere in Africa,” says Watermeyer. “We have a well-established speech therapy and audiology profession in South Africa, but in other countries skilled professionals are few and far between. Now we can easily connect with patients and colleagues across the continent.”
Neille agrees: “We can access greater numbers of clients for remote interventions, potentially moving beyond the borders of South Africa to countries that have limited access to speech language therapy services. Two of our biggest challenges are accessing people in remote areas due to logistical challenges and the shortage of skilled therapists – with only 3 266 registered speech therapists to a population of 60 million, you can see that there aren’t enough therapists to service the needs of the people.”
People in urban settings have greater access to services while those in remote areas have to travel long distances, sometimes up to a day, for a 45-minute session. This is where the real value of online therapy emerges. Patients can log in, connect and undertake therapy without travel or extensive costs. But there are limitations.
People with neurological impairments, those who aren’t confident using technology, or who have limited data or poor connectivity are at an immediate disadvantage when it comes to online therapy. Their experiences can be challenging, and these limitations impact on the one factor that makes this therapy so valuable – the connection with people.
“Relationships are key to our profession and with online it isn’t always possible to read people, or target issues remotely,” says Neille. “We have to engage with patients to help them become more confident with the technology before we can even begin to think about offering a language intervention service.”
In addition to engaging with the technology, there is the need to consider the therapy environment as a whole. When patients attend sessions, the tools and equipment needed to support the therapy are on site, while in the online environment these often have to be sourced by patients and carers. In addition, there is the risk that the therapist will engage more with the carer than with the patient if the latter has cognitive impairment.
“Assisting with materials and technology is one side of the coin, but we have found that there is a risk of the carer becoming too involved in the therapy, or clients not setting up their sessions in the right setting, like on the bed or sofa, for example,” says Watermeyer. “If the line is bad or there is poor connectivity, or if there is excessive background noise – all these factors negatively impact on a session.”
There is a lot that still has to be overcome to turn online into as engaging and capable a tool as face-to-face. Captioning, carer engagement, assisted therapy, connectivity – these are evolving in the online environment. Yet patients in complex situations and with challenging disabilities still struggle to receive the right levels of care. Certainly, online has opened the door, but to truly realise the full capabilities of online therapy and training a lot more needs to be done to ensure that online shines as brightly as it should.
Read more in the 12th issue, themed: #Solutions. We explore #WitsForGood solutions to the structural, political and socioeconomic challenges that persist in South Africa, and we are encouraged by astounding ‘moonshot moments’ where Witsies are advancing science, health, engineering, technology and innovation.
Getting serious about gaming
- Shivan Parusnath
Games from the Game Design programme at the Wits School of Digital Arts tell important stories, and allow for solutions to many real-world problems.
Play is a concept as old as work. Many species, including ours, play often during childhood. The games played serve as a vehicle for lessons needed later in life, such as hunting or defending themselves.
In today’s world, gaming is perhaps the most popular form of play. However, it is generally seen less as lesson learning and more of an escapist pastime – delving into worlds or systems that differ drastically from the one in which we live.
Educational games are not new, but they tend to be veneers of the promise of fun pasted over a conventional learning system. These veneers tend to be thin, and are seen through by the intended audience who quickly realise they are being duped into learning something.
“Just sprinkling game design on top of learning content doesn’t make it a game – it is still a multiple choice test if you take away all the effects and visuals,” says Henrike Lode, who heads up the Serious Games course offered as part of the game design degree in the Wits School of Arts - Digital Arts.
Serious games are those that have a narrative that is educational or informative without compromising on the quality and enjoyment of the gameplay itself. Importantly, games of this nature can bring empathy to other human experiences – helping people understand what it’s like to be someone else, by exploring themes such as sexual identity, language and privilege.
Making teaching fun
“I struggled with education and authority in high school. It killed my love for learning, because it was about authority, and not about the excitement of finding out more,” says Lode. This drew her to the idea of making games that offer education through playful interaction. “Gaming can transform education with joy,” says Lode.
Many of Lode’s students were drawn to game design for the same reason: learning through games is more effective than traditional teaching methods. Alice Seremane, a 2019 alumnus of Wits game design, chose to take this course because of her challenges with traditional teaching methods for complex subjects like physics.
“Schooling is not something that people typically describe as enjoyable – but if you can incorporate fun into teaching, where the person is unconsciously learning, you can expose learners to more information without them even realising it,” says Seremane.
“I found physics very challenging in school and there were many concepts I just couldn’t grasp – but seeing physical models and demonstrations made it so much easier.” This made her think that if physics could be explained in a more fun and practical way, it would be so much more accessible and easier to understand.
Seremane designed a game called Time’s Up!, in which players use a variety of electrical components such as electric wires, batteries, resistors and switches to create a closed circuit with a specific set of components and requirements.
Levashan Pillay, a 2020 alumnus of game design at Wits, found a gateway into gaming through difficulties with traditional learning at school. “I found that my maths skills improved dramatically when I started playing on an educational gaming console in my spare time,” says Pillay.
“Aside from the fun that you experience when playing an educational game, there is a real sense of feedback and accomplishment when you get something right, and that is missing in traditional learning systems.” Pillay’s game Code Wiz centres around teaching the player the logic of programming which can be transferred and used in any form of programming language.
Breaking taboo barriers
Serious games can extend beyond just learning content in a different way. They can also be used to explore complex or taboo issues that may otherwise be difficult to broach in casual conversation.
Janharm Labuschagne, a 2019 alumnus, developed a game called birthright which explores the topics of gender and racial privilege.
“I learnt so much about social context when I arrived at Wits, and it was important to me as a white Afrikaans person to explore and learn more about the concept of privilege,” says Labuschagne.
“This can be a difficult concept to talk about, but hopefully my game allows for this concept to be explored through play.” In birthright, players start the game with a roll of the dice that determines their race and gender.
Each identity has different rules for how they play the game and move across the board – and so players experience the game differently. There are some barriers or paths that are more difficult to cross depending on the identity you have been given.
When the rules are in your favour you may not notice the injustices in the system, but you might find the game frustrating when the rules are holding you back. “My hope is that serious games can lead to a higher level of consciousness and awareness in our society,” says Labuschagne. “There are a lot of difficult conversations we need to have about topics that may be abstract to some, and games can make these concepts feel tangible.”
Diverse perspectives
Game design is still a relatively new field to be taught at university level in Africa, with Wits being the first university on the continent to introduce it into its curriculum. Since its inception in 2012, Wits has produced many award-winning industry experts who have gone on to work at leading international game design houses. In that relatively short period of time, the game design field seems to be transforming.
“There are a lot more females and people of colour in game design since the degree was first offered at Wits,” says Seremane. “Perceptions of what it means to be a game designer are changing, and with a more diverse group of game designers out there, we can experience different stories from unique perspectives.”
Although the games designed within the game design programme are not released to the public, the new Digital Arts building has incorporated a ‘playtest’ area, where the Wits student body and members of the public can get a chance to play the games.
Games alone aren’t enough to provide solutions to education, discussion of taboo topics, or achieving true empathy. “Discussion after playing a serious game is key to the experience,” says Lode.
In that way, these games may serve as sparks to further thought and discussion on problems we face in our society and how we can overcome them. But we have to be the ones to work on them, to keep the fire for learning, for debate, for empathy burning when the game is over, and perhaps in that way we can arrive at the solutions we need. Game on.
Shivan Parusnath is Senior Multimedia Communications Officer for Wits University and Curios.ty Pictures Editor.
Read more in the 12th issue, themed: #Solutions. We explore #WitsForGood solutions to the structural, political and socioeconomic challenges that persist in South Africa, and we are encouraged by astounding ‘moonshot moments’ where Witsies are advancing science, health, engineering, technology and innovation.
Wits.For Good. solutions inspire hope
- Professor Zeblon Vilakazi
Editorial: From solutions to the structural, political, and socioeconomic challenges in South Africa, to those ‘moonshot moments’ that advance society for good.
It’s been more than a year since the Covid-19 pandemic irrevocably changed the way we live, work, and play but challenges persist in South Africa. Yet the current situation also presents opportunities, and now is the time to galvanise our collective strengths towards addressing multiple challenges. That is why this issue of Curios.ty is themed #Solutions.
Our first feature story (pg. 8) interrogates both infrastructural frustrations around energy, water, roads and buildings and – importantly – presents research-based suggestions of how to overcome these. Our second feature, on how our economic reality adversely affects vulnerable South Africans, is a sobering indictment of the complicated interplay of politics, economics and people (pg. 30). Solutions proposed by Wits researchers are backed by translational research that drives life-affirming and empowering policies.
Wits scholars suggest we consider the kind of society we want to create and envisage new ‘knowledge architectures’ from the Global South (pg. 6). As a key player in higher education in Africa (and, increasingly, globally), we would be remiss not to continue interrogating our role and relevance. How can higher education remain relevant for good?
In the classrooms, Wits educators are advancing mathematics education (pg. 25), while mathematics postgraduate students are number-crunching creatively to boost a tourism sector decimated by travel restrictions.
Wits is inexorably part of the history and fabric of Johannesburg and as we approach our centenary in 2022, our urban architects suggest how the City’s spatial geography can be reconceived for inclusivity and development (pg. 12).
Yet cities and classrooms globally are now mostly remote and online, and Wits scholars explore if online platforms can help therapists and tutors transform care and teaching beyond the pandemic (pg. 20). In the Digital Arts sandpit online, academics get serious about gaming, with game design that creates empathy by exploring themes such as sexual identity and privilege (pg. 18), even as we’re cognisant that insidious forces exist online that threaten democracy and demand vigilance (pgs. 42, 44).
Empathy and understanding are critical to advancing society for good. This means care and concern for the environment while making tough decisions (pg. 46), and considering people with disabilities and how they are required to negotiate their intimate and lived realities (pg. 34). In the boardroom, Wits academics explore the abstraction but no-brainer that love should drive strategy and the ‘bottom line’ (pg. 22).
With South Africa reduced again in June 2021 to a level 4 lockdown to limit transmission of Covid-19, revisiting our values provides pause for thought. The stories in this issue make courageous efforts to address both unprecedented and persistent problems – a ‘wealth tax’ to end poverty (pg. 14), philanthropy to advance Africa (pg. 50), and the complexities of a National Health Insurance (pg. 40).
But I’m encouraged by astounding evidence of ‘moonshot moments’ – Witsies are advancing science itself and photographing black holes in outer space (pg. 26), devising biomedical engineering devices to enable understanding of those who stutter (pg. 36), reimagining the way vaccines and lifesaving drugs could be delivered in future (pg. 48), and thinking deeply about how our brains solve problems (pg.28).
These solutions are grounded in the values that characterise Wits University – on the edge of research excellence and exceptional academic standards, and a commitment to societal good in Africa and beyond.
Read more in the 12th issue, themed: #Solutions. We explore #WitsForGood solutions to the structural, political and socioeconomic challenges that persist in South Africa, and we are encouraged by astounding ‘moonshot moments’ where Witsies are advancing science, health, engineering, technology and innovation.
Curios.ty 12 (#Solutions): Advancing society for good
- Wits Communications
Our cutting-edge research offers #Solutions to some of the most challenging problems facing society today.
The 12th issue of Wits University’s research magazine, Curios.ty, themed: #Solutions, is available online now: http://www.wits.ac.za/curiosity/. (To republish articles, see guidelines below).
Structural, political and socioeconomic challenges persist in South Africa. Yet the current situation also presents opportunities, and now is the time to galvanise our collective strengths towards finding #Solutions grounded in the values that Wits University exemplifies – research excellence, the commitment to social justice, and creating new knowledge that advances the public good. #WitsForGood
The stories in #Solutions offer novel research-based suggestions to addressing multiple challenges, as well as astounding ‘moonshot moments’ that advance science and give us hope and inspiration for the future.
In this issue:
No place for politics in bricks and mortar (Page 8): Energy, water, roads and buildings … South Africa’s infrastructure seems to be falling apart at the seams. How do we save the country from further deterioration?
Photographing ghosts in space (Page 26): Set with the virtually impossible task of photographing a black hole in space, 55 million light years from Earth, a group of scientists went to unprecedented lengths to overcome this challenge.
Sense and sensuality in people with disabilities (Page 34): Researchers are creating space and support for people with disabilities to talk about sex.
What the world needs now (Page 46): As the world looks to COP26 in November 2021, it’s clear that the time for sitting on the side-lines is over – and so is thinking that ill-conceptualised tradeoffs and compromises are going to cut it.
About Curios.ty
Curios.ty is a print and digital magazine that aims to make the research at Wits University accessible to multiple publics. Curios.ty is available on the Wits website here: http://www.wits.ac.za/curiosity/
Contact Wits Communications should you require more information or visit our media section for more on our experts and latest media releases.
The University of the Witwatersrand adheres to the regulations of theProtection of Personal Information Act, 2013 (POPIA). In accordance with POPIA, we commit to keeping your personal information safe. Should you wish to unsubscribe from our mailing list, please emailwits.news@wits.ac.za.
Are you quantum or not? Wits PhD student cracks the high-dimensional quantum code
- Wits University
A new and fast tool for quantum computing and communication.
Isaac Nape, an emerging South African talent in the study of quantum optics, is part of a crack team of Wits physicists who led an international study that revealed the hidden structures of quantum entangled states. The study was published in the renowned scientific journal, Nature Communications, on Friday, 27 August 2021.
Nape is pursuing his PhD at Wits University and focuses on harnessing structured patterns of light for high dimensional information encoding and decoding for use in quantum communication.
Earlier this year he scooped up two awards at the South African Institute of Physics (SAIP) conference to add to his growing collection of accolades in the field of optics and photonics. He won the award for ‘Best PhD oral presentation in applied physics’, and jointly won the award for ‘Best PhD oral presentation in photonics’.
In May, he was also awarded the prestigious 2021 Optics and Photonics Education Scholarship from the SPIE, the international society for optics and photonics, for his potential contributions to the field of optics, photonics or related field.
Faster and more secure computing
Now Nape and his colleagues at Wits, together with collaborators from Scotland and Taiwan offer a new and fast tool for quantum computing and communication. “Quantum states that are entangled in many dimensions are key to our emerging quantum technologies, where more dimensions mean a higher quantum bandwidth (faster) and better resilience to noise (security), crucial for both fast and secure communication and speed up in error-free quantum computing.
“What we have done here is to invent a new approach to probing these ‘high-dimensional’ quantum states, reducing the measurement time from decades to minutes,” Nape explains.
Nape worked with Distinguished Professor Andrew Forbes, lead investigator on this study and Director of the Structured Light Laboratory in the School of Physics at Wits, as well as postdoctoral fellow Dr Valeria Rodriguez-Fajardo, visiting Taiwanese researcher Dr Hasiao-Chih Huang, and Dr Jonathan Leach and Dr Feng Zhu from Heriot-Watt University in Scotland.
With traditional approaches, the time of measurement increases unfavourably with dimension, so that to unravel a 100 dimensional state by a full ‘quantum state tomography’ would take decades. Instead, the team showed that the salient information of the quantum system – how many dimensions are entangled and to what level of purity? – could be deduced in just minutes. The new approach requires only simple ‘projections’ that could easily be done in most laboratories with conventional tools. Using light as an example, the team using an all-digital approach to perform the measurements.
The problem, explains Nape, is that while high-dimensional states are easily made, particularly with entangled particles of light (photons) they are not easy to measure – our toolbox for measuring and controlling them is almost empty.
You can think of a high-dimensional quantum state like faces of a dice. A conventional dice has 6 faces, numbered 1 through 6, for a six-dimensional alphabet that can be used for computing, or for transferring information in communication. To make a ‘high-dimensional dice’ means a dice with many more faces: 100 dimensions equals 100 faces – a rather complicated polygon.
“In our everyday world it would be easy to count the faces to know what sort of resource we had available to us, but not so in the quantum world. In the quantum world, you can never see the whole dice, so counting the faces is very difficult. The way we get around this is to do a tomography, as they do in the medical world, building up a picture from many, many slices of the object,” explains Nape.
But the information in quantum objects can be enormous, so the time for this process is prohibitive. A faster approach is a ‘Bell measurement’, a famous test to tell if what you have in front of you is entangled, like asking it “are you quantum or not?”. But while this confirms quantum correlations of the dice, it doesn’t say much about the number of faces it has.
Chance discovery
“Our work circumvented the problem by a chance discovery, that there is a set of measurements that is not a tomography and not a Bell measurement, but that holds important information of both,” says Nape. “In technical parlance, we blended these two measurement approaches to do multiple projections that look like a tomography but measuring the visibilities of the outcome, as if they were Bell measurements. This revealed the hidden information that could be extracted from the strength of the quantum correlations across many dimensions”.
First and fast
The combination of speed from the Bell-like approach and information from the tomography-like approach meant that key quantum parameters such as dimensionality and the purity of the quantum state could be determined quickly and quantitatively, the first approach to do so.
“We are not suggesting that our approach replace other techniques,” says Forbes. “Rather, we see it as a fast probe to reveal what you are dealing with, and then use this information to make an informed decision on what to do next. A case of horses-for-courses”.
For example, the team see their approach as changing the game in real-world quantum communication links, where a fast measurement of how noisy that quantum state has become and what this has done to the useful dimensions is crucial.
WitsQ – driving quantum technology innovation in Africa
In March 2021 the Department of Science and Innovation of South Africa approved a national strategy for quantum technologies. In parallel, Wits launched WitsQ, a university-wide strategy to co-ordinate quantum activities across the university for maximum impact.
Johannesburg turned into live laboratory to measure 'killer' lightning
- Wits University
DEHN AFRICA donates R500 000 to the Johannesburg Lightning Research Laboratory at Wits University to support pioneering research in lightning protections.
Lightning is one of the biggest weather-related killers in the world. In South Africa, more than 250 people are killed annually by lightning, whereas 24 000 people worldwide die each year. Thousands more are injured, and according to the South African Weather Service, the estimated insurance claims in South Africa amount to more than R500 million each year.
Southern Africa as a climate change hotspot is likely to see increased lightning activity, making the study of lightning in Johannesburg paramount to mitigate the dangers to human safety and economic sustainability.
To build on Wits University’s rich history of pioneering research into lightning and as part of the Wits Centenary programme that seeks to advance society for good, the JLRL has partnered with lightning protection company, DEHN AFRICA, and Sentech to support research into the protection of renewable energy systems from lightning.
The research involves installing a custom-built DEHNdetect lightning current measurement device –intended for measuring lightning currents to wind turbines – on the Sentech Tower in Brixton, Johannesburg.
(Watch the first measurement of a lightning current to the Sentech Tower….. wait for it…)
“The best way to study lightning is to measure real lightning which cannot be simulated in a high voltage lab as the distances between clouds and the ground are not great enough,” explains Hunt.
Together with colleague Dr Carina Schumann, who made the first high-speed videos of lightning in Africa in 2017, postgraduate students and collaborators from around the world, the JLRL is turning Johannesburg into a laboratory where live lightning events can be measured and characterised through the use of high-speed cameras, direct current measurements, fast electric field measurements, field measurements and comparison with lightning location systems.
“Lightning is measured in flashes per square kilometre per year and Johannesburg averages a high flash density of 15 flashes/km2/year compared to Europe with an average of 3 flashes/km2/year.”
“It is rare to find a country’s economic and industrial centre in such a high lightning risk zone and Johannesburg is ideal to study lightning events because of its extremely unique characteristic of having a high cloud base, six kilometres on average, making it possible for us to film a full lightning flash. No other location where lightning currents to tall towers are measured can correlate the measurements with high-speed footage as well as we are able to do in Johannesburg,” says Hunt.
The JLRL made the first measurements using the DEHNdetect device over the 2020 to 2021 Johannesburg summer thunderstorm session, high-speed filming and measuring an astounding 50 lightning currents. This has spurred DEHN AFRICA to further donate R500 000 to the JLRL for future research around the protection of renewable energy systems from lightning.
“It is an absolute pleasure to extend our partnership even further with Wits University. As education and research are critical components to our economy we as DEHN are truly excited to take the partnership to new levels," says Hano Oelofse, Managing Director of DEHN AFRICA.
The money will go towards installing more DEHNdetect devices on high infrastructure in Johannesburg as well as to providing bursaries for MSc and PhD students working in light protection research, and growing the research capabilities for the JLRL.
Professor Estelle Trengove, Head of the School of Electrical and Information Engineering in the Faculty of Engineering and the Built Environment says the JLRL is one of the School’s flagship projects for the #Wits100 celebration next year.
"Although much is known about lightning, there is much that we still need to learn. The JLRL is working at the cutting edge of lightning physics today, and the School is grateful for the generous donation from DEHN that has allowed it to expand this project further.
“At present, the Sentech Tower is equipped with current measurement equipment, but in future, we would like to equip the Telkom Tower and other tall structures in Johannesburg with measurement equipment, to get a more complete picture of lightning activity over Johannesburg,” she says.
International Conference on Lightning Protection 2022
To add to the celebrations, the International Conference on Lightning Protection – the premier lightning conference in Europe – will be hosted in South Africa next year thanks to the successful bid by Professor Ian Jandrell, a renowned expert in the field of lightning, high voltage engineering and forensic engineering, and currently the Deputy Vice-Chancellor: Systems and Operations at Wits University.
FEBE100 Club
The Faculty of Engineering and the Built Environment (FEBE) is also celebrating its centenary in 2022 with companies, global and local, that are 100 years and older. It is doing so through the establishment of its FEBE100 Club that honours companies that have invested financially and otherwise, into the sustainability of the Faculty and its myriad of pioneering projects and research. DEHN AFRICA is one of the first companies to join the FEBE100 Club as part of the University’s centenary celebrations.
About #Wits100
The University of the Witwatersrand (Wits University) is a leading African university ranked in the top 1% of universities in the world. In 2022, Wits celebrates 100 years of academic and research excellence, social justice, and the advancement of the public good. In our pursuit to positively impact humanity, our innovative technology-driven research aims to transform and prepare society for a collective and common digital future. Our research output has doubled in the past five years and offers new ways to impact society for good, as well as astounding ‘moonshot moments’ that give us hope and inspiration. Visit https://wits100.wits.ac.za/. #WitsForGood
Wits leads ambitious partnership to drive AI in Africa
- Wits University
The AI Africa Consortium partners with Cirrus AI to bring large-scale AI infrastructure capacity and expertise to the African research community and industry.
“We embark on these great undertakings because we remain optimistic about the future of our country and our continent”– Professor Zeblon Vilakazi, Vice-Chancellor and Principal of the University of the Witwatersrand (Wits University), Johannesburg
Wits University today invited Africa’s research community to join its newly formed AI Africa Consortium which aims to develop a collaborative network focussed on the advancement of artificial intelligence (AI) and the application of AI in research and innovation. [Read or download the AI Africa Consortium brochure.]
Addressing the virtual opening of AI Expo Africa 2021, the largest business-focused AI event in Africa, Professor Zeblon Vilakazi, Vice-Chancellor and Principal of Wits University, announced the ambitious partnership, saying AI and machine learning (ML) “offers huge opportunities for development and progress in Africa”.
“For us to fully participate in the 21st Century, we must use this ‘scientific renaissance’ to drive innovation and foster the growth of a strong scientific ecosystem. In so doing, we can play an active role in achieving true progress and help steer the socioeconomic trajectory of the African continent,” Vilakazi said.
It is for this reason that Wits University has partnered with Cirrus AI, a private sector-led initiative that aims to bring large-scale AI infrastructure capacity and world-class expertise to the doorstep of African universities, research institutions, researchers, and industry collaborators. Cirrus was announced at the AI Expo Africa in 2019.
“Cirrus is an initiative that aims to secure funding to establish among other things, the first AI supercomputer hub in Africa which will be located on Wits University’s campus. Cirrus has already formed partnerships and relationships with stakeholders in the AI space throughout the world,” explained Professor Barry Dwolatzky, Director of Innovation Strategy at Wits University. He is the project leader for the AI Africa Consortium.
“This partnership will promote and drive AI innovation and entrepreneurship through the infrastructure, engineering capacity, and learning programmes that will be set up. Student participation and training will be central in our efforts to develop AI skills in Africa,” he said.
Help us grow Africa’s research footprint
The Consortium will also lead engagement and coordination with government agencies and non-profit research institutions on the adoption of Cirrus. It will support data science practices across research fields and aid local academic and research institutions to stimulate AI research and advance the application of AI in industry.
“Wits University has Africa’s largest grouping of researchers and postgraduate students working in the disciplines of data science, AI and ML. We invite all members of the African Research Universities Alliance (ARUA) as well as from other universities and research institutions in Africa to join the AI Africa Consortium and help us grow Africa’s footprint on the global research output map,” Professor Lynn Morris, Deputy Vice-Chancellor: Research and Innovation, said in her address at the Africa AI Expo.
Looking ahead
“We embark on these great undertakings because we remain optimistic about the future of our country and our continent. There are huge opportunities to create economic activity and solve problems drawing from AI and ML. This will guarantee the future of our society for generations to come,” Vilakazi said.
How will the AI Africa Consortium work?
Tier 1 Consortium members will each appoint an ‘ambassador’. These ambassadors will participate in what will be known as the ‘Ambassador Advisory Network’, responsible for building the network and negotiating benefits on behalf of the members of the Consortium.
What will the benefits be in joining the AI Africa Consortium?
“Through international collaborations already established by Cirrus AI, the Consortium will link members with the global AI network,” Dwolatzky explained in his presentation to the AI Africa Expo.
Other benefits include:
Providing researchers with access to hardware / software / data and machine learning engineers. Although it is implied it is often overlooked that infrastructure is useless without the supporting engineering to assist in making use of it.
Access to state-of-the-art computing capability where members will have free access to the powerful supercomputing platform housed at Wits University;
A ‘Digital Asset Locker’ where members will have access to ample storage capacity to store data for use in ML and activities in AI;
A ‘Sandbox’ where researchers can try out concepts and ideas;
Co-development programmes for AI research and learning;
An annual summer and winter schools programme to build AI skills;
‘Saloons’ and ‘Teatime’ talks to share information across Africa and beyond;
The right to host events at Consortium forums;
Inclusion in Consortium-led proposals and contracts to take part in continent-wide bids for research grants and funding in the field of AI.
AI @ Wits
Stay updated with the latest research news in AI/ML and technology/digital innovations at Wits University:
Follow #WitsResearch, #WitsForGood and @Wits_News on Twitter
Wits to coordinate South Africa’s national quantum initiative
- Wits University
The South African Quantum Technology Initiative (SA QuTI) aims to drive local quantum technology research and innovation.
Wits University today announced it has successfully secured R8 million in seed funding from the Department of Science and Innovation (DSI) towards implementing Phase 1 on behalf of the South African Quantum Technology Initiative (SA QuTI).
Approved by the DSI earlier this year, the SA QuTI is a national undertaking that seeks to create the conditions in South Africa for a globally competitive research environment in quantum technologies and to grow the local quantum technology industry.
Wits University, a leading quantum research institute in Africa through its newly formed WitsQ initiative, is the official host of the SA QuTI and will administer and manage the funds. It will also coordinate the implementation of the SA QuTI.
“The objective is to move South Africa into a quantum future where government, industry and academia work together for the development and deployment of quantum technologies,” says Distinguished Professor Andrew Forbes, Director of WitsQ and Director of the Structured Light Laboratory in the Wits School of Physics.
“It is a very exciting time to be in quantum, and I believe that Wits has an important role to play in this field. We are regarded as world leaders in high-dimensional entanglement, we have unique experimental facilities, and our WitsQ initiative is home to an enthusiastic quantum community that has no traditional discipline boundaries,” he adds.
Dr Robin Drennan, Director for Research Development in the University's Research Office, says Wits is proud to act as a host for the SA QuTI and looking forward to working with all the partners from several universities and research institutes across the country that are part of this national initiative.
“This initial grant from the DSI is received with deep gratitude. Quantum technologies offer a new frontier of research and innovation, and this grant shows a clear and confident vision expressed by the Department.”
“It is so important to support the existing research efforts in this budding area to ensure that South Africa remains competitive in these areas of endeavour. It will of course also add impetus to Wits’ efforts in the field of quantum technologies and our access to a 50 qubit quantum computer,” says Drennan.
Wits University has a unique quantum advantage through its partnership with IBM Research by becoming the first African partner on the IBM Q Network and has access to its 50 qubit quantum computer.
The SA QuTI will be a consortium of five universities. Wits University will act as the main contracting site and is also one of the main centres together with Stellenbosch University and the University of KwaZulu-Natal. The two emerging centres are the Cape Peninsula University of Technology and the University of Zululand. The Centre of High-Performance Computing (CHPC) will provide the quantum computing infrastructure.
First steps
In Phase 1 the funding will be used, among other projects, to support quantum technology development initiatives at Wits University, the University of KwaZulu-Natal, the Cape Peninsula University of Technology, and the National Metrology Institute of South Africa. The SA QuTI has pre-allocated some of the funds towards supporting identified undergraduate, postgraduate and postdoctoral students in quantum technologies from various universities.
In Phase 2 the SA QuTI aims to create critical mass in quantum technology research leadership across the country through senior and emerging research chairs. It also seeks to achieve greater diversity and demographics in quantum technology research emanating from South Africa by creating new centres of quantum research in previously disadvantaged institutions.
Side-stepping the competition
“South Africa cannot compete with the billions of Euros invested in quantum technology development in other countries. That is why we have to be strategic by bringing together our quantum community – research, academia, government and industry – to save decades in time and money,” explains Forbes.
Three years in the making, this national roadmap to drive quantum technology research and innovation, have three main focus areas:
quantum communications
quantum computing
quantum sensing
Each focus area will have one flagship project that serves to drive science through to technology and allow for faster uptake by commercial partners.
“The philosophy of SA QuTI is to side-step the competition. Take the smartphone industry: you don’t have to be a smartphone manufacturer to be part of the smartphone revolution – the economy of smartphone apps is huge, perhaps even bigger than the phone industry itself (think Facebook, Whatsapp, Twitter and so on). We see an analogous situation in quantum. In quantum computing, for instance, we will not be building a quantum computer but rather develop ‘quantum apps’, a faster and cost-effective way to make an impact that leverages on our capabilities in software development,” says Forbes.
In quantum communications the idea is to focus on technology integration from partner institutes across South Africa, comprising sources, detectors, protocols and networks, to establish local quantum secure links between universities, key government sites, and strategic industry locations such as banks.
The flagship project in quantum sensing will leverage South Africa’s well developed and sophisticated medical industry.
“I am very excited that WitsQ has some seed funding so that we can grow our internal community to leverage off the national programme. We plan to use the funds to grow the Wits quantum community by seeding small projects, and bringing new students into the fold,” says Forbes.
About #Wits100
The University of the Witwatersrand (Wits University) is a leading African university ranked in the top 1% of universities in the world. In 2022, Wits celebrates 100 years of academic and research excellence, social justice, and the advancement of the public good. In our pursuit to positively impact humanity, our innovative technology-driven research aims to transform and prepare society for a collective and common digital future. Our research output has doubled in the past five years and offers new ways to impact society for good, as well as astounding ‘moonshot moments’ that give us hope and inspiration. Visit https://wits100.wits.ac.za/. #WitsForGood
Let’s DIY future democracies for good
- Wits University
#DIYAfrica 2021 creates space for Africans to “Do It Yourself” and realise the potential of new and emerging technologies to bring about change.
“Africa at some point will need to lead the digital transformation, particularly to address a wide range of societal issues that have an impact on us, the continent and the world,” said Professor Zeblon Vilakazi, Vice-Chancellor and Principal of Wits University.
“It is an opportunity to ensure that our intellectual labour maximally translates for the benefits of the continent. Civic tech and media innovation are showing that a future democratised, digital government and social order that is sustainable is achievable.”
Vilakazi announced that as part of Wits’ centenary celebrations next year, the University will establish a new African Centre for Excellence in Digital Technology and Government. This Centenary Flagship programme and the newly established Wits Centre of Journalism (WCJ) will be platforms for robust engagement between research, academia, society and government.
He addressed the opening plenary for #DIYAfrica 2021 – a collaboration between the Civic Tech Innovation Forum (#CTIF2021) and #JamfestAfrica2021. The CTIF is an annual event presented by the Civic Tech Innovation Network (CTIN) in Wits University’s School of Governance that seeks to connect practitioners, researchers, experts and decision-makers with interests in civic tech and provides a platform for them to learn, share knowledge and experience and collaborate.
Jamfest is an African media and information festival directed at a diverse set of African media makers and media publics, presented by the Journalism and Media Lab (Jamlab), a project of Wits Journalism that supports more and better innovation in journalism and media in Africa.
The virtual #DIYAfrica 2021 conference has brought together civic tech and media innovators and stakeholders to connect around the ways in which digital innovators, innovations, initiatives, and their support structures are playing out across Africa in the spaces of journalism, media, civic activism, and public services, particularly in this pandemic era. The “Do It Yourself” approach is offered as a frame for exploring the potential for a more democratised society – one where technology enables empowerment, participation, critique, and even resistance.
“The role of society and social enterprises are increasingly important drivers of the digital exponential, a process of rapid technology changes and disruptions in the way we do business, life and work. The flow of information is moving faster than the speed of which the producers and the curators of knowledge can anticipate. And with that comes the challenge of how we manage and curate data and information,” said Vilakazi.
He said Wits is proud to host the CTIN, Jamlab and many other innovative digital transformation programmes.
“The University is at the forefront in driving the development of cutting-edge digital technologies for the 21st Century, from artificial intelligence to machine learning, quantum computing and technologies, data sciences, blockchain and many others. We are helping organisations and businesses to go digital and are pioneering the adoption of innovative digital technologies in education, finance, arts medicine, journalism, and government.”
“The new Centre for Digital Governance will also assist countries across the continent to meet the critical means needed for the development of the appropriate policies and regulatory frameworks needed in this rapidly exponential changing space of e-government,” Vilakazi said.
About #Wits100
The University of the Witwatersrand (Wits University) is a leading African university ranked in the top 1% of universities in the world. In 2022, Wits celebrates 100 years of academic and research excellence, social justice, and the advancement of the public good. Wits is acatalyst for change that creates hope in society, and our founding values remain: We uphold no distinctions of class, wealth, race, or creed and cherish academic freedom and the discovery of truth. Visit https://wits100.wits.ac.za/. #WitsForGood
Remote work a win for South Africa's ICT professionals
- Joburg Centre for Software Engineering (JCSE)
JSCE-IITPSA ICT Skills Survey results will be released on 28 September 2021.
The Covid-19 pandemic brought with it some unexpected benefits for the South African ICT sector, including increased productivity and the potential for employers to reduce their operating costs.
This is one of the findings in the first South African ICT Skills Survey to be carried out since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic by Wits University’s Joburg Centre for Software Engineering (JCSE) in partnership with the Institute of Information Technology Professionals South Africa (IITPSA).
The JCSE-IITPSA ICT Skills Survey assesses skills demand and supply from both a corporate and practitioner perspective, to identify the most pressing skills needs and current skills capacity. The 2021 edition of the survey also set out to assess the impact the pandemic has had on ICT skills in South Africa.
The report’s co-authors, Professor Barry Dwolatzky, Director of the JCSE, and Adrian Schofield, production consultant at the IITPSA, report that the survey uncovered the pandemic’s impact on the work environment, prospects for a Gig economy, and developments in ICT skills development to meet local business needs.
The full results will be released by the report’s co-authors at an online launch event on 28 September at 12h00.
Skills survey finds SA ICT not moving to gig economy - yet
- Barry Dwolatzky and Tony van der Linden
Survey shows a shift to the gig economy has not occurred in SA, but it's plausible that this might change in future.
The Covid-19 move to work from home has raised the question of whether linking an employee to a single employer still makes sense, or whether the traditional “job” should instead be broken down into a sequence of tasks or “gigs” that can be carried out by anyone.
What is a “job”? The simple answer - without getting bogged down in legal technicalities — is that it’s an arrangement between a person, called an “employee”, and another person or entity, called an “employer”. Through this arrangement the employee agrees to spend about 40 hours every week at a “place of work” assisting the employer in conducting its business.
In return the employer provides the employee with the necessary tools - a salary, and (possibly) other benefits and incentives. The arrangement is exclusive — the employee provides services to only one employer.
The employer usually puts processes in place, called “management”, to monitor the work of its employees. These processes focus mostly on “time-and-attendance” management. They ensure that the employee puts in — at least — the agreed number of hours per week at the place of work.
Whether replacing “jobs” with “gigs” would be a logical consequence of the changes brought about by the pandemic was one of the questions we hoped to answer when we launched the 11thedition of theJohannesburg Centre for Software Engineering (JCSE)-Institute of IT Professionals SA ICT Skills Survey in July 2021.
We wondered whether we might see a reduction in the number of people employed in the sector (fewer “jobs”) while the amount of work stayed the same or increased.
We asked IT practitioners whether they were now working for multiple employers in a “gig economy” mode of engagement. The results indicate that this change is not occurring in SA - yet.
However, we are still left with the question: is a shift to the gig economy likely to happen in our local ICT sector in the near future?
At first glance the gig economy promises the attractive prospect that employees could have the freedom and autonomy to manage their own time, make money doing things they love and things that challenge them.
However, for flexibility we sacrifice security. The gig economy transfers the risk inherently associated with full-time employment from the employer to the employee. Benefits associated with full-time employment, such as paid leave, are no longer part of the deal.
Even though as our survey shows a shift to the gig economy has not occurred in SA, it is plausible that forces in the industry might change this in future.
The question is - what factors are at play and what role do they have in renegotiating the historic and exclusive arrangement between employer and employee?
Among the changes wrought by the pandemic has been the role of the manager, which has shifted from managing time and attendance to managing outcomes and expectations. It requires managers to give up absolute control and share responsibility with their subordinates.
With little oversight possible, tasks have been broken up into smaller subtasks independently planned and executed by employees based on their strengths and experience. Employees have become empowered, can take ownership, make decisions and deliver work based on the conditions in which they find themselves.
Employees are committed and more effective. Employers have been surprised at the increase in the output that has been achieved. Underpinned by forced introspection, the employee has discovered the possibility and importance of a better work-life balance, the ability to deliver quality output from anywhere, as well as the value of good skills.
So, what will give way first to force the adoption of a gig economy in ICT? The pandemic has provided fertile soil in which a gig economy could flourish.
In these uncertain times, and since people are at the core of the business in the ICT sector, employers are forced to be innovative in how they maintain their culture and competitive advantage.
As both are vested in the people they employ, employers are at risk. In an attempt to protect what is important, employers are looking at mechanisms to encourage employees back into the office. This approach may very well backfire since employees are seeing the advantages of working from home.
This tension between employers and employees might just be what is required to break the current balance, making the gig economy an attractive alternative, bringing with it new ways of working and new skills sets.
The JCSE-IITPSA ICT Skills Survey findings on the effects of Covid-19 on work and skills will be released on September 28.
Professor Barry Dwolatzky is the Director of the Johannesburg Centre for Software Engineering at JCSE and Director for Innovation Strategy Wits University. Tony van der Linden is CIO and head of R&D at BBD.
SA ICT sector navigates pandemic unscathed but skills gaps remain
- Wits University
The 2021 ICT Skills Survey results were released on 28 September 2021.
South African ICT employers and practitioners appear to have adapted well to the Covid-19 pandemic and associated lockdowns, with little to no negative impacts on working conditions or ICT skills demand and supply. However, significant digital skills gaps remain.
This emerged in the 2021 ICT Skills Survey carried out by Wits University’s Joburg Centre for Software Engineering (JCSE) in partnership with the Institute of Information Technology Professionals South Africa (IITPSA). The survey, the 11th since 2008 and the first since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, assessed what impact the pandemic and lockdown have had on working conditions and skills supply and demand in South Africa.
Report co-authors Adrian Schofield, production consultant at the IITPSA, and Professor Barry Dwolatzky, Director of the JCSE, said in releasing their findings: “The surprising finding is that there are no surprising findings! The survey shows that the ICT industry has coped well in these disruptive times without needing to change much or re-invent itself. ICT companies and ICT professionals have coped well with new working conditions. They have not needed to scurry around hunting for new technologies and skill sets. Everything required for the “new normal” was already in place.”
Almost 60% of employer respondents felt that the pandemic had not affected skills availability, and overall respondent sentiment about the impact of work from home arrangements was positive. Employees have adapted to work from home, and many companies report an improvement in productivity, saying this model would likely remain in place in the long term.
Dwolatzky said: “If there’s any profession that should lend itself well to making digital transformation of the workplace possible and dealing with it comfortably, it is the ICT community. It is interesting to speculate that a ‘job’ has changed – where it was once attendance at a workplace for a number of hours a day, people working from home now need to be managed in a very different way and jobs no longer mean attendance by numbers of hours a day, but rather completing a collection of tasks or ‘gigs’. This raises the question of whether the ‘Gig Economy’ becomes possible. One of the things we probed was whether we are beginning to see the emergence of a ‘Gig Economy’. The conclusion is that this is not happening.” (Read: Skills survey finds SA ICT not moving to gig economy - yet)
However, he noted: “It’s still early days in terms of the changes we’ve seen since 2019, and the next few years may see new trends emerging.”
Skills Survey reveals most in-demand IT skills
Reported in the latest MICT SETA Sector Skills Plan, the top occupations with hard to fill vacancies in the MICT sector are Software Developers, Computer Network Technicians, Developer Programmers, ICT Communications Assistants, Computer Network & Systems Engineers, ICT Security Specialists, ICT Systems Analysts and Web Technicians.
The same report indicated the programming languages most in demand were found to be .NET, C#, C++, Java and VB, with a decline in demand for people to maintain legacy systems, such as COBOL developers. The report noted that many companies were adopting the agile project management methodology, resulting in scrum masters being in demand. However, there are very few people in the country that have certified qualifications to work with the method. The Survey report listed Java, Python, Javascript, C# and PHP as the top five languages.
The report noted that while the MICT sector includes over 30,000 companies, more than half of ICT practitioners work in other non-MICT sectors.
According to the report, the top occupations with hard to fill vacancies in the MICT sector (and the quantity needed) were:
Software developer (2 434)
Computer Network Technician (1 948)
Developer Programmer (823)
ICT Communications Assistant (755)
Computer Network & Systems Engineer (731)
ICT Security Specialist (713)
ICT Systems Analyst (676)
Web Technician (514)
Systems Administrator (405)
Programmer Analyst (397)
Management Consultant (Business Analyst) (359)
Advertising Specialist (224)
Telecommunications Network Engineer (164)
Database Designer & Administrator (114)
Schofield noted the increase in vacancies since the 2019 report and highlighted the challenge of relating an occupation to the core skills required to carry out the tasks thereof. He emphasised the comparison with the top priority skills listed by employers participating in the survey overall, which were:
Information security/cyber security
Big data design/ analytics
DevOps
AI/ML
Application development
Data management
Test automation/performance testing
Internet of things
Connectivity
Skills gap persists
On the question: is there a digital skills shortage? Schofield said: “Yes, there is and it’s ongoing. From the practitioners’ perspective, the skills gaps are real, measured in thousands locally and millions globally. We are still not seeing sufficient numbers coming through the skills pipeline.”
“The future is still about the foundations: education, getting more people comfortable with STEM subjects, ensuring that people have the aptitude for STEM and ICT subjects, ensuring that people gain practical experience, and we must approach the question of gender equality in the sector much more robustly,” he said.
Schofield noted that Continuing Professional Development would remain critical. “Employers consistently say they need to reskill employees, and vendors must identify competencies that will be replaced so they can also show where practitioners can be moved to new areas. All the practitioners participating in the survey say they want to learn new skills, but they need to know how and where, and how to choose from the menu.”
“Skilling is an investment for employers and practitioners, for long term sustainability. Government’s challenge is the industry’s challenge: funding the investment required in education and training to support the investments in infrastructure and services. We need to combine thinking and resources in government and industry to ensure these investments are channelled, coordinated and productive.”
Future-proof qualifications
The report noted growing concern among young people about what to study to prepare for 4IR careers. Dwolatzky said: “Learning ‘coding’ seems to have become something of an obsession in recent years. We have also seen a mushrooming of coding academies and “Coding Bootcamps”. I would question whether the mass acquisition of skills in coding and robotics should be our priority in preparing South Africa for 4IR. Coding is hard to master and frustrating if you only learn it superficially.”
His advice for future-proof qualifications was to first strive to complete a university degree – any university degree. “Over the three years of an undergraduate programme you will learn to learn, communicate and sell. With a degree under your belt, learn the foundational skills required in the 4IR-related job you may wish to be doing. These foundational skills can be acquired via a good set of online courses or other alternative learning pathways. But remember that technical skills such as software development require many hours of practice,” he said.
Professor Barry Dwolatzky explains what gamification in learning is and how it is on a path to change the future of higher education.
Generation Z are rapidly stepping onto the world stage. They are graduating from high school, entering the workforce and studying at tertiary education institutions. Referred to as digital natives, this generation grew up with technology and have no knowledge of life without it. They are globally connected, incredibly mobile, entrepreneurial and crave autonomy – especially when it comes to education where they want flexibility on how, where and when they learn.
Are our South African universities equipped to engage with and stimulate these digitally immersed learners?
Emeritus Professor Barry Dwolatzky, Director of Innovation Strategy at Wits University and who also serves on the Computer Science Advisory Board of University of the People (UoPeople), a tuition-free, online university, says that conventional education models are starting to become superfluous in our modern age as more learners go online.
“The brick-and-mortar style of tertiary education is set to be disrupted in the near future with a move towards virtual learning. With so much material available through technology anytime, anywhere, it is no longer necessary to physically attend a lecture with hundreds of people. Learners can watch and learn online from the comfort of their homes,” he says.
But can digital learning be as effective and engaging as in-person education?
Teaching by traditional methods with a blackboard and the teacher’s voice as focal point – or ‘chalk and talk’ – is already making way for more online learning spurred on by the global pandemic, while a more informal and interactive approach that allows learners to study at their own pace has long been acknowledged to inspire more effective learning.
This is where gamification comes in. By blending the online method with interactive learning techniques, a new way of learning is created, integrating game elements and game thinking in activities that are not games. Technology, then, becomes a tool for active, instead of passive, learning. Using game-based mechanics, aesthetics and critical thinking to engage people, it promotes studying and increases motivation.
While South Africa is not quite there yet with gamified education, with the digital divide a stumbling block to including lower-income learners in online learning, UoPeaple is opening up opportunities with its tuition-free model and is on the right path to making gamification in higher education a reality. This is critically important for a country such as South Africa where unemployment among the youth is at a record high and which is in dire need of jobseekers with tertiary certificates or degrees.
Dwolatzky sees huge merit in gamifying learning and believes disruptors in the education sector should tap into this method of learning to keep students motivated and minimise dropout rates: “There is a lot to be learnt from gaming. There is no penalty for failure – if you lose you start again, taking the lessons learnt with you into the next game. There is no stigma attached to failure – it is seen as part of progressing. People play in virtual multinational groups and learn to collaborate and communicate with players from different cultures in order to jointly solve problems,” he explains.
World-renowned game designer, author and researcher Jane McGonigal asserts that gamification works because gaming triggers emotions such as joy, excitement, curiosity and pride, among others. Gamification is being used in business with good results, offering hope. McGonigal believes that these techniques could be applied to revolutionise the ways through which higher education is delivered or assessed.
Gamification perfectly aligns with the flipped classroom concept, where traditional ideas about classroom activities are reversed, transforming learning into a hands-on, differentiated and even personalised learning experience. The theory is that students learn best when they have goals, targets and achievements to reach for in a way they perceive as fun. So, using game-based elements, such as virtual currency or point scoring, problem-solving activities, peer competition, teamwork, score tables and advancements to higher levels help learners assimilate new information and test their knowledge.
As a computer science advisor to the online UoPeople, Dwolatzky has insight into how students respond to online learning and what keeps them motivated. “Universities that recognise the connection between digital engagement and student experience will be ahead of the curve in educating online learners.”
At UoPeople, learners participate in online discussion forums, peer review groups and graded quizzes, all of which improve attitudes towards learning, Dwolatzky says. This is echoed by UoPeople President Shai Reshef: “Thanks to our strong online community, students make connections from all around the world. This is a resource for sharing information, wisdom and support as well as for building a vibrant, international network.”
Reshef concludes: “When implemented correctly, online education is the solution to the crisis in higher education. It is not just putting lectures on Zoom; rather, there is an entire pedagogy involved. You need to build in meaningful interactions and create virtual resources for students to make a positive change in student behaviour.”
Wits, British Council to boost innovation in Africa
- Wits University
The new Wits Entrepreneurship Clinic will form part of the Innovation for African Universities Project that will drive economic development.
“The Wits Entrepreneurship Clinic will see senior commerce students provide advice on entrepreneurship-related issues to members of the Wits community and the general public,” explains Dr Rob Venter, a project leader from the Wits School of Business Science. “These students will be supported by academic staff, alumni, volunteers, and leaders with experience in entrepreneurship. We are grateful for the grant from the British Council which will help to get the Wits Entrepreneurship Clinic off the ground.”
The 24 successful 2021 IAU network partners will receive funding of up to £60,000 to deliver their projects, which address entrepreneurship, youth employability, climate change and digital innovation. The inspiring projects address local and global challenges, and reflect their extensive understanding of community needs and challenges. The partners will benefit from a shared UK-African network of collaborative partnerships which support an exchange of learning that fosters an increased culture of entrepreneurship and innovation within universities across focal programme locations.
Youth are Africa's greatest asset, with the youth population in Sub-Saharan Africa expected to double to over 830 million by 2050. This growth will bring unprecedented opportunities for entrepreneurship and innovation. But many young Africans lack the opportunities, training and support to develop their ideas for businesses and enterprise.
The Going Global Partnerships Programme aims to foster a culture of innovation and entrepreneurship within universities and to facilitate the development of skills required to build industries, companies, products and services. The IAU project is specifically designed to support the development of African-UK University partnerships that build institutional capacity for higher education engagement in entrepreneurship and innovation ecosystems in selected African countries.
“By bringing together universities from across the UK and sub-Saharan Africa with organisations supporting innovation and entrepreneurship in the region, we can facilitate an exchange of learning, ideas, knowledge and connections to enable universities to become key champions for innovation and entrepreneurship,” says Moses Anibaba OBE, the Regional Director of the British Council for sub-Saharan Africa.“We recognise the key role that universities can play in the entrepreneurial ecosystem in Africa, helping enable African youth to become the job creators of tomorrow and drivers of economic development in the continent.”
Mandisa Cakwe, Director: Teaching, Learning and Research Development in the South African Department of Higher Education and Training adds: “Partnerships are key for the expansion and strengthening of the higher education system in South Africa. The IAU is building partnerships between universities in Africa and the UK, which will help us to achieve our strategic goals and contribute to building the capacity of students and staff, as well as improving the curriculum in specific areas that some projects will focus on. The department welcomes the support of the programme and is looking forward to more possible areas for future collaboration. The IAU promises to be a great and much needed platform for collaboration, learning, and knowledge exchange.”
Lighting up the digital divide with ‘Fibre, Before the Fibre’
- Wits University
Wits leads efforts to develop low-cost, long-range free-space optics that can connect informal settlement communities to high-speed internet.
Imagine 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 learners with instant high-speed, reliable internet access.
A two-year project is underway 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 not yet connected to existing fibre infrastructure.
The‘Fibre Before the Fibre Project’isa collaboration between Wits University in South Africa and the Universities of Glasgow and Aston in the UK. Itwas conceptualised before the Covid-19 pandemic that has dramatically worsened the digital divide due to the increased reliance on electricity and communication technologies for remote learning, working, and accessing health care services.
Lead investigatorDr Mitchell Cox,co-founder of the OC Lab at Wits University, says: “In cities like Johannesburg there’s a stark contrast between informal settlements that don’t have fibre and nearby affluent suburbs, often just across the road, that do.”
While there are over 50 million smartphones with access to the internet in use in South Africa, Cox says data costs are too high and mobile internet is not fast enough to provide an entire building, such as a school with connectivity suitable for streaming video, for example.
“What are the opportunities if we could simply ‘light up’ that digital divide?” asks Cox. “Access to the internet enables children to broaden their horizons and expand their curiosity: something that I believe leads to much-needed scientists, engineers and entrepreneurs."
How it will work
The OC Lab, together with theStructured Light Laboratoryheaded byProfessor Andrew Forbesat Wits University, andthe UK collaborators, ProfessorMartin Lavery (Glasgow) and Professor Andrew Ellis (Aston), have over the past several years been researching and developinglow-cost, long-range, high-speed wireless optical communication technologies.
“We are now developing a low-cost, 3D-printed wireless communication system using off-the-shelf components as far as possible. These devices will link anchor sites, such as schools, clinics or police stations, via a wireless optical line-of-site signal to nearby fibre-sources in affluent suburbs that are within about a kilometre of the anchor sites,” explains Cox.
Powerful partners
The ability to power the system is key to the sustainability of this Project. TheFibre Before the Fibre Projecthas teamed up with another innovative project also developed in theSchool of Electrical and Information Engineering.
Professor Willie Cronjeand his team of PhD students have developed thePeCo Grid, an affordable off the grid energy system that could potentially power whole villages. The home-based electrical grid solution can easily integrate multiple energy sources – from solar panels to batteries. The commercialisation of the project with industry partners has led to aspin-off company,PeCo Power, that designs, manufactures, and distributes smart solar products for household electrification.
Cox explains, “through our partnership with PeCo Power, we’ve come to realise that reliable electricity is a scarce resource even for schools in peri-urban areas. The PeCo system is a cost-effective and reliable way to power our system, while providing any excess to the school itself.”
A lifeline for communities
Rapid urbanisation is occurring across many developing nations, and with most of the world’s population predicted to be living in an urban environment by 2050, projects such as theFibre Before the Fibre Projectwill be a lifeline for many evolving informal settlements.
It is for this reason that the Royal Academy of Engineering in the UK has provided funding of R1.7-million for the Project.
“This is enough money for us to build a demonstrator system, fund a few postgraduate students and to evaluate the opportunities and challenges of our idea. Rolling out telecommunications infrastructure is an enormous and expensive exercise, and our intention is not to replace what the service providers do, but rather to try leverage what’s existing for maximum impact. Hopefully this is just the start of something awesome!” says Cox enthusiastically.
Project stages
TheFibre Before the Fibre Projectwill roll out in phases, and a range of key activities are planned, says Cox.
Recently, the research team met with a diverse group of stakeholders to gather insights about the social and technical requirements, as well as educational opportunities afforded by the system. Design and construction of a suitable prototype are now underway, and in 2022 the team hopes to deploy the prototype linking a currently unconnected school to nearby conventional fibre infrastructure.
“We will measure the system performance, usage and social impact of the link over an extended period. This information will help us to develop a roadmap to deploy this technology in informal settlements globally,” says Cox.
Should we trust machines?
- Mary Carman and Benjamin Rosman
Inclusivity and diversity need to be at the level of identifying values and defining frameworks of what counts as ethical AI in the first place.
But concerns have emerged about the accountability of AI and related technologies like machine learning. In December 2020 a computer scientist, Timnit Gebru, was fired from Google’s Ethical AI team. She had previously raised the alarm about the social effects of bias in AI technologies. For instance, in a 2018 paper Gebru and another researcher, Joy Buolamwini, had shown how facial recognition software was less accurate in identifying women and people of colour than white men. Biases in training data can have far-reaching and unintended effects.
There is already a substantial body of research about ethics in AI. This highlights the importance of principles to ensure technologies do not simply worsen biases or even introduce new social harms. As the UNESCO draft recommendation on the ethics of AI states:
We need international and national policies and regulatory frameworks to ensure that these emerging technologies benefit humanity as a whole.
In recent years, many frameworks and guidelines have been created that identify objectives and priorities for ethical AI.
This is certainly a step in the right direction. But it’s also critical to look beyond technical solutions when addressing issues of bias or inclusivity. Biases can enter at the level of who frames the objectives and balances the priorities.
In a recent paper, we argue that inclusivity and diversity also need to be at the level of identifying values and defining frameworks of what counts as ethical AI in the first place. This is especially pertinent when considering the growth of AI research and machine learning across the African continent.
Context
Research and development of AI and machine learning technologies is growing in African countries. Programmes such as Data Science Africa, Data Science Nigeria, and the Deep Learning Indaba with its satellite IndabaX events, which have so far been held in 27 different African countries, illustrate the interest and human investment in the fields.
Yet very few African voices have so far been involved in the international ethical frameworks that aim to guide the research. This might not be a problem if the principles and values in those frameworks have universal application. But it’s not clear that they do.
For instance, the European AI4People framework offers a synthesis of six other ethical frameworks. It identifies respect for autonomy as one of its key principles. This principle has been criticised within the applied ethical field of bioethics. It is seen as failing to do justice to the communitarian values common across Africa. These focus less on the individual and more on community, even requiring that exceptions are made to uphold such a principle to allow for effective interventions.
Challenges like these – or even acknowledgement that there could be such challenges – are largely absent from the discussions and frameworks for ethical AI.
Just like training data can entrench existing inequalities and injustices, so can failing to recognise the possibility of diverse sets of values that can vary across social, cultural and political contexts.
For machine learning to be effective at making useful predictions, any learning system needs access to training data. This involves samples of the data of interest: inputs in the form of multiple features or measurements, and outputs which are the labels scientists want to predict. In most cases, both these features and labels require human knowledge of the problem. But a failure to correctly account for the local context could result in underperforming systems.
For example, mobile phone call records have been used to estimate population sizes before and after disasters. However, vulnerable populations are less likely to have access to mobile devices. So, this kind of approach could yield results that aren’t useful.
Similarly, computer vision technologies for identifying different kinds of structures in an area will likely underperform where different construction materials are used. In both of these cases, as we and other colleagues discuss in another recent paper, not accounting for regional differences may have profound effects on anything from the delivery of disaster aid, to the performance of autonomous systems.
Going forward
AI technologies must not simply worsen or incorporate the problematic aspects of current human societies.
Being sensitive to and inclusive of different contexts is vital for designing effective technical solutions. It is equally important not to assume that values are universal. Those developing AI need to start including people of different backgrounds: not just in the technical aspects of designing data sets and the like but also in defining the values that can be called upon to frame and set objectives and priorities.
Wits, UJ, government and the telecoms sector join forces to close the digital divide.
When Covid-19 took hold of South Africa in 2020, traffic across mobile networks doubled. The communications regulator, Icasa, assigned emergency, but temporary spectrum to telecommunications operators to cope with the increased network demand.
For the higher education sector, this additional spectrum - the range of frequencies used for wireless communications – pulled back the curtain and revealed what a just and equitable society could look like: successful licensees created zero-rated virtual classrooms, with poorer university students able to access free data to complete their studies.
Addressing these issues in an inaugural webinar, titled: The Impact of Spectrum on Higher Education and Society, Professor Zeblon Vilakazi, Vice-Chancellor and Principal of Wits University, said equitable digital access is vital as the world ushers in the digital exponential, characterised by high connectivity and rapid advances in computation.
“The Covid-19 pandemic showed us how higher education institutions exposed the digital divide. We cannot have this if we are to embrace blended teaching and learning models where online instruction takes centre stage,” he said.
Mobile phone penetration is high in South Africa but not everyone has access to the world wide web, nor take advantage of opportunities in the increasingly digital economy. The long-awaited auctioning of spectrum frequencies is urgently needed to ensure less network congestion and poor-quality, patchy service.
Vilakazi welcomed President Cyril Ramaphosa’s declaration that analogue would be switched off in March 2022 to free up spectrum. “Accessing the internet is not a luxury, nor can it be cumbersome and slow. Indeed, it’s a civil rights issue, and universities must be at the forefront of leading such a movement”, he added.
Better connectivity at lower cost – the power of spectrum
The webinar, hosted by Wits University and the University of Johannesburg (UJ), invited industry to table to identify the “possible impact of spectrum for the higher education sector and broader society.”
Professor Tshilidzi Marwala, Vice-Chancellor of UJ, said even though there are more people with internet connection access in South Africa, this is not equitably distributed, especially between urban and rural areas. “Up to this point, the regulatory framework has hindered digital access, with about one third of South Africa denied access. This is not found anywhere else in the world,” he said.
Brite Devassy, Head of Technology and Strategy at Telkom, noted that spectrum offers better connectivity at a lower cost. “So far, temporary spectrum has increased user experience by 50%. If we don’t get awarded spectrum quickly and permanently, we have to continue to build other expensive infrastructure which affects consumers the most.”
However, Devassy noted that spectrum is not the only golden ticket out of the digital divide. He says an ‘entire tech ecosystem’ should support wider and efficient internet access. “I think it’s a blend of spectrum and other mobile technologies that will prove to be effective,” he said.
Dr Andrew Barendse, Managing Executive for Policy and Regulatory Affairs at Vodacom, added that there’s a blend of network infrastructure, including fixed fibre and copper lines elsewhere in the world. “We don’t have sufficient fixed infrastructure, and the country relies heavily on the mobile network. Hence we desperately need spectrum.”
Devassy and Barendse both lament the slow rollout of assigning spectrum. Indeed the last spectrum band was awarded in 2005. “There have been five further attempts to receive more spectrum. The good thing to come out of Covid-19 is that it has catalysed the urgency of assigning spectrum,” says Barendse.
Vilakazi urged regulators and responsible departments to prioritise public interest matters. The “future is already here. We can work together,” he said.
Quantum entanglement: Why physicists want to harness it
- Nicholas Bornman
“Quantum entanglement” is one of several plot devices that crops up in modern sci-fi movies.
Fans of the Marvel superhero movies, for instance, will be familiar with the idea of different timelines merging and intersecting, or characters’ destinies becoming intertwined through seemingly magical means.
But “quantum entanglement” isn’t just a sci-fi buzzword. It’s a very real, perplexing and useful phenomenon. “Entanglement” is one aspect of the broader collection of ideas in physics known as quantum mechanics, which is a theory that describes the behaviour of nature at the atomic, and even subatomic, level.
Understanding and harnessing entanglement is key to creating many cutting-edge technologies. These include quantum computers, which can solve certain problems far faster than ordinary computers, and quantum communication devices, which would allow us to communicate with one another without the slightest possibility of an eavesdropper listening in.
But what exactly is quantum entanglement? Two particles in quantum mechanics are said to be entangled when one of the particles cannot be perfectly described without including all of the information about the other one: the particles are “connected” in such a way that they are not independent of one another. While this sort of idea may seem to make sense at first glance, it is a difficult concept to grasp – and physicists are still learning more about it.
Quantum dice
Suppose that I give you and your friend, Thandi, each a small, opaque black box. Each box contains an ordinary six-sided die. You are both told to lightly shake your boxes to jumble the dice around. Then you part ways. Thandi goes home to one South African city, Cape Town; you return to another, Durban. You don’t communicate with each other during the process. When you get home, you each open your box and look at the upward-facing number on your die.
Ordinarily, there would be no correlation between the numbers you and Thandi see. She would be equally likely to observe any number between 1 and 6, as would you; importantly, the number she sees on her die would have no bearing whatsoever on the number you see on yours.
This is unsurprising – indeed, it’s how the world normally works. However, if we could make this example “quantum”, it could behave quite differently. Suppose that I now tell Thandi and you to first lightly tap your boxes together, before then separately shaking them and heading your separate ways.
In a quantum mechanics analogy, this action of tapping the boxes against one another would enchant the dice and link – or entangle – them in a mysterious fashion: once you each arrive home, open your boxes and look at the numbers, your number and Thandi’s are guaranteed to be perfectly correlated. If you see a ‘4’ in Durban, you know that Thandi in Cape Town is guaranteed to measure a ‘4’ on her die too; if you happen to see a ‘6’, so will she.
In this analogy, the dice represent individual particles (like atoms or particles of light called photons) and the magic act of tapping the boxes together physically is what entangles them, so that measuring one die gives us information about the other.
Making better entanglement
As far as we know, there’s no magical box-tapping action to enchant a pair of dice or other objects on our human, macroscopic scale (if there were, we would be able to experience quantum mechanics in our everyday life and it would probably not be such a foreign, perplexing concept). For now, scientists have to be content with using things on the microscopic level, where it is much easier to observe quantum effects, like charged atoms called ions or special superconducting devices called transmons.
This is the kind of work carried out in the University of the Witwatersrand’s Structured Light Laboratory, in South Africa. Instead of ions or transmons, however, researchers in the lab use particles of light, called photons, to better understand quantum mechanics and its implications. We are interested in using the quantum nature of light for a variety of purposes: from designing efficient communication systems which are completely unhackable by a malevolent third party, to creating methods of imaging sensitive biological samples without damaging them.
Studies like this often require us to start with specially created states of entangled photons. But it’s not as simple as putting two dice in separate boxes and tapping them together. The processes used to create entangled photons in a real laboratory are constrained by many experimental variables. These include the shape of laser beams used in experiments and the sizes of small crystals where the entangled photons are created. These can give subpar outputs – or unideal states – that require researchers to selectively throw away some measurements once an experiment is done. This is not an optimal situation: photons are discarded and so energy is wasted.
A group of researchers from the lab, myself among them, recently took a step towards solving this problem. In a journal article, we mathematically calculated what the optimal laser shape needs to be in order to, as best as possible, create the entangled state that an experimenter would want to start their experiment with. The method proposes changing the input laser beam shape at the beginning of an experiment to maximise the entangled photon creation process later in the experiment. This will mean more photons available to perform your experiment the way you want to, and fewer stray ones.
Improving the efficiency of the entanglement creation and manipulation process, using techniques such as the one proposed, will be important to optimise the efficiency of a number of other quantum technologies, like quantum cryptography systems and the other technologies already mentioned. This is especially important as the fourth industrial revolution moves ahead globally and technologies with quantum mechanics at their cores undoubtedly become more commonplace.
- Natasha Joseph with Abiodun Egbetokun, Christa Kuljian and Tolullah Oni
With the year drawing to a close, many people will be wondering what books they may have missed out on in 2021.
For those who prefer a heftier beach read, The Conversation Africa asked several academics to recommend the best science or technology-related books they read this year.
In the context of rapid urbanisation across Africa with significant investment in hard infrastructure like water and sanitation, the book introduces the notion of social infrastructure – shared physical places and institutions that shape social life – as critical for healthy societies. These range from outdoor green spaces like parks to indoor shared spaces like public libraries.
These are spaces that support physical activity and connection across social divides. Investing in this type of infrastructure can reap the benefits of social inclusion as well as physical and mental health.
Penguin Random House
The book also highlights social infrastructure’s potential to improve urban resilience. For instance, Klinenberg researched a heat wave in Chicago that killed hundreds of people. He found that while poor neighbourhoods had the highest death rates overall, neighbourhoods that looked like they should have fared badly but had some of the lowest death rates also had strong social infrastructure. This included sidewalks and well-maintained streets, libraries and community organisations that drew people out of their homes into public life in normal times.
In the heatwave crisis, this infrastructure helped to identify and reach out to particularly vulnerable people and to prevent death.
The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the critical role that public space can play in addressing or aggravating pre-existing inequality, with public spaces that were usually the domain of cars appropriated for physical activity and social connection. This highlights the unmet demand for such places in our cities.
The book supports the notion that a core dimension of any “good city” is public space, an important mediator of equitable access to health-promoting opportunities. In that vein, I would argue that a good city is one in which planning of public space integrates health and climate resilience with principles of equity and inclusion to enhance urban resilience and health-proof the future of the city and its population.
Several cities across the African continent have recently developed resilience and climate action plans with mitigation and adaptation strategies. The book is a reminder that alongside hard infrastructure, planned interventions should not neglect social infrastructure as a powerful approach to equitably creating health.
Christa Kuljian
The Alchemy of Us: How Humans and Matter Transformed One Another, 2020
Materials scientist Ainissa Ramirez loves her field, which she says is not widely known because it is wedged between physics and chemistry. Ramirez’s book The Alchemy of Us: How Humans and Matter Transformed One Another explores eight stories of how humans and matter transform one another.
The stories of clocks, steel rails, copper cables, photographic film, light bulbs, and silicon chips show how these technological and scientific developments have shaped human culture. “I use storytelling with the hopes of bringing the wonder and fun of science to more people,” says Ramirez.
The MIT Press
In 1966, the Polaroid Corporation created the system that produced two instant photographs in one minute for official documents, without a darkroom and added chemicals. Polaroid began to sell this film to the South African government under apartheid, to create ID photos for passbooks. In 1970, chemist Caroline Hunter, an African American employee at Polaroid, caught wind of the sales, and led a protest that ultimately resulted in the company’s withdrawal from South Africa. This is just one of the fascinating stories Ramirez tells about photographic film. In each of her eight essays, she introduces us to new perspectives, forgotten innovators, and the unintended consequences of scientific discoveries.
By showing many inventors as human and flawed, rather than as geniuses, Ramirez makes science more accessible. Everyone can create something, she says, “from a sandwich to a solar cell”, so stories of science need to reflect the fact that innovation is universal. As Ramirez suggests in her front matter, perhaps the famous science fiction novelist Octavia Butler was thinking of materials science and The Alchemy of Us when she wrote: “All that you touch, you change. All that you change, changes you.”
Abiodun Egbetokun
How Humans Judge Machines by César Hidalgo, Diana Orghian, Jordi Albo-Canals, Filipa De Almeida and Natalia Martin, 2021
It has an important message for today’s world: humans need a balanced view of machines. We tend to be biased against machines. For instance, if there is an accident involving self-directed technology such as an autonomous car, humans are more likely to reject the technology as unviable before even considering that the engineers may have made a design mistake that led to the accident in the first place.
Why is this important? We are now in a world driven by technologies. As the technology frontier continuously shifts forward, devices and solutions keep getting better. If we are biased against technologies, we may resist or reject technological solutions that could improve social welfare.
As explained in the book, a medical diagnosis tool that is not perfectly accurate but is more accurate than human doctors may be rejected if technology failures are perceived with a strong negative bias. Conversely, if we are overly optimistic about technological solutions, we may adopt hostile technology and fail to recognise the negative consequences until it is too late.
There are many reasons I find the book valuable. First, it is based on solid, peer-reviewed science. The experiments presented in the book involved nearly 6,000 randomly selected individuals. Even academic articles sometimes fail to meet this standard of representations and scrutiny. Second, the book deals with a topical issue: how to efficiently foster profitable interaction between human and machine in the Fourth Industrial Revolution. This is one question that policymakers worldwide grapple with, and the book provides clear answers.
The MIT Press
Third, the book is multidisciplinary; its insight is rooted in different knowledge traditions. Such insight is practical and free from disciplinary bias. The scenarios compare people’s reactions to human and machine actions across the five dimensions of moral psychology, and visit contemporary issues such as algorithmic bias, privacy and labour markets.
Finally, it is written in clear language for a general audience. I believe that most readers will enjoy reading this book as much as I have.
Wits team develops social distancing and shopper behaviour tracker for malls.
Wits University innovators have developed a novel Wi-Fi-based solution for managing and monitoring foot count, social distancing and consumer behaviour in shopping malls. The solution uses Artificial Intelligence (AI) to allow retail managers to make future predictions, improve security and deliver intelligence to stores about shopper behaviour.
Its inventor, Dominique Adams has been awarded R100 000 worth of support from Wits Enterprise towards developing the business so as to take the innovation to the next stage. This award was for the winning pitch of the latest Prospector@Wits course run by Wits Enterprise. Development of the Wi-Fi-based, AI-enabled solution began in 2020, shortly after the Covid-19 pandemic emerged in South Africa, triggering the concept for the social distancing tracking tool.
Adams explains; “Our innovation stemmed from an existing product for Wi-Fi signals to monitor social distancing in public spaces. We engaged with stakeholders in the retail space to determine whether there was a need for a solution that, with the application of AI technology, would give them valuable insights into consumer behaviour and help them make predictions.
“Combining Wi-Fi technology with AI, our tool allows mall managers to monitor the complex behaviour of people in real-time as well as predict their future behaviour. This gives stores data-based intelligence while providing mall management teams with an additional tool for enhancing security. Our tool also allows shopping malls to monetize from the deployment of Wi-Fi, and importantly obtain intelligent foot count and other data for strategic planning and evidence-based decision-making.”
As an example, Adams says mall managers can measure the overall popularity of stores and see the length of time a shopper spends at a particular store. The data gathered from these measurements are valuable for establishing shopper behaviour and for informed decision-making and planning.
Adams’ DataConvergance team is developing the solution under the leadership of Professor Bruce Mellado from Wits University’s School of Physics. Mellado is also part of iThemba LABS at the National Research Foundation, and leads the Technology Innovation Platform in Artificial Intelligence, which is a collaboration between Wits and iThemba LABS.
The team, consisting of data scientists and AI specialists, includes Xifeng Ruan, Kentaro Hyashi, Finn Stevenson and Benjamin Lieberman.
In developing the tool from scratch, they had to learn how to harness the large amount of data available from Wi-Fi systems and solve challenges around Wi-Fi signals bouncing off walls, the distortion of positioning of people and the complexity of terrains. In adapting the tool for shopping mall application, Adams recalls the biggest challenge being the reluctance of mall managers to assist with the market and needs analysis.
“It has been a huge team effort. Being awarded the seed funding is a huge achievement for me as well as our team, a great reward for all the long hours spent. The knowledge gained through the Prospector@Wits course and the valuable guidance from my mentor, Dineo Masokoane, were critical contributions to the successful outcome of the project proposal.”
Commenting on the solution’s potential, Mellado says: “Given the small number of businesses contemplating or already adopting AI, there is a huge opportunity for this solution to be successful in the retail environment. If the solution is successfully implemented, DataConvergence could be a trailblazer in the deployment of AI in the retail sector.”
Ela Romanowska, Director of Innovation Support at WITS Enterprise says that this is another example of Wits University’s response to providing solutions to societal needs, and is a worthy winner of the Prospector@Wits end of course pitch session.
Dineo Masokoane, Innovation Support Manager at Wits Enterprise, says: “The solution will enhance data collection by exploiting and deriving greater benefits from the Wi-Fi availability in malls. This approach enlarges the scope of information available to management and planners to monetise their investment in Wi-Fi as well as optimise in-store strategy development.”
The next steps for Adams and his team are to refine the prototype for the retail environment and develop a pilot in a real retail environment before full- and large-scale deployment in shopping malls.
R50 million donation to advance innovation in South Africa
- Wits University
Alumnus Dr David Fine's generous donation will be used to establish the Angela and David Fine Chair in Innovation.
From making air travel safer to detecting chemicals that can cause cancer, from developing advanced technologies for finding buried landmines, the curiosity of Dr David Fine, a Wits University alumnus, has resulted in innovations that have impacted on society for over 45 years.
Now, the successful Boston-based innovator and entrepreneur is heeding the call from his alma mater to help establish an ecosystem to drive researcher-led innovation at Wits that will solve some of Africa’s greatest challenges, and advance the public good.
In celebrating its centenary this year, Wits has identified innovation as one of its major strategic thrusts and Fine’s generous donation of 3-million dollars (about R50 million) will be used to establish the Angela and David Fine Chair in Innovation.
“Innovators are problem solvers. They can think practically across multiple technical disciplines, and who use accessible and inexpensive methods and material to build products and services, that have real-life impact. South Africa needs a culture of innovation. My hope is that the Chair in Innovation will help place Wits at the leading edge of innovation in the Global South,” says Dr Fine, now retired. He remains passionate about inspiring a new generation of innovative problem solvers.
“We are very grateful to Dr Fine for walking this #Wits100 journey with us. His generous donation will go a long way towards propelling our research towards innovation, enabling scholars, researchers, students and those with curious minds to seek and create new knowledge, across disciplines and sectors. Dr Fine is leaving a legacy for future generations, and this Chair in Innovation will undoubtedly create an enabling environment for the flourishing of great ideas that will herald this continent into a new era of innovation, change, and growth,” says Professor Zeblon Vilakazi, Wits Vice-Chancellor and Principal.
Dr Fine graduated from Wits with an honours degree in chemistry in 1964. He later read for a PhD from Leeds University in the United Kingdom, before leaving for the US to run the Combustion Lab at MIT. He worked for 28 years at Thermo Electron (now Thermo Fisher) before establishing two companies of his own – CyTerra in 2000, and Vero-BioTech in 2006.
World-firsts
Dr Fine has dedicated his life to transitioning high technology chemistry-based instruments from concept and research through to production and commercialisation.
Amongst his many achievements is the development of the first airport sniffers that could detect traces of plastic explosive residue in passenger luggage. This was in response to the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, that killed 259 people. Thousands of these devices have since been deployed around the world, making air travel safer. A similar device is also used to detect narcotics.
In the field of analytical chemistry, Dr Fine developed a method to detect traces of nitrosamines in foods, body fluids and in factories. Chronic nitrosamine intake is associated with numerous cancer sites. A third important innovation is a handheld detector for finding buried landmines, using a combination of ground penetrating radar and metal detection.
Innovation. For Good.
In its first 100 years, Wits has on several occasions successfully risen to meet society’s needs to turn knowledge into impactful solutions. Wits was actively involved in pioneering the development of radar, the first in the country to own a mainframe computer, to access a quantum computer, to develop a digital innovation precinct, to house a Mirage jet for use in teaching and research, to discover and describe early pre-human fossils, to host a 5G lab, and to effectively transmit data through light.
More recently, in response to the Covid-19 pandemic, Wits’ clinicians, researchers, social scientists, engineers, data scientists, legal experts, ethicists and others have played an important role in responding to the pandemic both locally and globally.
“It is an exciting time to be at Wits. The Chair in Innovation is part of our broader innovation strategy that includes the establishment of the Wits Innovation Centre (WIC) which will support several important initiatives that are due to be announced in the coming months. The ideal candidate for Chair in Innovation will be an innovator with a strong academic interest and experience in commercialising research ideas,” says Professor Barry Dwolatzky, Director of Innovation Strategy at Wits, founder of the Wits Tshimologong Digital Innovation Precinct and Director of the Joburg Centre for Software Engineering (JCSE).
“Innovation thrives in diversity, so naturally because Wits is a rich, diverse community of researchers, academics, students and staff, we are able to cultivate multidisciplinary collaboration, a key component towards finding solutions to the major challenges confronting humanity and our planet.”
The Wits Centenary Campaign
Wits University has made a formidable impact on society over the past 100 years and is set to continue advancing society for good. It remains a beacon of hope for South Africa, and is well-poised to serve as a catalyst for change in the decades to come.
Wits celebrates 100 years of academic and research excellence, innovation, and social justice in 2022. It launched the Centenary Campaign, that aims to raise R3 billion to support, teaching, research and innovation, infrastructure development and students. A series of events is being planned which will culminate in a Homecoming Weekend from 2-4 September 2022, closer to Wits’ official birthday.
The 2022 ICT Skills Survey goes live
- Wits University
The impact of hybrid work models on IT skills in South Africa will be among the issues coming under the spotlight this year.
The survey assesses skills demand and supply from both a corporate and practitioner perspective, to identify the most pressing skills needs from the corporate perspective, balanced with the view of the current skills capacity of the practitioners and their intentions for future skills development.
This year, the survey will assess how the Covid-19 pandemic impacted skills availability, the effect the lockdown has had on workforces, and whether hybrid models have increased cross-border working in the IT sector.
It will also address employers’ IT skills needs and shortfalls, how they upskill staff, and the impact of the new Critical Skills List issued earlier this year.
In a questionnaire for individuals, the survey will include a look at how South African IT professionals plan to adapt to an evolving digital landscape, how they prefer to acquire new skills, and whether the hybrid work environment is prompting them to work remotely for employers based in other countries.
The two confidential questionnaires are now live and can be accessed viahttps://va.eduflex.com/jcse/loginwhere respondents can register and then login to select either or complete both of the surveys.
Wits physicist awarded 2022 Sang Soo Lee Award
- Wits University
Professor Andrew Forbes recognised for his outstanding leadership in founding and growing an optics and photonics community in Africa.
Forbes, Director of the Structured Light Laboratory which he established in 2015, is honoured for “advancing photonics in South Africa through strategic leadership in executing national photonics programmes, high-impact research and education, and mentorship of African researchers”.
Forbes’ leadership has transformed the advancement of photonics in Africa. A National Research Foundation A-rated scientist, he is a founding member of the Photonics Initiative of South Africa (PISA), which aims to accelerate and grow photonics research and impact in South Africa.
“It is a great honour to be recognised by these top international societies. Photonics in South Africa and Africa is still at a fledgling stage, but hopefully my small contributions have helped to creative an environment for the next generation to pick up the baton and flourish,” says Forbes.
He is an active participant in the African Laser Centre, organising and hosting numerous training events in South Africa and Africa, and strives to increase the visibility of South African research initiatives internationally, coordinating events and programmes with global organisations such as Optica (formerly OSA), advancing optics and photonics worldwide.
Forbes is also the initiator of South Africa’s Quantum Technology Initiative, coordinated by Wits to drive local quantum technology research and innovation. He also leads WitsQ, the University’s vision to strategically promote and advance Quantum Technology at Wits, with a focus on the research, innovation, business, education and outreach, and ethics of quantum technologies.
He serves on many international advisory panels, conference committees, and journals, and is presently the Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Optics.
His contributions to the field have been recognised through several national awards, as well as the Georg Forster Prize from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, and the South African Institute of Physics Gold Medal, the highest award for physics in South Africa, and in 2021 he won the Vice-Chancelllor’s Research Award. He is a Fellow of Optica, the South African Institute of Physics, and SPIE, and an elected member of the Academy of Science of South Africa.
About the Sang Soo Lee Award
Established in 2013, the Sang Soo Lee Award recognises outstanding leadership in founding or growing an optics and photonics community in a specific population, anywhere in the world.
It honors Professor Sang Soo Lee for his pioneering role in establishing optics in the Republic of Korea. The award is jointly presented in even years by Optica and Optical Society of Korea (OSK), and is endowed by Optica, OSK, and the family of Sang Soo Lee.
About Optica
Optica (formerly OSA), Advancing Optics and Photonics Worldwide, is the society dedicated to promoting the generation, application, archiving and dissemination of knowledge in the field. Founded in 1916, it is the leading organization for scientists, engineers, business professionals, students and others interested in the science of light. Optica’s renowned publications, meetings, online resources and in-person activities fuel discoveries, shape real-life applications and accelerate scientific, technical and educational achievement.
About the Optical Society of Korea
Founded in 1989, the Optical Society of Korea (OSK) is the leading academic society in the field of optics and photonics in Korea. OSK provides academic activities including domestic and international optics conferences, tutorials, seminars, workshops, and publishing services including journals, technical digests, monographs, and technical bulletins.
The Zuck stops here
- Glenda Daniels
It’s time to take on the tech giants to sustain media and journalism - you can use competition laws against the likes of Facebook.
This year, South African media houses, publishers and journalism bodies (hopefully civil society organisations in the media space and the government) will tackle the multinational tech giants that use content, and move readership to their sites, with no compensation to the authors or to local media.
Google, Facebook and Twitter take their sweet time to remove online hate, it seems, just to “gain traction”. The uglier, the more clicks – which plays into the dreadful numbers game. All in all, the biggest money spinners in the world (pandemic or no pandemic) have been the FANGs (Facebook, Amazon, Netflix and Google). And after two horrendous years for the media, 2022 is likely to offer respite if advocacy efforts aimed at engendering fair competition bear fruit.
The past year was dominated by the pandemic and combating misinformation, while the industry continued to suffer big job losses because of the digital economy, loss of advertising revenue and economic downturns in media companies, all exacerbated by the Covid-19 pandemic.
Besides these structural difficulties, some nasty blows for journalism and media include Independent Newspapers’ horrible embarrassment following its fake decuplets story, which got worse when its owner, Iqbal Survé, linked the nonexistence of the 10 babies to child trafficking.
Then, in December 2021, there was political interference at the SABC after recent dry runs during the Ramaphosa era. Quite bizarrely, the ANC recently blamed the SABC for contributing to its local government election losses.
But back to the global picture. You can’t take sledgehammers to the ants, but you can use competition laws to stop the drain of local revenue to big techs laughing all the way to the bank. In a similar move to Australia, where the media were successful, the Publisher Support Services (PSS) in South Africa, supported by the South African National Editors’ Forum (Sanef), is hauling Facebook and Google to the Competition Commission.
Presently, the action is being taken by Media24, Arena Holdings, Caxton, Independent Media and Mail & Guardian Media, but other media companies may come on board.
The chairperson of the PSS, M&G CEO Hoosain Karjieker, articulated the reason for the impending action:
“Globally, platforms like Google and Meta have been using publishers’ content at no cost to grow their market dominance. The objective was to get the giant multinationals to compensate South Africa media fairly and equitably for its journalistic efforts. Hence, we are making submissions on their behaviour in the local market to the Competition Commission’s market inquiry into online platforms in South Africa.”
Contributing to the pressure is Sanef’s latest research on the matter, titled “Fostering fair competition in the digital economy”, which was outsourced to ALT Advisory, a public-interest advisory and research firm. The aim was to lead research that assessed the feasibility of possible competition reform in South Africa, aimed at advancing the sustainability and independence of journalism and a fair relationship between news media and tech platforms in the digital economy. The results of this research should be released soon.
The issue of regulation is a tricky one. There has to be a balance between freedom of expression but without hate speech and cyber misogyny. This has to be tackled from a local contextual perspective.
But there is also a global overlap because other countries face the same issue. You need government support, but you cannot have states banging the internet and digital companies with a sledgehammer. There’s also a need for consciousness-raising about online hatred, trolling and emotional violence. For example, researchers worked on the online bullying of women journalists and asked the government what they were doing about it.
The government said women journalists should report it to the police. Women journalists said they do, but police were bemused: “But what is online violence?”
It’s really up to the media, with civil society, to take the lead on this. In South Africa, we are fortunate to have more than 20 media organisations, NPOs, NGOs, community-based organisations, academic associations and advocacy groups in the media space. All have different but overlapping interests.
Besides the PSS, they include Sanef, Gender Links, the Institute for the Advancement of Journalism, the Press Council South Africa, the Media Development and Diversity Agency, Freedom of Expression Institute, Save our SABC, Media Monitoring Africa, Media Institute of Southern Africa, the Association of Independent Publishers, the Broadcasting Complaints Commission of South Africa, National Press Club, Right2Know andamaBhungane.
In 2018 and 2019, countries started to think about the regulation and taxation of Facebook and Google. Internationally, many governments and NGOs, especially in the UK, US, Canada and Australia, have instituted commissions to investigate the impact of big techs on local news media. These inquiries are reaching similar conclusions: a new tax reform regime is necessary for tech giants Google and Facebook, who are now gobbling up journalism.
As countries look to each other, it’s now South Africa’s turn to tackle the tech giants. For example, Germany executes millions of euros in fines if hate speech is not taken down within 24 hours. Through this, countries can concentrate on the original mission of journalism: public service and public interest, to inform with facts, educate, comment and analyse – while making journalism sustainable.
Alliances with the government (for policy implementation and back-up), civil society and media houses can create huge pressure to tackle some FANGs and get the fair tax required to sustain local journalism.
Old profit models are dead. We need to start thinking about journalism as a public, not-for-profit good. It’s urgent to stop the money flow to those tech giants who are not paying taxes in their own countries or in ours.
Glenda Daniels, an associate professor of media studies at Wits University, sits on the executive of Sacomm, the Press Council and Sanef. This article was first published in Daily Maverick.
Hat-trick of research accomplishments for Wits digital technologist
- Wits University
A researcher and lecturer in the Wits School of Education has begun 2022 with three high-profile achievements.
Dr Boitumelo Innocent Ramatsetse not only received a National Science and Technology Forum (NSTF) award in September 2021, but was then awarded a Y-rating by the National Research Foundation (NRF), followed by an appointment by President Ramaphosa to the National Planning Commission in December 2021.
He won the TW Kambule-NSTF Award: Emerging Researcher for designing and developing an innovative beneficiation solution called a Reconfigurable Vibrating Screen (RVS). The RSV separates mineral particles according to size and volume, as required by the mining and mineral processing industries.
“It gives me great pleasure to be recognised as the NSTF-South32 TW Kambule Emerging Researcher for the years 2020/21. I am grateful to everyone who has assisted me along the way in my research career. This accomplishment will serve as a source of inspiration for the rest of my life and will assist me in achieving future success,” said Ramasetse, who was also named the winner in the Education category of the M&G 200 Young South Africans in 2021.
Then, in a government gazette notice on 1 December 2021, Ramasetse was one of 28 new members appointed to serve on the National Planning Commission for five years. The team, comprising doctors, professors and innovators in technology, politics and finance, will advise the government and provide recommendations in the interest of the long-term development of the country over the next five years.
Just before Christmas, on 17 December, the NRF advised that Ramasetse had been awarded a Y-rating, effective January 2022. NRF Y-rated researchers are young researchers (40 years old or younger), who have held the doctorate or equivalent qualification for less than five years at the time of application, and who are recognised as having the potential to establish themselves as researchers within a five-year period after evaluation, based on their performance and productivity as researchers during their doctoral studies and/or early postdoctoral careers.
Wits in multi-country high-tech mineral exploration partnership
- Wits University
Team of experts help search for metals and minerals needed to meet the tech demands of an evolving world.
The discovery of new metal and mineral resources is necessary to supply raw materials for emerging technologies.
These technologies are required to meet the expectations of billions of people and the demand for higher living standards.
The geological conditions of Africa and Europe suggest that these critical metals and minerals maybe found in these regions, but their discovery will require non-destructive, high-resolution and deep exploration techniques.
To this end, a consortium of South African Partners – Wits University, Gold Fields Ltd, University of Venda, and counterparts in Europe including Uppsala University (Sweden), Polito University (Italy), Sercel (France), Geological Survey of Sweden (Sweden), and Nordic Iron Ore AB (Sweden) will leverage their expertise to develop new seismic, electromagnetic and magnetic methods for deep exploration targeting. These methodologies boast unprecedented penetration, sensitivity, and resolution.
The project, titled FUTURE: Fiber-optic sensing and UAV-platform techniques for innovative mineral exploration commences in April 2022 and will span approximately two years.
It is anticipated that the FUTURE project will advance high-resolution imaging and modelling of the host rock and any mineralisation between tunnels and the surface, and in the down-dip direction.
The project has a total budget of R21-million and will be funded by the Department of Science and Innovation (DSI – South Africa), Vinnova (Sweden), Ministry of Universities and Research (Italy), and National Agency for Research (France) via ERA-NET Confund on Raw Materials (ERA-MIN).
Project leader and director of the Wits Seismic Research Centre Professor Musa Manzi says the FUTURE project seeks to develop innovative, environmentally friendly and cost-effective technologies for deep exploration, primarily in the challenging mine environment.
Professor Alireza Malehmir from Uppsala University says the planned work will employ fiber-optic sensing technologies and UAV-based magnetic and electromagnetic surveys for high-definition target generations and subsurface imaging.
The project team includes researchers from universities, geological survey, equipment manufacturers, and mining companies on two continents and will support the exchange of knowledge and experiences across zones.
Exploration sites
Blötberget in the Ludvika Mines in Sweden is one of the two target sites given the wealth of information available from earlier studies. The mine is known for its iron-oxide deposits – a combination of minerals from which metallic iron can be extracted for various uses. There is a high demand for iron-ore products from maturing economies including Europe, Japan, China, Africa, and now increasingly in the Middle East and India. Higher Iron ore grades are required in improving auto markets, construction, and other demanding types of specialised infrastructure. Technology is increasingly demanding sophisticated forms of steel.
The second site is South Deep Mine which falls under Gold Fields in South Africa, where mining at depth requires improved understanding of potential resources at depth and their host rock structures. South Deep mine is one of the deepest (> 2.5 km mining depths) and largest gold-producing mines in the world. Given the deep nature of the mining operation and the prevailing rock stress fields, the mine is geological complex and subjected to comparatively high levels of mining-induced earthquakes. The site is ideal because the project may improve the life of the mine by mapping the mineralisation between the surface and tunnels, as well as protect miners working underground by mapping zones of weaknesses that are important for mine planning and safety.
“We envisage that innovative technologies that will be used at South Deep would make a good case study on how one can maximize the value of the mining infrastructure – such as tunnels and boreholes –using geophysics for mineral exploration, especially at deep mines in South Africa, and future deep mines in Europe,” says Manzi.
As human endeavours and discoveries soar, gold will continue to be valued for its uses in electronics and computers, phones, medicine, aerospace, etc.
Several field surveys are planned as well as new prototypes and solutions to make these types of surveys cost-effective in hard rock settings. The project will also involve a major training and educational component to capacitate masters and PhD students.
Tackling how data from your Health App is used
- Wits University
New research project will explore ways to protect the personal health data of African app users.
Pamela Andanda, Professor in the School of Law and an expert in law and bioethics, is part of an international research team that will examine how to better regulate the collection and migration of health data of people in the global South in order to protect privacy and prevent exploitation of their personal information.
Digital health apps are increasingly popular in sub-Saharan Africa as a means of delivering health services. But a pilot project by the research team found that most of these health apps are owned and operated by foreign companies, and that health data out-migration from these apps is inadequately regulated.
Annually, health data from over 40 million Africans is harvested by digital companies based in the global north, something which has been described as “digital colonialism.”
“Digital colonialism leads to structural inequalities and lack of oversight over the use of the collected data thus leaving less room for data subjects and contributors to determine how data can be used for their benefits,” says Andanda.
Through the research project titled There is no app for this! Regulating the migration of health apps in Sub-Saharan Africa, the team will tackle these pertinent issues.
The project is led by Professor Sharifah Sekalala of Warwick Law School, and consists of Professor Bitange Ndemo (University of Nairobi, Kenya) and Wits University’s Andanda. It has been been awarded €1.4 million (approx.. R24 million) under the Mobility – Global Medicine and Health Research programme, funded by the La Caixa Foundation (Spain), the Novo Nordisk Foundation (Denmark), the Volkswagen Foundation (Germany) and Wellcome (UK).
Focusing on Kenya, Uganda and South Africa, the project brings together a consortium of scholars and activists to examine how to construct regulatory solutions to the problem of health data migration in Africa.
The research will address three questions:
How can the conceptual framework of digital health colonialism help us to understand and resist structural inequities of data migration?
How can we co-create the design of apps to better address issues of privacy and data misuse, given the rapid rate of technological development?
How can we update regulatory frameworks at the Pan-African level?
An important aspect of the work is the commitment to working with civil society organisations, app developers and traditional and non-traditional regulators. Together, the team will devise legal mechanisms to protect the health data of people in the global South by co-creating guidelines for data regulation, and testing their feasibility with app developers and other relevant stakeholders.
Professor Sekalala says: “The migration of people has long been a key policy issue for global health, but the global health stakes are also high for the migration of health data. The use of mobile health apps offers huge advantages for health in Africa, where health infrastructure and resources are often limited. However, the emergence and popular uptake of health apps also raise troubling questions: Where does data go? Who has access to it? And who profits from Africans’ health data, particularly once it leaves Africa?”
Professor Andanda who will lead the section which seeks to conceptualise legal and ethical issues that should be resolved to create core minimum standards for regulating the migration of health data in Sub-Saharan Africa says: “The co-creative approach, which we use in this project will go a long way in ensuring that the passive collection of personal data, through health apps, and data migration are properly regulated to respect human dignity.”
Professor Ndemo says: “The funding from Wellcome comes at the right time when there is a growing list of health hubs in Africa especially those that are building health wallets that will have a long-term effect on the people of Africa. The need to interrogate emerging concepts from the health apps is urgent now.”
Dr Peter Kilroy at Wellcome adds: “The rapid rate of technological development in recent years has had profound implications on the global collection and storage of health data. Working with stakeholders across sub-Saharan Africa, this innovative project will be critical in transforming our understanding of the global inequities associated with health data migration, helping to inform regulatory frameworks and promote equitable approaches.”
NOTES
“There is no app for this! Regulating the migration of health apps in Sub-Saharan Africa” (Grant ref: 0062255) is one of seven global health research projects awarded funding under the
Mobility-Global Medicine and Health Research call.
The call focuses on the opportunities, risks and possible solutions to the impact of increasing mobility on global health. It is co-ordinated jointly by the La Caixa Foundation (Spain), Novo Nordisk Fonden (Denmark), Wellcome (UK) and the Volkswagen Foundation (Germany). After funding 15 pilot studies, these foundations have now selected seven international and interdisciplinary projects to be recipients of 10.3 million euros in funding.
Tracking symptoms of respiratory diseases online can give a picture of community health
- Mvuyo Makhasi, Cheryl Cohen and Sibongile Walaza
This is not an alternative to traditional disease surveillance, but a complementary tool.
Respiratory diseases are highly infectious and cause a significant health burden. Disease surveillance is the bedrock of public health responses to outbreaks or epidemics caused by these diseases. Effective surveillance gives an indication of the scale of the problem. But traditional disease surveillance is mostly limited to health facilities or surveillance sites, where doctors and nurses identify cases and report to national authorities. Here, a team from South Africa’s National Institute for Communicable Diseases talks about another useful tool: community-based surveillance.
How does community-based surveillance of respiratory diseases work?
A commonly used form of respiratory disease surveillance works through a network of healthcare facilities that have a specific geographic catchment zone. In these zones, patients come to the clinic or hospital with symptoms that meet the criteria for a suspected case. Specimens and clinical data from the patient are then collected and sent to the laboratory for testing and epidemiological analysis. A disadvantage of this is that it relies on people coming to healthcare facilities.
It’s also possible to collect data directly from patients. People can report their symptoms online without having to go to a health facility. A weekly online survey of symptoms can give the public health community access to real-time data on suspected cases of acute respiratory tract infection.
Reporting via online platforms has worked successfully in Europe, Australia, the United States and Mexico to detect increases and variations over time of respiratory illnesses.
This is not an alternative to traditional disease surveillance, but a complementary tool.
Has it been done in Africa and if so, what were the outcomes?
Participatory surveillance has not yet been implemented in African countries. There has only ever been one pilot study, in Tanzania. In 2016, a pilot study of a mobile app called AfyaData was implemented for participatory surveillance in Tanzania. The aim was to establish a platform where members of the community could report any symptoms they encountered. Based on the clinical data provided these would be grouped into categories of diseases. In the pilot study most of the reported cases were related to the digestive system. The second most frequently reported cases were related to the respiratory system. This demonstrated the potential of obtaining close to real-time data on diseases directly from the community.
The National Institute for Communicable Diseases will embark on a pilot study in March 2022. The aim is to explore whether a participatory surveillance system for respiratory diseases could work in South Africa and complement long-term surveillance.
We’ll be following a standardised approach taken by countries that form part of InfluenzaNet in Europe. This is similar to other platforms developed in Australia, Mexico and the US.
Ours will be different, though, in two ways. Participants in South Africa will not incur any mobile data costs for being in this study. And the pilot will include the option of obtaining laboratory confirmation of the cause of illness in a subset of individuals. Participants residing in specific areas where the facility is available, who report symptoms through the app, will be able to ask for a swab to be delivered to their homes and have a PCR test done at the lab for influenza, respiratory syncytial virus and COVID-19. The result will be sent to their phone.
What are the benefits of participatory surveillance?
Participatory surveillance is in place in 11 European countries that form part of the InfluenzaNet network. Here it’s been shown to address some of the limitations of traditional facility-based systems. For example, it can detect the start of the flu season up to two weeks earlier than traditional facility-based surveillance. This allows public health officials to plan and respond earlier to seasonal outbreaks.
Self-reporting systems provide similar and complementary data to facility-based surveillance. They show:
variations over time in cases of acute respiratory tract infection
time to peak of incidence of acute cases
the peak intensity of acute cases
a comparison between participatory and facility-based surveillance trends.
The same analysis can now be done for COVID-19 cases, which were previously not included in participatory surveillance platforms.
The systems enable analysis of health-seeking behaviour in people who don’t see a doctor or nurse. For example, people may use home-based remedies, search for guidelines on the internet or consult traditional healers. Health-seeking surveys are often conducted in research studies for a defined period of time, but data is not routinely collected. Participatory surveillance is a longitudinal and systematic way of collecting information about health-seeking behaviour related to respiratory diseases.
Vaccine effectiveness estimates can also be determined through participatory surveillance data. This includes vaccine coverage for seasonal influenza and COVID-19 and information on how these vaccines perform in preventing illness. These data can be compared with vaccine effectiveness estimates from facility-based surveillance.
What are the limitations?
There are a number of limitations with participatory surveillance.
First, the success of the system requires active and sustained participation from the community. This often wanes over time. Sometimes the active participants do not report symptoms consistently on a weekly basis. This may affect trends that are identified and the accurate reporting of cases.
Second, participatory surveillance systems do not uniformly represent the entire population. Often children below the age of 18 are excluded. Studies have also shown there is an under-representation of people over 60 years. The strength of such systems, however, is that they complement traditional facility-based surveillance. They provide data from age groups that are often under-represented in traditional surveillance.
Third, in low-to-middle-income countries, limitations in information and communications technology infrastructure, and access to mobile data, may affect participation.
Finally, data from participatory surveillance systems usually lack the laboratory confirmation of cases. This is important to confirm the respiratory pathogens that are circulating. This is one of the reasons participatory surveillance systems cannot replace the value of traditional facility-based surveillance that provides laboratory confirmations of cases.
WECAP aims to strengthen the entrepreneurship and innovation ecosystem and improve student employability outcomes in South Africa.
The Total Entrepreneurial Activity score in South Africa is approximately 11%, while unemployment amongst South African youth grows at an alarming rate of 63%. This is due to the little support for entrepreneurship as a career trajectory historically at the university level despite its significant establishment.
Due to the increasingly poor economic outlook, youth employment will not improve immediately. This, together with burgeoning poverty levels, suggests that employment alternatives need to be explored. Young entrepreneurs are one of the country's best hopes of solving the jobs crisis, which the Covid-19 pandemic has worsened in an environment of weakened economic growth.
WECAP will give a clinic programme focused on experiential learning and evidence-based management, together with a structured mentorship programme, to develop students’ business acumen and improve their overall employability through exposure to and solving of business problems confronting students, staff, and external entrepreneurs.
WECAP also intends to provide professional and quality business advisory services to the university and its surrounding communities to accelerate viable entrepreneurial opportunities. At the same time, data and research-centric entrepreneurial methodologies such as lean-start-up, evidence-based management, and design thinking will be adopted to accelerate businesses.
The work of the WECAP partnership will be submitted to form learnings that will contribute to formulating a policy framework for universities under South Africa's Department of Higher Education and Training.
About the Innovation for African Universities Programme (IAU)
The Programme comprises 24 UK universities, Sub-Saharan African universities, and entrepreneurial ecosystem organizations. The Programme is running in Kenya, Nigeria, Ghana & South Africa.
We wish this project well as we unite to grow and innovate Africa for youth employment opportunities. We're looking forward to working in partnership with WECAP to exchange knowledge and ideas to strengthen the role of universities in entrepreneurship ecosystems – British Council
Gender-based violence and femicide is a pandemic more insidious and endemic than a virus – how technology can help combat and prevent it.
President Cyril Ramaphosa described gender-based violence and femicide (GBVF) as the “second major pandemic we face in South Africa today”, and with good reason. SA has one of the highest incidences of femicide and rape in the world, and the lockdowns only made things worse – more than 120 000 victims were reported in the first three weeks of the first lockdown in 2020.
According to Stats SA, almost 50% of assaults are committed by a friend, partner, relative or household member, and one in five partnered women have experienced physical violence. This finding led the President to launch the GBVF Response Fund (GBVF-RF) early in 2021. For Wits University Chancellor, Dr Judy Dlamini, who also chairs the GBVF-RF, the starting point for addressing this problem lies in understanding how big it is and how impactful this crisis is, which is why she has engaged in a project to mobilise big data and artificial intelligence (AI) against GBVF.
Impartial intelligence
“We have a serious national crisis that predates Covid-19 and we need to find ways of combatting GBV with the sole aim of eradicating it,” she says. “To ensure that there are the right policies in place to address this problem, and to allocate responses in the right places at the right time, you need accurate data, accurate data analysis, and AI without bias.”
One of the challenges facing the project from the outset was the need to create an AI platform and data analysis toolkit that was free from the inherent biases found in AI. There are numerous examples of how AI platforms – Microsoft, Amazon – have favoured the white male, and this is a bias that cannot be allowed when it comes to overcoming the complexities of GBVF.
“The starting point is to get the correct data which requires conducting participatory research in affected communities, as this data can be effectively analysed to find the right solutions,” says Dlamini.
“The goal is to develop an intersectional lens that can look at those social identities that tend to be ignored and the different contexts for different communities, so that any solution developed will truly address the issues.”
Dlamini says that the challenge is to work out the representivity in teams of developers, what data is being used and how the algorithm is developed. Only 22% of professionals in AI are women, and they usually hold low-level roles. Women are 20% less likely to own a smartphone or have access to the internet, according to the Global Gender Gap Report, 2018. “So, when using AI to address social ills, we first have to address inherent bias.”
GenderXSecure is a parody site for gender safety insurance. This parody site speculates on the existence of a subscription service that offers one less exposure to GBV by endowing the member with privileges that would make them less vulnerable. They review the options for the different packages one could take out and lastly, they do a risk assessment calculator to help them find their best cover. The questions asked by the website are supported by screenshots of GBV stats."
Subverting patriarchy
For Dlamini, the patriarchal system is so entrenched in all communities for various reasons that it will take deliberate and consistent effort and support across the board to defeat GBVF and gender inequality in general, in this lifetime. With the right data and analysis, she believes that it is possible to predict and prevent GBVF, and that the right data can influence policy, the appropriate interventions and resource allocation.
“We can use the data to see what it’s telling us about a specific community and how many intervention areas and types of intervention are required, such as at police stations and other support services,” she says.
“We can use the data to look at the causes underlying GBVF and how we can address those, and find ways of creating social cohesion and better conversations around gender equality and different sexual orientations. If we get it right, it can inform so many aspects that can change the paradigm of how women are viewed and how we can change this toxic system that doesn’t serve anyone.”
It’s early stages for this initiative and collaboration across sectors, academic disciplines, civil society and government holds the key to finding a sustainable solution.
Mapping gender safety on the ground
Another project that focuses on the GBVF conversation, but on a more granular level, is the Digital SUPERPOWER! Lab in collaboration with Fak’ugesi Labs. Creative technologist Ling Tan from Umbrellium, and Dr Tegan Bristow, Principal Researcher for the Fak’ugesi Festival and Senior Lecturer at Wits, are developing an app specifically targeted at womxn and the LGBTQIA+ communities in Bulawayo, Johannesburg and London.
“This is a citizen-led data project on a small scale, led by a community,” explains Bristow. “The point is to understand how different rights organisations and people interested in gender safety in these three cities can use a piece of technology on a mobile phone to answer specific questions around gender safety. Ultimately, it’s about putting a tool into the hands of communities and citizens that allows them to geospatially map issues around gender safety in their communities.”
The tool asks the questions that governments may not be answering by logging where and how people are experiencing problems. While the app is still in the prototype phase, it is built to work around very specific questions. Bristow and Tan are working with a group of femme-identifying individuals, including those who are transgender.
People in each group across the three cities use the app by screen tapping to share insights, while concealing the app in their pockets so as not to put the person at further risk of attack or theft. They share their impressions of security within specific areas across the metrics of ‘very good’ to ‘very bad’. They can stop at a place and take a photo and write a note, enter their answer on a scale of one to five, or tap on their phone – one tap indicates ‘not feeling safe’ while five taps is a healing location. The information is logged according to location and situation.
“The insights offer an overview of how people are managing safety and advocates for improvements around gender safety,” says Bristow. “The app considers a lot of data and takes the nuanced detail into account that can help organisations by providing insights that can make tangible change for GBV.”
Read more in the 13th issue, themed: #Gender. We feature research across disciplines that relates to gender, feminism, masculinity, sex, sexual identity and sexual health.
Monstrous males/femme fatales
- Leanne Rencken
Gender portrayals in animated films have come a long way, which is important, as animation can be a tool for positive social change.
Her favourite response to the question, and the most surprising she received from this year’s cohort, was randomly, Ed, Edd n Eddy, because, as the student who nominated the cartoon series elaborated, “it showed the hustle, like how important it is to make money, how to adapt, and how to become an entrepreneur”.
This was an option and an interpretation that Wittstock hadn’t yet considered, but which goes to show, whether it is an emotional, cultural or educational connection, animation as a medium is certainly effective, and way more than the sum of its intricately illustrated parts.
“Every student could come up with an animation that profoundly impacted on the way they perceive the world,” she says. “It is something that pop culture does. It is so all-encompassing that we get influenced by it daily, and it stays with us for the rest of our lives.”
Pop invasion
With the proliferation of viewing devices and streaming platforms, it is easy for both adults and children to be bombarded by ‘invasive’ pop culture messaging that dictates gender stereotypes as the norm. We don’t question these messages enough – especially when it comes to animation, as this is likely the first medium with which children typically engage.
“We’re passive consumers, and we don’t really think about the meaning and ideology behind the films that young children are watching. I would love for them to see shows that promote inclusivity and equality within genders, rather than shows that promote othering and exclusivity,” adds Wittstock.
Wittstock focuses much of her academic energy on animation. It is the reason why she recently published a chapter in the book Gender, Supernatural Beings, and the Liminality of Death: Monstrous Males/Fatal Females.
The chapter she submitted is titled The Animated Dead: Reimagining the Beautiful Corpse in Tim Burton’s Corpse Bride, and is based on a portion of her Master’s thesis, as well as some of the material that she has developed with her colleagues in the Department.
She is obviously delighted to have her work featured in this international collection of essays, and experienced the writing process as a cathartic distraction from Covid-19. “I feel like I achieved something in a really difficult time,” she explains. “Something that I thought was worthy and needed to be discussed.”
Gender evolution
When it comes to gender and the portrayal of the female in animated film, Wittstock has much to say. She believes that within a Westernised context, representations of gender have come far since the early years of animation, particularly when it comes to heteronormative ideas of gender.
“Each wave of feminism has brought with it a great change in society, and these shifts in gender ideologies have bled into popular culture, and subsequently animated film,” she explains.
“If we look at the evolution of Disney’s princesses you can see a massive shift in gender representation. The pathetic and feeble portrayal of Snow White in Disney’s first feature length animation Snow White and the Seven Dwarves has been radically overthrown in their more recent animated offerings, and can be seen explicitly through protagonists, Anna and Elsa (Frozen), Moana (Moana) and Raya (Ray and the Last Dragon).”
Pixar has had a similar journey of growth, although that studio is providing new guidance on masculinity and manhood within a post-feminist world.
“I think fondly here of the 2001 film Monsters, Inc.,” says Wittstock. “Sully the Monster is represented as a paternal figure whose masculine presence is loving, kind, emotional and protective.”
Wittstock cautions that there is still much to be reimagined and envisioned regarding gender.
“Although there have been great leaps in representation, I believe that as we continue to develop and practise our ideas surrounding gender identity, we will begin to see even more changes in our films. Gender binaries are being questioned, and I hope that the future of animation allows spaces for positive queer identities, and for feminine identities to be redefined in spaces that have previously been destructive or exclusionary.”
In her contribution to the book, Wittstock shows how animation enables these ventures into new feminine figures within the horror genre.
“Emily from Tim Burton’s Corpse Bride is not simply a site of the monstrous, nor is she fully released from the objectification of the beautiful corpse. She is a subtle rendering of both, subconsciously navigating and commenting on previous feminine horror tropes. As a result, Burton refreshingly offers a powerful, alternate female horror figure, whose agency lies within ambiguity, subversion and humour of the macabre.”
But does Burton’s ‘refreshing’ nuanced take on Emily’s character make him a feminist ally?
“Yes and no. Women in horror are still incredibly objectified and undervalued, but through my argument I show how an animated character could potentially break through these problematic genre codes and conventions in a way that is unseen in other genres or film formats. I wanted my research to show the power of animation as a tool for positive social change that is often ignored or patronised due to it mistakenly being labelled as childish or naive. For me, Emily is a truly unique character and this marks a moment of change within the horror genre.”
Wittstock’s passion for her research extends to how we discuss gender in SA – a country with one of the highest femicide rates in the world.
“We need to constantly reflect on how we are navigating gender and the ideologies that we are circulating. It is represented in different spaces, in different ways, at different times - we need to question gender everywhere. Our students don't have to agree with us, or what we’re saying, but they need to be able to back up their beliefs. They need to be able to provide evidence, they need to have opinions and a voice that is both reasonable and reasoned.”
Read more in the 13th issue, themed: #Gender. We feature research across disciplines that relates to gender, feminism, masculinity, sex, sexual identity and sexual health.
‘Digital activism is the future’ – Commonwealth scholar
- Wits University
Albert Sharra, recipient of the Commonwealth Split-site scholarship, focuses on digital political activism and people power.
Social media has been praised for its ability to connect people and for mobilising action for change in communities, business and politics amongst other spaces. The 2010 Arab spring, #FeesMustFall, and #BlackLivesMatter were amplified by social media. Every day, digital tools help to set the agenda as individuals use these to call attention to what matters to them.
However, digital activism has been criticised for its lack of permanence in creating meaningful change beyond rage. There are a proliferation of topics, but these die without offline action.
Wits researcher in digital activism, Albert Sharra, holds a different view.
“Yes, digital political activism has the potential to lead to meaningful and even sustainable change. For the past two decades, people have tried to dismiss online activism, calling it ‘clicktivism’ in which people just tweet or share posts without a purpose. However, evidence shows the opposite. People are taking online activism seriously and we can see how activists such as Evan Mawarire in Zimbabwe are challenging established institutions such as government with online protests.”
Sharra, a multi-award winning journalist from Malawi and a PhD candidate in the Department of Political Studies at Wits cites how African governments have taken surveillance to online platforms to silence dissent against government.
“So you have people who attack others on social media platforms and are sent by government officials. Other attacks are happening in real life as a result of online discussions. This means online activism has become more relevant. So, we have to take it: digital activism is the future.”
African people power from Edinburgh
Sharra has been awarded the 2021-2022 Commonwealth Split-site scholarship at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland. Here he will spend a year at the Centre of African Studies (CAS) advancing his PhD studies in digital activism and people power in the Global South. The scholarship cements the partnership between Wits University and Edinburgh.
The Centre is a perfect place to be, says the three time-winner (2017, 2018, 2019) of the annual MISA-Malawi Media Overall Journalist of the Year Award.
“The University of Edinburgh is ranked amongst the top 10 in the UK and 30 globally. Apart from playing host to globally recognised experts in African Studies, CAS is a multi-disciplinary Centre crossing all the university’s faculties conducting research on African issues, with a particular strength on African social media studies. This is the brain bank that I am targeting to help me sharpen my arguments. At the Centre, I will be presenting my work and receiving feedback, which I think will strengthen my theoretical arguments because my research work is more conceptual and adopts theories from different fields of study such as psychology, anthropology, and politics,” says Sharra.
Sharra, who speaks highly of his Wits supervisor Professor Joel Quirk and colleagues, says that he has built a solid foundation for his studies and is confident as he embarks on his studies abroad.
“I am so thrilled with how Wits has uplifted me and made me a competitive candidate globally. Moreover, I am really proud of myself that I am not going to an ordinary university.”
He further hopes that his stay at the UoE will help refine the process of converting his PhD work into a book, building on his growing list of academic publications. His debut book chapter, co-authored with Dr Trust Matsilele and edited by Professor Shepherd Mpofu, was published in November 2021. Several of Sharra’s academic papers appear in the African Journalism Studies journal.
“The topic is very important because digital technology is here to stay, and the future of activism is in digital media. My study explores several emerging issues in digital activism and the findings show that even the governments are not sleeping trying to find mechanisms to regulate online activism, and we cannot sit down and watch. Most importantly, my study exposes the different tactics that activists are adopting to challenge their governments. This also shows how online activism is changing the way citizens interact with their governments. I would say some governments are slowly learning to listen to citizens’ voices posted online, which is very good,” says Sharra.
Sharra joined Wits in 2017 for his master’s degree and started his PhD in 2019 after a 10-year career as a journalist at Nation Publications Limited in Malawi, where he held various positions. He began as a general journalist in 2009 covering sports and other beats. With time he moved to the current affairs desk and by the time he left Malawi in 2019, he had worked as an investigative journalist for Solutions Journalism and acting editor for three desks focusing on features, arts and entertainment and current affairs.
Journalism and teaching are his passions. Since 2019, Sharra has been teaching two courses – Comparative Politics and Conflict, and Stability and State Building in Postcolonial Africa – at Wits. In 2021, he was awarded the PhD Teaching Assistant fellowship, which saw him undergoing an eight-month Wits professional teaching training programme. In 2022 and 2023, he will be pursuing a Postgraduate Diploma in Higher Education in the Wits School of Education.
“Journalism is on the edge and we can only save its future by producing well-qualified journalists who can do a better job. Teaching is the key recipe for professional journalism, and I want to contribute to this through teaching and providing refresher courses for journalists in Africa,” he says.
At UoE, Sharra will be hosted by Dr George Karekwaivanane, a lecturer and expert in African Studies.
Future Ecosystems for Africa programme launched at Wits
- Wits University
Programme aims to identify African ecosystem vulnerabilities while leveraging African-informed transformative change opportunities.
The Oppenheimer Generations Research and Conservation in partnership with the University of Witwatersrand and the University of Exeter launched the Future Ecosystems for Africa programme at the Origins Centre museum at Wits University in Braamfontein.
The Future Ecosystems for Africa programme is an African-wide initiative that aims to identify African ecosystem vulnerabilities and tipping points while leveraging African-informed transformative change opportunities. It supports research to address conservation and development issues across the continent, identifying that Africa has a unique, but temporary opportunity to guide development onto nature-supporting, rather than nature-eroding paths.
The programme was made possible through a donation from Oppenheimer Generations Research and Conservation as part of the Wits Centenary campaign, in which the University celebrates 100 years of research excellence. Wits’ Centenary is an opportunity for the global community to celebrate the impact that Wits has had on their lives, and a chance to reflect and to look to the future.
As part of its Centenary campaign, Wits aims to raise R3 billion in order to give more of South Africa’s talented youth access to quality education at Wits, and attract top teaching and research talent, we can do even more to tackle inequality, contribute to employment and drive sustainable development.
Global collaboration for local action
The overarching aim of the Future Ecosystem for Africa programme is prioritising ecosystem-based interventions in Africa, this includes what to protect and how, plus what to rehabilitate, and also identifying whose voices need to be included in this decision-making.
Through this programme, Wits University Professor Sally Archibald and Associate Professor Laura Pereira are working with project partners from across the continent and the globe to drive research that can feed into policy strategies that enhance the resilience of African ecosystems and the wellbeing of its people. This approach to developing resilient African Future Ecosystems will build on findings from the IPBES (Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform for Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services) regional assessment for Africa that emphasised Africa’s rich bio-cultural heritage and diverse value perspectives for nature needed to be brought more strongly to the fore in science and decision-making.
“This is an Africa-led, Africa-centred programme to influence thinking and action on the continent,” says Archibald.
The journey starts with progressive and thoughtful futures thinking to re-imagine Africa’s future with communities across the continent. Co-creating these futures requires drawing on data and knowledge from within Africa, and integrating ecological, social and economic information with the stories and belief systems of local peoples.
Project partner, Dr Duncan Kimuyu says that “This programme presents a much-anticipated opportunity to change the narrative about how African ecosystems are perceived and managed”.
Developing the next generation of African scientists and empowering them to have strong voices around African development pathways brings us a step closer to ensuring sustainable future ecosystems. This programme enables African scientists to mobilise and increase their impact, strengthens existing regional networks, and will support several ‘Oppenheimer Impact Scholars’.
According to Dr Duncan MacFadyen, Head of Research at Oppenheimer Generations Research and Conservation,“the development of the Future Ecosystems for Africa Programme is hugely exciting as it will undoubtedly create real impact and practical outcomes across the African continent. We hope to better understand the unique and complex relationships between man and the environment, as well as develop an understanding of self-healing rates within different landscapes across the continent,” says MacFadyen.
A model for impact
The programme is designed to ensure that activities ranging from data collection to visioning workshops all have maximum impact through active integration and feedback between core project activities. Outputs drive action at high levels through national policy and global negotiating platforms, and from the bottom-up through targeted interventions and innovative local projects.
Race and class fears amplified on Twitter when Covid-19 hit
- Job Mwaura and Ufuoma Akpojivi
Study of tweets in Kenya and South Africa shows online rage towards white communities and privileged classes can be read as fatigue with the postcolonial state.
It’s common in both Kenya and South Africa for there to be everyday conversations about inequalities in power relations and between “races”, classes and ethnic groups. Kenya, in East Africa, and South Africa, in southern Africa, share a history of British colonial divisions. In both countries, social movements and protest have sought to address these social injustices – like #FeesMustFall, #MenAreTrash, #SabaSabaMarchForOurLives, #OccupyParliamentKE.
Socio-economic and political divides were further exacerbated by the global COVID-19 pandemic and the responses of the Kenyan and South African governments. As countries went into lockdowns, citizens used social media platforms to voice their concerns.
During the first weeks of COVID-19 cases reported in Kenya and South Africa, there were hundreds of thousands of tweets posted by distressed citizens. Our study of these tweets was undertaken in order to see what kind of conversations were happening – and if they reinforced postcolonial social inequalities in the countries.
Over 129,541 tweets were collected from Kenya and 237,528 from South Africa between 5 March and 31 March 2020 using Twitter Archiving Google Sheet (TAGS). The tweets, from ordinary citizens, were then grouped into themes and the major themes were used to produce a research report.
Our study revealed several issues raised. These were divided into four themes: racialised politics, classism, privilege and panic buying, and ethnicity and ‘othering’ (or prejudice against certain groups). These themes, outlined below, echoed issues of discrimination that have characterised postcolonial states.
In short, we found that the first recorded cases of COVID-19 in South Africa and Kenya in March 2020 spawned a maelstrom of tweets reflecting fears and anxieties about the virus, as well as other deeply rooted prejudices. The rage towards white communities and the powerful and privileged class can be read as fatigue with the existing postcolonial issues.
Racialised politics
Power and the racialised politics of the pandemic dominated the Twitter conversations in both countries. At the beginning of 2020, media reports had indicated that black communities in the US were hardest hit by the pandemic due to continued institutionalised discrimination.
The first cases of COVID were reported on 5 March and 13 March 2020 in South Africa and Kenya, respectively. These first reports indicated the virus had been brought into both countries by “privileged” citizens.
The first case of COVID in South Africa was a white South African from KwaZulu-Natal province, who had travelled back from Europe. In Kenya, 239 passengers who had arrived from China were blamed for bringing in COVID. This resulted in a strong resentment in South Africa towards the white communities, and resentment towards the Chinese in Kenya.
Racial conversations worsened when some Kenyans and South Africans regarded COVID-19 as a foreign disease. As one South African tweet stated:
Imagine dying from an overseas disease when you don’t even own a passport, let alone being in a plane or ship, except for a relationship. Watseba these travellers di na le mahlale (You know, these travellers are silly) #COVID19SouthAfrica
And another, in Kenya:
We can confidently report that part of China mega loans agreement (initially negotiated by Raila as PM) was to allow illegal infiltration of Chinese into KE (Kenya), that’s why these despots continue to allow coronavirus infected Chinese to enter KE. #UhuruKenyatta #coronavirusInkenya"
Classism, privilege and panic buying
When the World Health Organization (WHO) declared COVID-19 a pandemic on 11 March 2020, it led to drastic changes in public and social life. These were accompanied by perceived and sometimes real shortages of resources. There were reported cases of long queues in the stores with individuals stockpiling essential goods.
Class issues dominated the conversations on panic buying in both Kenya and South Africa. While privileged white communities in South Africa were accused of participating in panic buying, Kenyan tweeters regarded those who participated in panic buying as a selfish and ignorant middle class:
The only people who have panicked and started panic buying of goods are the wannabe middle class. The rest of us live on FAITH. One day at a time #StayHome #lockdown #COVID19KE
Those who could panic buy had the resources to do so. Those who could not afford to, as Twitter users noted, could only panic:
To the selfish assholes black and white. Stop hoarding stock on retail shops, just because you can afford to purchase 15 loaves of bread doesn’t mean the rest of us don’t want to eat. You have clearly demonstrated if there was a deadly epidemic, you’d do the same #COVID19SouthAfrica
Ethnicity and othering
Propagation of ‘othering’ in Twitter conversations was also noticed in both South Africa and Kenya. Apart from the resentment towards white and Chinese communities, ethnic stereotyping was evident in online conversations. These were linked to the ability to survive the pandemic due to behaviours associated with certain ethnic stereotypes. Ethnic stereotypes and prejudices are divisive and generally show an unfavourable attitude towards certain groups. As one Kenyan Twitter user put it:
BREAKING NEWS! We need 2 Kikuyu’s to go to China waibe dawa ya coronavirus, 2 Kalenjins watoroke nayo mbio, 2 luos warushe mawe in case kuharibike, 2 maasai waruke nayo border, 2 kamba and 3 kisii for supernatural powers for protection and 2 Luyhas wakule evidence #covid19kenya’
(We need two individuals from the Kikuyu community to go and steal medicine from China, two from the Kalenjin communities to run with it, two from the Maasai community to cross the border with it, two from Kamba and Kisii communities to use their supernatural powers for protection and two from the Luhya community to eat the evidence afterwards)
And a South African tweet read:
Worry yam is watching all those rich South Africans (majority white) who bought more than they needed throw these away once the outbreak is brought under control on the back of many preventable deaths. #COVID19SouthAfrica"
The colonial lives on in the postcolonial
These Twitter conversations in the first few weeks of the COVID-19 pandemic in Kenya and South Africa reveal a range of unique experiences and biases shaped by postcolonial legacies of power. They represent ongoing racial and ethnic issues that are highly contested and deep-seated in the historical antecedents of both countries.
In building a post-COVID society, government policies must systematically address these postcolonial issues and legacies of power and racial and ethnic identity in order to shape a society that is responsive to the needs of all its citizens.
Towards a secure digital legacy – Wits Library now a member of the Digital Preservation Coalition
- Wits University
Wits has joined the Digital Preservation Coalition, a charitable foundation that supports digital preservation with a view to a secure digital legacy.
The University is also part of the DPC’s Representative Council, which drives strategy.
The Wits Library envisages being SA’s information hub of choice among leading research libraries globally, and providing an inclusive environment in which to access, produce and share knowledge.
Responsible for the University’s digitisation centre, digital library and archival repositories, the preservation of these digital objects is also the mandate of the Library – hence its full membership of the DPC.
“The University of the Witwatersrand’s Library values the endeavours of the DPC to harness a community of experts and novices to address and champion preservation and digital preservation issues,” explains Dr Daisy Selematsela, the University Librarian.
“The benefit for us in the Global South of being part of the DPC ensures that we do not ‘reinvent the wheel’, and there are benefits associated with knowledge sharing and training programmes. We are excited to be the third South African Academic Library to join the global DPC network”.
As a full member, Wits University joins the DPC’s Representative Council, which ensures that the Coalition remains focussed on its strategic plan, and that the strategic plan remains relevant to members’ emerging needs.
Juan Bicarregui, Chair of the DPC, says: “As global ambassadors and conveners of local communities of digital preservation practice, we are very excited to welcome Wits University to the Coalition. We look forward to working with and learning from Daisy and the team in Johannesburg.”
The DPC is an international charitable foundation which supports digital preservation, helping its members around the world to deliver resilient long-term access to digital content and services through community engagement, targeted advocacy work, training and workforce development, capacity building, good practice and standards, and through good management and governance. Its vision is a secure digital legacy.
Turkish ambassador launches digital fabrication laboratory at Wits
- Wits University
Turkish Cooperation and Coordination Agency (TIKA) and Wits University launch FabLab.
Wits University in partnership with TIKA launched a digital fabrication lab (FabLab) in the School of Electrical and Information Engineering under the directorship of Professor Turgay Celik. The digital fabrication lab is designed to inspire Wits researchers and students to turn ideas into real products using a range of advanced digital manufacturing technology and knowledge. It is envisaged that access to the lab will accelerate innovation.
The launch was attended by Turkish Ambassador Ms. Ayşegül Kandas and country representatives, Wits leaders, academics, as well as students.
In her speech Ambassador Kandas welcomed the collaboration between Wits University, TIKA and Turkey, noting that Wits is the first institution of higher learning that she has visited since coming into office. She said she is keen to see more partnerships between the University and institutions of learning in Turkey.
Professor Zeblon Vilakazi, Vice-Chancellor and Principal at Wits University emphasised the importance of creating an enabling environment adding that, “the work coming from the lab will go a long way in inspiring innovation on campus, as well as building Wits’ relationship with Turkish institutions.”
The lab called the Cezeri lab is kitted with the latest digital technologies ranging from 3D printers, scanners, laser cutting machines to CNC routers, desktop lathes, bench drills, computers, digital microscopes, robotic training sets, and various mechanical-electronic equipment.
Prior to the opening, 10 Wits students and staff members participated in and completed a training programme organised by TIKA. The training covered equipment use in order to ensure optimum results and machine longevity.
Tau Mmanchidi, training beneficiary and Technician Computronics at the School believes that “the establishment of the fabrication laboratory on the campus is a good opportunity for students and staff to present their ideas”. Mmanchidi hopes that students and staff can commercials their products tested and produced at the lab.
The lab is inspired and named after Ismail Al-Jazari a polymath: a scholar, inventor, mechanical engineer, artisan, artist as well as mathematician. Al-Jazari has been described as the "father of robotics" and modern-day engineering. Cezeri is the Turkish spelling and pronunciation of Al-Jazari.
African sci-tech could drive future black hole discoveries
- Roger Deane and Iniyan Natarajan
Astronomers have revealed the first image of the black hole at the centre of our galaxy, the Milky Way.
Black holes were predicted by Albert Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity over a century ago. They are regions of space so dense that nothing, including light, can escape. Their boundary is known as the event horizon, which marks the point of no return. That’s just one of the reasons these objects are hidden from our eyes. The other is that they are exceedingly small, when placed in their cosmic context. If our Milky Way galaxy were the size of a soccer field, its black hole event horizon would be a million times smaller than a pin prick at centrefield.
How, then, can one photograph them? Our team did so by capturing light from the hot swirling gas in the immediate vicinity of the black hole. This light, with a wavelength of 1 millimetre, is recorded by a global network of antennas that form a single, Earth-sized virtual telescope.
The light looks rather like a ring, a characteristic signature that is the direct consequence of two key processes. First, the black hole is so dense that it bends the path of light near it. Second, it captures light that strays too close to the event horizon. The combined effect produces a so-called black hole shadow - a brightened ring surrounding a distinct deficit of light centred on the black hole. In the case of our Milky Way black hole, this ring has the apparent size of a doughnut on the moon, requiring an extraordinary engineering effort to bring it into focus.
The unveiling of an image of our black hole, Sagittarius A*, is not just a massive moment for science. It could also be an important catalyst for diversifying African astrophysics research using existing strengths. We were the only two of more than 300 EHT team members based on the African continent. The continent doesn’t host any EHT telescopes – we were brought on board because of expertise we’ve developed in preparation for the world’s largest radio telescope, the Square Kilometre Array (SKA), to be co-hosted by South Africa and Australia.
Why the image is important
This is not the first time a black hole image has captured people’s attention. We were also members of the team that captured the first ever image of a black hole in 2019 (this one is at the centre of a different galaxy, Messier 87, which is 55 million light years away). It has been estimated that more than 4.5 billion people saw that image. Sagittarius A* has also dominated headlines and captured people’s imaginations.
But there’s more to this result than just an incredible image. A plethora of rich scientific results has been described in ten publications by the team. Here are three of our primary highlights.
First, the image is a remarkable validation of Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity. The EHT has now imaged two black holes with masses that differ by a factor of over 1000. Despite the dramatic difference in mass, the measured size and shape are consistent with theoretical predictions.
Second, we have now imaged black holes with very different environments. A wealth of prior research over the past two or three decades shows strong empirical evidence that galaxies and their black holes co-evolve over cosmic time, despite their completely disparate sizes. By zooming into the event horizon of black holes in giant galaxies like M87, as well as more typical galaxies like our own Milky Way, we learn more about how this seemingly implausible relationship between the black hole and its host galaxy plays out.
Third, the image provides us with new insights on the central black hole in our own galactic home. It is the nearest such beast to Earth, so it provides a unique laboratory to understand this interplay – not unlike scrutinising a tree in your own garden to better understand the forests on the distant horizon.
Southern Africa’s geographic advantage
We are proud to be part of the team that produced the first black hole images. In future, we believe South Africa, and the African continent more broadly (including a joint Dutch-Namibian initiative), could play a critical role in making the first black hole movies.
As has been the case with the country’s key role in paleoanthropology, there are contributions to global astronomy that can only be made from South African soil. Sagittarius A* lies in the southern sky, passing directly above South Africa. That is a major reason why this image of the Milky Way’s centre, taken by the MeerKAT (a precursor to the SKA) is the best there is.
South Africa also has well-established infrastructure at its astronomical sites, which are protected by legislation. And it has world-class engineers at the forefront of their craft. This makes for low-cost, high-performance telescopes delivered on time and to budget.
New technology is also on our side: a cutting-edge simultaneous multi-frequency receiver design, pioneered by our Korean colleagues, means that EHT sites no longer need to be the most pristine, high-altitude locations on Earth.
All the elements are in place for a dramatic increase in the number of young Africans who participate in this new era of black hole imaging and precision tests of gravity. In the coming years, we hope to be writing about findings that couldn’t have been made without technology on South African soil, as well as African scientists leading high-impact, high-visibility EHT science in synergy with our multi-wavelength astronomy and high-energy astrophysics programmes.
Wits University is home to a wellspring of talent from multiple disciplines where life-changing innovation is incubated.
This two-part series features some of the solutions from students and academics as they respond to real issues facing people, communities and economies.
Professor Barry Dwolatzky, the Director of Innovation Strategy at Wits, describes innovation as the successful deployment of new ideas, inventions, or methods, that benefit society, with a strong emphasis on collaboration and multi-disciplinarity, across sectors. “By breaking down silos, we can work across disciplines to find solutions to the major challenges that confront humanity,” he says.
One of the standout solutions is Pelebox, an invention to cut down the time that patients spend waiting for medication in hospitals. Wits innovator, Neo Hutiri, invented digital lockers to reduce the time that patients spend waiting for repeat chronic medication from three hours to less than two minutes. His work fixes a problem that he experienced, as a patient himself, who was needing regular TB medication in South Africa.
“In complex countries like South Africa, riddled with limitations and constraints, disruption alone is not enough, says Hutiri. “Designing technology without paying attention to our local context will result in failure. The Pelebox induces creativity and shapes our frugal, relevant and context driven innovations in a highly local approach that our team calls the "Think Inside" principle.”
Also in the medical field, a solution known as SmartSpot consistently improves the accuracy of TB testing. Used on all 289 GeneXpert testing instruments in the national TB programme since 2011, over the duration of a year, it showed that 2.6% of the TB tests were inaccurate, and that test modules needed replacing. Their inventions are approved by the World Health Organization and are used in many countries around the world.
The SmartSpot innovation was developed by a team of scientists from Wits, led by Professor Wendy Stevens and Professor Lesley Scott in the Department of Molecular Medicine and Haematology, in collaboration with Professor Bavesh Kana from the Department of Science and Technology/National Research Foundation Centre of Excellence for Biomedical TB Research.
PeCo Power is a third example of innovation sparked at Wits that is positively changing the lives of people daily. This homegrown electrical off-grid solar solution for local communities enables the easy integration of renewable energy sources, along with batteries and appliances, for the electrification of households in Africa.
Originated and developed in the Wits School of Electrical and Information Engineering, this innovation is finding its way into rural and un-serviced communities, with the promise of deep social impact. PeCo Power is also a prime example of the commercial viability and realisation of innovation - in the form of operational enterprises – being unearthed at the University.
“These are all multidisciplinary projects with research impact which span multiple sectors, involve elements of entrepreneurship and commercialisation and advance the public good,” adds Dwolatzky. He adds that collaboration is key to finding such solutions.
He points out that the climate crisis is a case in point. “We need the scientists and climatologists to help us better understand how our natural environment is changing and to model future scenarios, we need the social scientists to explain the effect of climate change on people and how behaviour can be changed. We need the ethicists, governors, policy- and lawmakers to guide communities and to keep climate offenders in check. By working together, we can develop innovative solutions that benefit both people and our planet.”
Another example is the University’s holistic response to the COVID-19 pandemic, which to date has included medical researchers, social scientists, engineers, data scientists, legal experts, ethicists, teaching and learning specialists and community leaders. All these contributors played an important role in leading society’s response to the pandemic both locally and globally, he says.
“To develop a culture of innovation, we need to develop a problem-solving mindset and run activities such as challenges and hackathons that allow people to find solutions to specific problems. We need to form communities of practice and create opportunities for people to discuss complex social and other problems, with the objective of finding innovative solutions,” concludes Dwolatzky.
Go tohttps://www.wits.ac.za/innovation/to find out more about the Wits Innovation Centre (WIC) and the brilliant solutions being generated at Wits University.
What’s wrong with the Fourth Industrial Revolution
- Ozayr Patel with Nanjala Nyabola and Ruth Castel-Branco
Pasha Podcast: Innovation in the digital space is not necessarily working for people in the global south.
The “Fourth Industrial Revolution” is a term coined in 2016 by German economist Klaus Schwab. It’s used to describe the technology revolution that the world is going through. But there is growing criticism, particularly in the global south, of how it’s framed. Many are questioning whether it should be considered a revolution at all.
The Fourth Industrial Revolution, according to one view, is a very simplistic narrative that advances a distinct political agenda. It is a kind of exploitation that is being sold as progress. The narrative is being advanced to achieve a specific economic outcome – at the expense of many people in the global south.
Many innovations are happening in the digital technological space. But do they reorganise production and social relations, or do they just entrench past forms of inequality?
Consider the case of the ride-hailing app Uber. It may sound like enticing work for drivers, but there’s more to it. Drivers may face bad working conditions, penalties and other challenges without the security of human resources behind them.
In this episode of Pasha, Ruth Castel-Branco, manager of the Future of Work(ers) research project at the University of the Witwatersrand, joins Nanjala Nyabola, a storyteller and political analyst, in taking us through the seductive idea of the Fourth Industrial Revolution.
Photo “A smartphone attached to the dash on a vent holder in a moving Uber car. The Uber App shows the route in Cape Town map.” by maurodopereira, found on Shutterstock.
Auto manufacturing is changing: how to protect workers
- Alex Mohubetswane Mashilo
South Africa should ensure that changes to energy-efficient vehicles are done in a way that creates jobs and protects workers.
Technological changes in industry have given rise to contending schools of thought about their impact on work and workers. Automation is rapidly deepening and widening, reaching new areas of work. What’s being produced is also changing. In the automotive manufacturing industry, for example, there is a global shift to vehicles that don’t produce emissions.
The ongoing industrial revolution is defined by new work methods, ways of organising production, and advances in technology.
At the one extreme is the view that this is the end of work. This argues that the technological changes will lead to mass unemployment through retrenchments. At the other end are optimists who argue that the changes will increase overall employment. Disrupted jobs will be replaced by others.
After South Africa’s first democratic elections in 1994, employers in the automotive assembly sector increased capital expenditure or investment in new production technology. They also reduced their direct employment by thousands of jobs. They benefited from trade and industrial policy incentives offered by the state.
Meanwhile, the number of jobs in automotive component manufacturing increased. This wasn’t driven by new production technology but by increased demand for domestically produced components. Some of it was for export.
A key finding is that technology need not result in job losses if domestic production is high enough.
Evolution of the sector
There are seven lead firms that make up the automotive assembly sector in South Africa. Another 430 firms make up the automotive component manufacturing sector.
The automotive manufacturing lead firms significantly increased their capital expenditure from R0.8 billion in 1995 to R9.2 billion in 2020. Much of this went into automation in the form of new production machinery and plant equipment, including an increased population of production robots.
This was accompanied by workplace restructuring. Companies introduced new work methods and ways of organising and co-ordinating production. These followed company production systems introduced globally.
In 1995, the automotive assembly sector directly employed 38,600 workers who produced 388,442 motor vehicles. Following the changes in production technology, work methods and ways of organising and co-ordinating production, the seven lead firms gradually reduced their direct workforce. This went down to 29,926 in 2020.
However, the reduced assembly sector workforce produced more motor vehicles per annum. In 2019, for example, about 30,000 workers produced 631,983 motor vehicles. Units per worker, referring to motor vehicles produced divided by the workforce, were 10.1 in 1995. This productivity indicator more than doubled. It reached approximately 21 units per worker in 2019.
The automotive component manufacturing sector increased its direct employment from 60,000 workers in 1995 to 80,000 in 2019 to support increased domestic motor vehicle production and export programmes.
This illustrates its employment creating potential, which needs to be harnessed in policy direction. It also shows that it will be beneficial to job creation to raise the levels of automotive vehicle assembly localisation substantially, and to deepen and diversify domestic component manufacturing value addition.
The National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa put this forward in 2021. It followed the union’s rejection of a Green Paper on the advancement of new energy vehicles released by the Department of Trade, Industry and Competition.
The Green Paper proposed changes to the way in which components manufactured abroad for new energy vehicles should be handled. It proposed that these components, once imported for assembly in South Africa, should be deemed to have been manufactured domestically. The proposal sought to make these imported components eligible for industrial policy incentives meant for domestically produced components.
This went against the imperative of employment creation as a key element of social upgrading.
In rejecting the paper, the metalworkers union stressed the importance of securing a just transition in automotive manufacturing. The transition in the sector involves a shift from carbon dioxide emitting internal combustion engine vehicles to new energy vehicles. These include hybrid, electric, fuel cell electric and hydrogen vehicles.
The union’s action led to the department initiating a research-led inclusive consultative process on the transition to new energy vehicles.
A just, versus unjust, transition
It would be unjust for the transition in automotive manufacturing to occur without two ingredients. Firstly protecting existing employment. And secondly creating additional work to reduce unemployment. This is particularly true given that South Africa is ravaged by an unemployment crisis.
To achieve a just transition, it will be essential to localise and diversify domestic manufacturing value addition in new energy vehicle components. South Africa mustn’t go back to colonial-type assembly of imported components and mustn’t adopt strategies that can ruin employment creating opportunities in the components manufacturing sector.
The subject of workers’ power is essential to giving this process a direction from labour’s perspective. This is the focus the University of the Witwatersrand-based Southern Centre for Inequality Studies’ Future of Work(ers) Research Group policy dialogue on “Emerging forms of worker power in the digital economy”.
Happening from 13 - 21 October, this year's digital innovation festival returns to its home at Wits' Tshimologong Digital Innovation Precinct in Braamfontein.
The 9th edition of the Fak'ugesi Festival is a celebration of young Pan-African talent in the digital sphere to its fullest.
The festival is rooted in showcasing and developing skills in technology, art and culture in Africa.
Founded in 2014 as a collaboration between Wits University's Tshimologong Digital Innovation Precinct and the Wits School of Arts' Digital Arts Department, the festival takes as its starting point the idea that for innovation with technology to succeed, a strong connection needs to be made between African cultural practices and creative encounters.
This year's theme, #FromNowOn, aims to showcase the creative climate of a new age after the positive (and negative effects) of the Covid-19 pandemic. it calls for a moment to pause and reflect where we are today and takes a look into Africa's digital future.
Splitting the theme into "FromNow" and "NowOn", the Festival will firstly look at how we arrived at our current context and how we got here, and then the latter will investigate how we use what we know of the now and respond energetically with creative solutions to our new perspectives on problems and opportunities in society.
Fak'ugesi continues to bring industry, researchers and African creators together to celebrate how technology enables creativity while zooming in on the ways this relationship shapes our lives.
Says Lesley Williams, CEO of Tshimologong: “The intersection between creativity and technology provides an innovative lens of understanding the world and crafting new solutions to problems. As the home of Fak’ugesi, we curate an innovation ecosystem where the convergence of hardware, software and content takes place. We proudly convene Africa’s leading talent in creative innovation each year and look forward to seeing what their imaginations will construct this year #FromNowOn.”
This year Fak'ugesi also has a new Creative Director at its helm, Eduardo Cachucho, a creative programmer, artist and ex-architect.
“Fak’ugesi has been the place to find rising African creatives working in digital from across the continent since 2014. In 2022 we welcome you back in person and online to meet trailblazing creatives, innovative organisations and brilliant makers," says Cachucho.
Programme overview
Fak'ugesi 2022 promises a jampacked programme, with some exciting new editions to its menu, including the much-anticipated inaugural Fak’ugesi 2022 Awards for Digital Creativity taking place on the last day of the Festival, 21 October 2022.
Also, don't miss these events:
Virtual and in-person Conference (14-15 October) for anyone - from beginners to experts - with a passion for digital innovation.
Expo (14-16 October) - exhibitions showcasing Africa’s leading digital innovation.
A family-friendly interactive Maker Day (16 October) filled with collaborative creative activities for makers to meet artists and learn from them during walkabouts and screenings.
At the recently held Business and Arts South Africa (BASA) Awards 2022, Tshimologong in collaboration with Wits Digital Arts won the coveted Chairperson's Awards for hosting Fak'ugesi since its inception in 2014.
The award was granted for the recognition of Tshimologong's commitment to the arts in South Africa in the form of advocacy and awareness initiatives and/or direct support of the arts in collaboration with Wits Digital Arts. Tshimologong defines “digital innovation” as the intersection between hardware, software, and content. As a university-based incubator, entrepreneurship is at the centre of its operating practice making it the perfect base for the Fak’ugesi Festival, its attendees, creatives and makers.
CTIF & Jamfest 2022: Unplugged - but still connected
- Wits University
Joint hybrid conferences for African civic tech innovators and media makers, journalism innovators, and other creatives.
Jamlab Africaand theCivic Tech Innovation Network(CTIN), both projects from the University of the Witwatersrand, will be hosting their joint hybrid annual conferences held between 3 – 27 October 2022 under the theme#Unplugged22 (but still connecting). #Unplugged will have virtual sessions and activities from 3 to 20 October 2022 and the in-person event will be between 24 to 27 October 2022 atTshimologong Precinct in Johannesburg, South Africa.
BothCivic Tech Innovation Forum(CTIF) andJamfestpromise exciting, power-packed programmes at this year’s#Unplugged22conference that will enrich both communities of African civic tech and media innovators. We are thrilled to connect with the global community virtually, and also reconnect in-person for the first time in two years.
We have connected virtually with the rest of the world for over two years and have been online more than at any other time in our history. It is with this context that#Unplugged22attendees can expect a hybrid experience for 2022; where the virtual and in-person sessions will have quality and stripped-down conversations about the effects of digitalisation on shared experiences.
CTIF’s programme will feature exciting plenaries with continental and international speakers, workshops, a full month exhibition, and more, all focusing on key current issues in the African civic tech space including governance, urban cities, participatory approaches, sustainability and funding, end-user experiences, the significance of a community of practice and other relevant issues.
The Jamfest component of#Unplugged22will stimulate conversations about new approaches within the skills, product and disruptive media innovation spheres. Some highlight Jamfest sessions are on Solutions journalism featuringRuona Meyer, and both Tulanana BohelaandPrincely Gloriousfrom Ona Stories in Tanzania explore the opportunities and challenges of the Metaverse for African media makers.
Organisers invite diverse African stakeholders from the current and potential civic tech user community, government, NGO, CSO, journalism, media, education and entrepreneurship fields to attend#Unplugged22.
Registration for the Virtual #Unplugged22:
Tickets are free. Clickhereand book your ticket and plug into the virtual#Unpluggedsessions on the Airmeet platform, which is freely available through your browser or the Airmeet App (download from your mobile appstore).
Registration for the in-person #Unplugged22:
Tickets are free. Clickhereand book your ticket for the in-person#Unpluggedconference which will be located at the Tshimologong Digital Innovation precinct in Johannesburg, South Africa. CTIF will be for 4-days from Tuesday, 25 October – Thursday, 27 October 2022, and Jamfest will be for 2-days from Monday, 24 October – Tuesday, 25 October 2022.
For further enquiries and media interviews contact:
Nkosinathi Mcetywa (Civic Tech Innovation Forum) at info@civictech.africa
Jamfest at info@jamlab.africa
Curios.ty 14 (#Wits100): A century of doing good
- Wits Communications
Wits' research magazine celebrates 100 years of changing the world for good.
The 14th issue of Wits University’s research magazine, Curios.ty, themed: #Wits100, is available online now: http://www.wits.ac.za/curiosity/. (To republish articles, see guidelines below).
In this special issue to mark Wits University’s centenary year, we look back over a 100 years during which Wits University, and Witsies, have undoubtedly changed the world for good, be it through research and innovation, teaching and learning, or civic action.
In a series of firsts, Wits developed and tested the first radar signals in South Africa in 1939 and was the first South African university to transmit data securely through light. Wits was also the first university to own a nuclear accelerator and a computer in South Africa, to confer the first PhD in isiZulu, and to successfully execute a living donor liver transplant from an HIV+ mother to her HIV- child.
In this issue we also look to the next 100 years, showcase Wits’ world-class scientists and, importantly, a new generation of early career researchers actively advancing society for good.
“Today, we are confronted with a myriad of complex planetary problems including global change and inequality, erratic energy supply, crime, the lack of governance and ethics, and the threat of a number of communicable and non-communicable diseases and pandemics. It is at Wits where we can bring the best intellectual talent and resources to bear, across disciplines, institutions, sectors and geographic boundaries, to find solutions to these challenges, some of which are still unknown,” writes Professor Zeblon Vilakazi, Vice-Chancellor and Principal of Wits University.
Highlights:
Meet the science superheroes whose research has saved countlesslives(page 10): Five Wits scientists weigh in on the University’s proud legacy of public health activism and why standing up for social justice in an unequal world remains their fight.
Mapping African genetic diversity for better health (page 14): The contribution of the Sydney Brenner Institute for Molecular Bioscience to the field of human genomics is rewriting history on the African continent.
Thirty years of the lab in the bush (page 18): Agincourt in Mpumalanga is one of the longest-running research centres of its kind in sub-Saharan Africa with sophisticated infrastructure to track and understand health and wellbeing over the life course.
Wits Digital Dome to light up the sky (page 32): It is the end of an era for the Wits Planetarium, although reimagining it as a Digital Dome promises to be literally out of this world.
Facing climate change head-on (page 34): Climate change took nearly a century to become mainstream science. Wits is taking the lead in facing up to the challenge.
About Curios.ty
Curios.ty is a print and digital magazine that aims to make the research at Wits University accessible to multiple publics. Curios.ty is available on the Wits website here: http://www.wits.ac.za/curiosity/
Contact Wits Communications should you require more information or visit our media section for more on our experts and latest media releases.
100 Years of changing the world. For Good
- Professor Zeblon Vilakazi
Guest Editorial: Wits remains a beacon of hope in society. We continue to strive for excellence in all that we do and use our knowledge for the good of society.
Wits University, and Witsies, have undoubtedly changed the world for good over the past 100 years, be it through research and innovation, teaching and learning, or civic action, as reflected in the following pages in Curiosity 14: #Wits100.
Witsies took to the streets to oppose apartheid and other atrocities, resulting in campus raids, violence, imprisonment and even death for people like David Webster. Fast-forward to the 21st Century and Witsies continue to demand access to higher education, and to engage in civic activities whether it be insisting for the treatment of HIV/Aids, speaking out against xenophobia, or advocating for measures to mitigate climate change.
Teaching and learning at Wits started in 1922 in response to a need from industry and the City. Fast-forward to 2022, and Wits’ response to the coronavirus pandemic can be felt at the local and global levels through its innovative research (including vaccine development), blended teaching and learning programmes, community initiatives, and social activism.
Today, we are confronted with a myriad of complex planetary problems including global change and inequality, erratic energy supply and crime, lack of governance and ethics, the intersection of communicable and non-communicable diseases, pandemics, and so on. It is at Wits where we can bring the best intellectual talent and resources to bear, across disciplines, institutions, sectors and geographic boundaries, to find solutions to these challenges, some of which are still unknown.
We can continue to make a positive impact on society from our locale in the Global South if we remain true to our values – search for and stand up for the truth, hold those in power to account, act with integrity, entrench proper governance systems, guard our academic freedom and institutional autonomy, tolerate differences of opinion, and stand up for democracy, justice, equality, and freedom.
We must continue to promote freedom of enquiry and the search for knowledge and truth, foster a culturally diverse, intellectually stimulating and harmonious environment within which there is vigorous critical exchange and communication, and encourage freedom of speech and public debate through facilitating dialogue and interaction between different parties, with the goal of increasing mutual respect and trust, amongst others.
Wits remains a beacon of hope in society – a national treasure that has developed with the City of Johannesburg and industry, an institution that will continue to impact society for good, for the next 100 years. We must continue to strive for excellence in all that we do and use our knowledge for the advancement of our community, city, country, continent, and the globe. For Good.
This article first appeared in Curiosity, a research magazine produced by Wits Communications and the Research Office. Read more in the 14th issue, themed: #Wits100 where we celebrate a century of research excellence that has shaped today and look forward to how our next-generation researchers will impact the next 100 years.
Stay curious – there’s a whole new world coming in 2122
- Professor Lynn Morris
Editorial: The stories in Curios.ty 14: #Wits100 showcase the University’s sustained participation, influence and impact in the lab, the classroom, and society.
Wits University celebrates its centenary in 2022 and although Wits today differs from a century ago, our raison d'être and values remain consistent: Our purpose is to impact society positively through creating and advancing global knowledge, and to foster graduates to be leaders with integrity. We value excellence, our people, and innovation.
Issue 14 ofCurios.ty, themed #Wits100, gives a snapshot of some of the research giants and innovations that preceded us, that shaped the world today, and which will impact on the next century.
The Featured Researchers on the cover and page 6 showcase a handful of Wits’ world-class scientists and, importantly, a new generation of early career researchers – read the profile of a young forensic anthropologist (page 42).
Wits occupies a significant space in the South African higher education sector, a space as tumultuous as it is dynamic. In the story on page 8, Vice-Chancellors and others envisage the sector in the next century. Our first feature (page 10) showcases some Wits science superheroes whose research and activism has saved lives. Further evidence of such impact can be found in public health research over 30 years at Wits’ Rural Campus (page 18). Read about Wits’ other contributions ‘beyond the ivory tower’ (page 46) and the emergence of entrepreneurial innovation (page 44).
Wits is known as much for its political protest as for its academic excellence. Over 100 years, Wits has been at the forefront of speaking truth to power. The Politics of Protest story (page 22) gives a perspective on the practice of this democratic right, while the column (page 24) by eminent sociologists suggests how a Perceptions of Wits study in 1984 demands interrogation in a post-pandemic, climactic crisis world in 2022.
The evolution of science and research practice is our second feature (page 28) and unravels how we do what we do best and how it’s changed since the 20th Century. We explore Wits’ significant contribution to the field of genetics since we helped sequence the human genome (page 14), tackle the origins of life and death (page 16), confront climate change (page 34), and dig deep for the origins of humanity (page 36). We look up to reimagine the night sky from a state-of-the-art Digital Dome (page 32) and consider what dung beetles can teach us about navigation (page 38). Bibliophiles will enjoy the compilation of social sciences research published as books (page 40).
Wits University is as much a part of Johannesburg as gold mining. The Braamfontein campus is an anchor in the City’s cultural precinct and home to the Wits Art Museum, which at a decade old reveals African stories – untold and emerging – through art (page 26).
The stories in Curios.ty #Wits100 showcase the University’s sustained participation, influence and impact in the laboratory, the academy, and society. Our focus in future is on developing excellent (post)graduates who advance society, conducting world-class research and fostering innovation, and leveraging our location in the City to lead from the Global South.
We invite you to celebrate our centenary with us and, above all else, stay curious. There’s a whole new world coming in 2122 – and Wits University will have made its mark.
This article first appeared in Curiosity, a research magazine produced by Wits Communications and the Research Office. Read more in the 14th issue, themed: #Wits100 where we celebrate a century of research excellence that has shaped today and look forward to how our next-generation researchers will impact the next 100 years.
Identifying faces to recognise humanity
- Leanne Rencken
The development of the Wits Face Database: An African database of high-resolution facial photographs.
Dr Nicholas Bacci has got a lot going on, which is the way he likes it. His Twitter profile describes him as a forensic anthropologist, anatomist, husband, beard grower and boring human being. Almost everything about that description is true.
A Lecturer in the School of Anatomical Sciences at Wits, bearded Bacci has two main research paths that demand most of his time. Simply put, these are his “facial identity work” and his investigations into lightning fatalities and bone trauma, both of which are equally fascinating. Then there is the constant stream of “what ifs” and ideas that he jots down in his little black book, because there is just so much that he would like to do, but so little time.
In a conversation that never strays far from his work, Bacci describes himself as obsessive, passionate, curious and determined and anyone who has encountered him will agree that this is the more accurate portrayal. Not a boring bone in sight.
The title of the paper, published in 2021, refers to the collection of 6 220 facial photographs of 622 matching individuals in five different views, as well as corresponding CCTV footage of 334 individuals recorded under different realistic conditions
Mapping faces for identification
Why has he focused on creating this database? Until now, most databases have been developed in Europe, the US or China, and so many databases end up being biased towards white and Asian males. This results in several facial recognition algorithms training on databases that don’t serve specific populations at all, with oftentimes detrimental consequences.
However, it’s important to be clear: Bacci is concerned with facial identification and not facial recognition, and there is a significant difference between the two. “There is a very common misunderstanding where the two are confused: grouping the automated systems, and the psychological process of facial recognition with facial identification, which is meant to be a forensic application,” he explains.
Facing off against crime
A very manual application, human-based facial identification is an emerging field with its origins in facial mapping. Many people are surprised by when Bacci explains that he is not working on facial recognition or developing machine learning algorithms, but that he is rather creating a system that is more inclusive than any system currently available but which he also hopes will help law enforcement with suspect prosecution and missing person identification.
“It’s more of a reactive measure,” he explains. “If there’s surveillance footage of a potential crime, it can help with associating a suspect to a criminal scenario that was under surveillance, or if there are images or a body we cannot identify due to various reasons, it can possibly help with missing person identification.”
He adds: “This research is literally just scratching the surface. We have so much data that I think it’s very short-sighted if we don’t investigate using the data to address crime.”
If he is awarded the Thuthuka grant, Bacci plans to expand his database, increase the number of male subjects and add female faces to his photographic pool. In addition, he will be able to support the onboarding of a PhD candidate to help to process the information as well as build a mobile photographic unit, to allow for more efficiency and uniformity in the gathering of this data.
From lockdowns to load shedding, it’s been a difficult and protracted experience trying to put this database together – especially considering that it is a manual process. Each face in the database is scored against an accepted list of criteria and the comparisons are made through the scores generated for these criteria, rather than by putting two faces together side by side and looking for similarities and differences. Part of this database work is studying these faces and coming up with more relevant and detailed criteria for comparison and having those criteria reviewed, tested and accepted.
Lightning bolts to the bone
If that’s not enough, Bacci keeps a standard blue cooler box in his office – not for after-work drinks, but for the bones that he picks up from the butcher to further his other field of study. With help from Wits electrical engineers, he generates lightning under controlled conditions to see how skeletal remains react.
Through this multidisciplinary work, he and his colleagues have been able to determine that lightning strikes affect bone in a very particular way. They are now able to identify lightning-related deaths in skeletal remains, where previously this could only be done by way of markers left on the skin and the soft tissues of recent deaths.
At its core, the work Bacci is doing is making connections – whether it’s between faces, or between lightning and bone, or critically, between different disciplines. It is something at which he is good at and much of the success that he has achieved can be attributed to his collaborative approach both within and beyond the University.
He connects the dots that others sometimes cannot see and at heart wants to solve some key real-world problems through his innovative research.
Leanne Rencken is a freelance writer.
This article first appeared in Curiosity, a research magazine produced by Wits Communications and the Research Office. Read more in the 14th issue, themed: #Wits100 where we celebrate a century of research excellence that has shaped today and look forward to how our next-generation researchers will impact the next 100 years.
The Wits Digital Dome to light up the sky
- Ufrieda Ho
It’s the end of an era as Wits Planetarium is reimagined as a ‘out of this world’ digital dome.
It’s a good day at the Wits Planetarium when the soundtrack Vangelis, the Greek musician, syncs perfectly with the moving projection of a cluster of stars rising from the rim of the dome, while the room darkens, on cue, to a shade of deep-space black.
“I still get a kick out of it every time,” says Planetarium Supervisor Constant Volschenk, who has played “conductor” hundreds of times at the Planetarium since 1997. He has overseen an orchestra of gears, dials, knobs and switches that have made planetarium live shows pop for thousands of people who have over the years craned their necks into the cushioned headrests and willingly fallen under the spell of the story of the night sky.
“We can have 400 school learners at a show. When you get through to even one child who leaves in total amazement, then my job is done,” says Volschenk.
Planetarium projection
In the days before the Covid-19 lockdown, the Planetarium welcomed about 60 000 people every year. It’s been a popular city fixture since it opened its doors in October 1960. It was in 1956 when the then Johannesburg City Council decided that a planetarium would be the perfect hurrah for a City that was turning 70 years old. Wits donated the land, cementing a city-university partnership, and welcomed a unique asset to the campus.
Zeiss, the manufacturer of the star projectors in Germany was not able to manufacture a new projector in time that year. “That’s when the Hamburg Planetarium offered their projector for sale. Part of the arrangement was for the star projector – which was built in 1930 – to be taken to Copenhagen so that it could be upgraded to become the Zeiss MKIII that we now have,” says Volschenk. He adds that the distinct pale avocado dome along Yale Road was designed specifically to optimise the projection from this Zeiss MKIII projector.
Man on the moon in Yale Road
Over the years there have been dozens of live and pre-recorded shows that have ranged from ancient Egyptian astronomy to exploring major celestial events like solar and lunar eclipses. The Planetarium has also been the venue for numerous launches and talks. Volschenk remembers the time that it was turned into a giant beach to re-launch a holiday club scheme for Sun City.
“Following the Apollo 11 moon landing, the Planetarium was one of the first places in South Africa where people got to watch the recordings of Neil Armstrong’s first steps on the lunar surface. The tapes were flown in from London and someone fetched them directly from the pilots and brought them here. It was such a big event that people were lined up all the way to De Korte Street waiting to get in, and there was no charge,” reminisces Volschenk.
These are the kind of historical highlights that have put the Planetarium’s star projector at the heart of the City’s heritage. But now it’s time for the grand ol’ dame projector herself to slip into memory. The Zeiss MKIII will be pensioned off in 2022 to make room for a rebuild project that will give Wits and the public a research, educational and entertainment resource aligned with 21st Century demands.
Visual lab puts stars in our eyes
Professor Roger Deane, Director of the Wits Centre for Astrophysics and the Square Kilometre Array Chair in Radio Astronomy, says that the multi-million rand digital upgrade will transform the familiar dome into a high-tech, fully immersive, multi-sensory, multi-dimensional resource. He likens it to an IMAX theatre experience – but better.
“For many researchers across many fields, we feel as if we are basically drowning in data, which is coupled with the challenge of datasets becoming more complex and more multi-dimensional. A resource like this Wits Digital Dome is a way of honing a more intuitive understanding of big data,” explains Deane.
The technology will be a boon to science and research, while it will also hit the sweet spot for entertaining and educating a modern-day public. As an example, Deane imagines that it could be three-dimensional shows made from drone footage swooping through the world’s largest radio telescope, the SKA. An immersive experience of the SKA, which is built in an inaccessible part of the Karoo, inspires collective pride in this significant South African scientific endeavour in a site that most people will never get to visit.
“We could also visualise what the Large Hadron Collider at CERN is measuring as particles are smashed together. It’s why we view the Digital Dome as a visualisation laboratory that will have countless applications and opportunities for collaborations, including creating local content for showcasing a wide range of academic disciplines, from lightning research to multi-layered biodiversity data, as well as advancements in the digital arts,” he says.
It could also serve as an additional medium to highlight some of the Wits Arts Museum’s 15 000 works of art for instance, or as a virtual walkthrough of the world-renowned active archaeological dig sites that Wits has been excavating and studying.
Beyond Wits, it could present visualisation and immersive experiences for a community of researchers to better understand ocean conditions, to study climate science, or to virtually explore underground mines towards improving strategies to reduce mining accidents or to limit environmental damage.
“The emphasis on multi- and trans-disciplinary research and applications is critical to give the new Digital Dome continued relevance, access for those from disadvantaged communities in particular, and for it to justify the big spend,” adds Deane.
He says that the Wits Council has already committed about a fifth of the funds (around R20 million) of all three stages required, meaning that the construction can kick off in 2022, Wits’ centenary year. A major donor is also interested in funding the first phase of the project.
The building project will incorporate a revamp of the Planetarium, within an upgraded precinct, and will include a partnership with Wits Sport on revitalising joint facilities and surrounding structures. The new facilities will be used both for viewing sports matches and to host exhibitions and other events. Given that it is a multi-use precinct, it will ensure broad, University-wide use as well as greater public patronage and access.
This project is also about giving attention to this wonderful, green precinct at the north end of campus that is perhaps sometimes underappreciated.
“I’m an astronomer focused on research and postgraduate training. However, I believe that as academics, we have broader roles and responsibilities in society. In this project we are furthering the interests of Wits, as well as promoting science engagement and education with the public, and what that means for the City and for community building,” explains Deane.
He promises that the Zeiss MKIII will “go to a good home” as she is moved out of the Planetarium. She deserves it – after all, it is this projector that started everything 62 years ago, with each planetarium show urging another person to reach a little further, to touch the stars.
Ufrieda Ho is a freelance writer.
This article first appeared in Curiosity, a research magazine produced by Wits Communications and the Research Office. Read more in the 14th issue, themed: #Wits100 where we celebrate a century of research excellence that has shaped today and look forward to how our next-generation researchers will impact the next 100 years.
Machines will not replace humans, yet!
- Wits University
Expert calls for development of a new kind of AI that is provably beneficial to humans
While the advances made within the field of Artificial Intelligence (AI) have made human life easier, the threat of it taking over has been a topical issue amongst experts since the 1950s when it was first developed.
But a Professor of Computer Science at the University of California, Berkeley, Stuart Russell said there was currently no indication that human life would be completely replaced by machines.
Russell was speaking under the theme “Provably Beneficial Artificial Intelligence”, at the 71st Dr Bernard Price Memorial lecture that was hosted virtually by the South African Institute for Electrical Engineers (SAIEE) in partnership with Wits.
The lectures are named after Dr Price for his contribution as an engineer to the South African power supply industry. As a technical expert who had a passion for the sciences, Price established the Bernard Price Institute for Geophysical Research and the Bernard Price Institute for Palaeontological Research at Wits.
Humans capable of AI?
At the lecture, Russell explored the possibility of what the creation of AI systems that could quickly learn to outperform human beings in tasks where the human intellect is relevant (General Purpose AI), would look like for the human race.
Should computer scientists be able to create general purpose AI systems, it would be the most significant technological event in the history of humans and one of the positive impacts of this would be the improvement of the global living standards.
“Because general purpose AI systems would be extremely low-cost and can be multiplied as many times as you want, they could provide high quality individualised health care, education for every child and could also be used to accelerate the rate of progress in science,” said Russell.
He however believes that this kind of technology is not available nor is it imminent in the near future despite suggestions that it currently exists or is being developed.
The training of deep learning networks from large amounts of data, which is currently the popular approach in AI, was also unlikely to create general purpose AI systems.
And because these deep networks were essentially circuits rather than computer programs, they were restrictive and required large amounts of pages even for simple pieces of knowledge that could be written down on a single page.
Russell explained, “We still have a long way to go before reaching human level artificial intelligence. We do not really know how to build systems that actually understand language as opposed to being able to produce the appearance of being able to understand language as current systems do.”
The path to provably beneficial AI
When computer scientist Alan Turing developed AI, he had predicted that humans would lose control over machines that would eventually exceed human capabilities. But Russell argued that Turing was wrong to think that doom was inevitable.
This is despite the development of apps that have the ability to predict and manipulate the preferences of users.
Russell called for the development of new models where machines are beneficial to achieve the objectives of human beings.
Based on these models, machines would rely on a mathematical framework that would give them access to these objectives.
"That is one possible answer to Turing’s concern that we actually have to rebuild AI on a completely different foundation. We have to get away from this idea that we begin with a fixed objective that the algorithm is going to optimise,” he explained.
According to Russell, this different approach to AI, where systems know that they do not know what the objectives of humans are, the idea of provably beneficial AI being a desirable form of technology can be proved.
While computer scientists are looking at these systems of the future that he described as better technology, Russell warned about the problems that could arise where these provably beneficial methods could be misused for evil motives or overused where AI systems run successfully to an extent where humans would end up being “infantilised” and “feeble”.
Mind-blown by interactive brain experiences
- Wits University
A showcase of local neuroscience talent was on display by Wits NeuRL and collaborators at the recent #Wits100 event.
Students and early career researchers in Psychology, Engineering, the RAIL (Robotics, Autonomous Intelligence and Learning) lab in Computer Science, and the Perinatal HIV Research Unit (PHRU) led the initiative to highlight the interdisciplinarity of the brain sciences in Wits’ centenary year.
Over 100 attendees engaged in cognitive neuroscience tasks on creativity, working memory and verbal fluency.They tried digital neuropsychological assessments, explored visual consciousness illusions, and discovered pioneering research on neuroanatomy, epilepsy, implicit prejudice, and social-emotional processes in early childhood development.
However, the science communication event was not limited to students and researchers – families and the public also participated! Exhibitors of all ages played with RAIL lab’s robot dog and experienced virtual reality in the main programme’s exhibition.
“It was really special to celebrate this historic time for Wits by looking at the future of the brain sciences, with students and emerging researches really driving its success. It was equally special having our families there, watching our children and loved ones come together to learn and celebrate science, and Wits of course!” says co-organizer, Dr Sahba Besharati, a neuropsychologist and Senior Lecturer in cognitive neuroscience in the Department of Psychology and co-Director of wits NeuRL.
Dedicated to the late Dr Ian McKay and in collaboration with the Origins Centre, the parallel junior programme explored brain anatomy and evolution with playdough and 3D printed brains, stone tools, bones and artefacts.
New frontiers in the brain imaging sciences were also on display in the new electrophysiological (EEG) lab housed at the Department of Psychology and recent advances in optical neuroimaging were exhibited with functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS).
In celebrating 100 years of excellence at Wits, this centenary event made science and the brain fascinating and fun for the whole family!
100 years of innovation and inventions
- Zeblon Vilakazi
Various innovations after the past century have improved the world for many - but there’s still much more for universities to do.
We live in a world characterised by inequality, poverty, economic volatility, globalisation, climate change and ambiguity. In my own country, South Africa, residents have to navigate socioeconomic and political instability, power and water cuts, homelessness, unethical governance and mediocre or no service delivery.
It is a far cry from what the country could be if we brought its best talent and resources to bear for the benefit of humanity.
Innovation will be key to any positive changes – and research-intensive universities have a central to play in that innovation. As the University of the Witwatersrand (or Wits, as it’s commonly known) turns 100, my colleagues and I have been thinking a great deal about the inventions and breakthroughs that have emerged from the university in the past 100 years – and what is coming next.
Great innovations have emerged from the work done by Wits researchers that have shifted the dial in sectors ranging from health to computing to quantum and nuclear physics. These rich seams of knowledge continue to inform policy and daily decisions and are the foundation of cutting edge research the institution continues to produce.
100 years of changes
On 1 September 1939, Adolf Hitler invaded Poland. World War 2 was underway. Barely three months later, the first radar set was tested on Wits University’s campus. Britain and its allies were looking for a way to detect enemy aircraft and ships. A group of scientists – among them Sir Basil Schonland, Director of the Bernard Price Institute of Geophysical Research and another Wits engineer, Professor Guerino Bozzoli – came together to harness the power of radio waves.
An aerial view of the university’s Milner Park campus, 1930.Wits University
Almost a century on, the science of sensors has taken several quantum leaps. Professor Andrew Forbes and his team at Wits are encrypting, transmitting, and decoding data quickly and securely through light beams. He has just secured R54 million for the Wits Quantum Initiative which explores theoretical and experimental quantum science and engineering, secure communications, enhanced quantum-inspired imaging, novel nano and quantum-based sensors and devices.
As the Chair of the National Quantum Computing Working Group in South Africa, this is an area where I see immense potential for Africa. Classical computing has served society incredibly well. It gave us the Internet and cashless commerce. It sent humans to the moon, put robots on Mars and smartphones in our pockets.
But many of the world’s biggest mysteries and potentially greatest opportunities remain beyond the grasp of classical computers. To continue the pace of progress, we need to augment the classical approach with a completely new paradigm, one that follows its own set of rules - quantum computing.
This radically new way of performing computer calculations is exponentially faster than any classical computer. It can run new algorithms to solve previously “unsolvable” problems in optimisation, chemistry and machine learning, and its applications are far-reaching – from physics to healthcare.
Innovative healthcare is sorely needed across the African continent. Here, too, Wits has been able to play a vital role in the research, teaching and learning, clinical, social and advocacy spheres. It was the first university to lead COVID-19 vaccination trials in South Africa.
Research intensive universities in South Africa need to ask the difficult questions about their role in a changing society.
How do we serve as a catalyst for social change? How do we best use our intellectual dynamism and work with the public and private sectors to effect positive change? How do we create new, relevant knowledge and translate it into innovation? How do we best develop critical thinkers, innovators, creators and the high-level skills required to advance our economy, and the future world of work?
How do we quantify our social impact and ensure that it is contextually attuned? How do we influence policy change?
These questions are at the heart of the university’s strategy today. And they’re no doubt being considered across the higher education sector as universities work to harness their collective talent and the resources at their disposal to craft a new future and transform society for the benefit of all humanity.
Digital labour platforms subject global South workers to ‘algorithmic insecurity’
- Hannah J. Dawson and Ruth Castel-Branco
Digital platform work is often seen to suit workers’ skills, interests and schedules. But it comes at a cost to their economic security and control.
Digital labour platforms are rapidly transforming the world of work. Many governments in the global south have welcomed platforms that bring businesses, workers and consumers together, creating opportunities to reduce unemployment. But what happens when jobs are turned into tasks? Workers are increasingly managed by apps that allocate these tasks and monitor their performance. Platform workers face low pay, poor working conditions – and algorithmic surveillance.
The number of digital platforms has expanded rapidly over the past decade, a trend accelerated by COVID-19. Most are concentrated in just a few locations, among them the US, India and the UK. There is also a significant imbalance between the demand for digital workers based in the global north and the supply of workers in need of income opportunities, in the global south.
There are two broad types of digital labour platforms. The first are “location-based”. They mediate tasks carried out in person at particular locations: delivering food, taxi services, domestic work and care services. The second are “online web-based”. They mediate tasks such as data categorisation and translation and editing services that can, in theory, be performed anywhere via the internet and remotely.
While digital labour platforms create new opportunities for income, they also threaten to extend informality into new sectors through “algorithmic insecurity”.
Claimed advantages
Platform work is often seen to create opportunities that better suit workers’ skills, interests and schedules. This increased flexibility is said to provide workers, particularly women who have to balance paid and unpaid care work, with income opportunities and greater autonomy over their work. However, a growing body of evidence shows that the flexibility of many of these jobs comes at a cost to workers’ economic security and control over the work process.
Many people are drawn to platform work because they aspire for the greater autonomy and control that comes from “not having a boss”. Yet, as Brazilian historian Lucas Santos shows in his research with food delivery workers in São Paulo, Brazil, riders soon realise that the “feeling of freedom” they associate with “working for an app” is more aspiration than reality.
Indian sociologist Gayatri Nair’s research shows that many gig workers in India are attracted to the “initial façade of formality and respectability”. Many women workers in India’s beauty sector see “digital mediation” via an app as creating a “form of respectability” that was not there before. But, Nair shows, earnings are meagre and many workers lack autonomy and control over their work. Digital labour platforms, she argues, are creating new forms of “algorithmic insecurity” in the form of surveillance, ratings, and arbitrary changes to remuneration.
The reality of algorithmic control
Digital labour platforms often deny any employment relation. They insist that they act simply as a mediator between businesses, workers and consumers. What distinguishes them from a traditional labour market intermediary is that what they mediate is a single task, activity or service rather than a job in the traditional sense. And though platforms are never fully autonomous, they manage workers and tasks using algorithms (computer programmed procedures). In so doing they minimise human interaction.
This process of automating work processes and the coordination of tasks is often referred to as “algorithmic management” or “algorithmic control”.
For example, food delivery workers in São Paulo and Johannesburg, South Africa receive automated instructions on their mobile phones about where to collect and drop off the food, and the route via GPS map they should take. South African sociologists Eddie Webster and Fikile Masikane show that digital labour platforms not only assign tasks: they also assess performance and determine pay. They have the power to deactivate or disconnect a worker from the platform, unilaterally terminating employment.
Algorithmic management is invisible and inaccessible. It also controls all aspects of the work process. As Colombian sociologist Derly Yohanna Sanchez points out, this control extends to more than just the “supply and demand” for digital work. Platforms also control aspects of the work that are, she says, “external to the digital market such as personal information and human resources”.
This can produce anti-competitive or discriminatory outcomes, or both. For example, platforms give customers, as Nair put it, “full power to rate and review” workers. This algorithmic “disciplining” of workers via customer ratings has minimised transparency and accountability. It has also created perverse “information asymmetries”, as noted by communications scholar Sai Amulya Kommarraju. These make it nearly impossible for workers to contest customer ratings or challenge the forms of algorithmic control they are subjected to.
Resistance
Although algorithmic control appears insurmountable, there is some evidence that workers are beginning to push back and fight for greater transparency and improved worker conditions.
In December 2020, Uber drivers in Johannesburg, South Africa launched a protest by disabling the Uber app and not accepting requests for rides. Among the drivers’ complaints were the obscure way in which their accounts were blocked by Uber and the inequitable way in which the fees earned by drivers were unilaterally decided and implemented by Uber.
If digital labour platforms are here to stay it is an imperative to build platforms and algorithms that prioritise the interests and needs of workers, not only business. Giving workers the right to access and have control over their data is, International Labour Organisation economist Uma Rani argues, one of the most important ways to “empower worker control over algorithmic management”. This will require both regulation and pressures from below, by consumers and workers.
The Future of Work(ers) Research Programme at the Southern Centre for Inequality Studies, University of the Witwatersrand is hosting a seven-part dialogue series. The aim is to generate public debate on the relationship between digital technologies, the changing nature of work(ers) and the implications for inequality.
The upcoming dialogue on “Automation, labour-replacement and labour market restructuring” will take place on 19 July from 3:30 to 5:00pm, SAST. To register click here.
Digital migration: court delay upholds information rights of poor South Africans
- Franz Krüger
The decision further delays migration to digital broadcasting and places strain on the urgently needed bandwidth for mobile data.
South Africa’s Constitutional Court has decided to strike down the government’s plans to end old-style analogue television broadcasting at the end of June. The decision upholds the right to information, which poor South Africans would have been denied as government has been slow to roll out the devices they need to access the new digital signal.
But the decision further delays migration to digital broadcasting and will leave South Africa struggling longer with a lack of urgently needed bandwidth. The migration would free up space on the frequency spectrum for mobile data and other uses.
The government had many years to ensure a smooth transition and ensure that poor households would continue to have access to television services. But it failed to do so. A last minute rush and hasty deadlines could not obscure the fact that perhaps a third of South Africans would have been left without access.
The court’s ruling, handed down just two days before the deadline, said the government neglected to establish how many people would be left without access to television when the analogue signal was switched off. The decision was, therefore, unconstitutional and was set aside.
The court challenge to the 30 June date for analogue switch-off came from free-to-air private broadcaster e.tv, supported by civil society groups SOS Support Public Broadcasting and Media Monitoring Africa. They argued that the date was too early, as there were still too many people who wouldn’t have access to the new digital signal.
The process of digital migration has dragged on for many years: South Africa first planned to switch off analogue in 2011, well ahead of a deadline set by the International Telecommunications Union for 2015. But these and further deadlines and ministers came and went, while the process was dogged by claims of corruption, operational delays and accusations that South African satellite TV giant Multichoicetried to shape the process to its own agenda.
The administration of President Cyril Ramaphosa has identified the reshaping of the digital landscape as a policy priority. The government is pushing hard to finalise digital migration – moving analogue television broadcasts to a new digital platform, “digital terrestrial television”.
bridge the digital divide, especially on a continent where the majority of our people remain unconnected and without access to technology. We cannot afford to be left behind, irrespective of any other agendas. Our people are going to be connected.
Need for change
After so many years of delay, however, the landscape has changed dramatically. Digital terrestrial television has largely been overtaken by internet-based services like Netflix and satellite services like DSTV, at least for the middle classes. Poorer South Africans still rely heavily on the analogue system.
Around 36% of the country’s population might have been left in “television darkness” at the end of June if the switch-off had gone ahead, according to submissions to the Constitutional Court.
That the 36% are the most marginalised and have least access should be of particular concern to the government.
At the heart of the problem is the fact that the frequency spectrum has limited space for the radio, television, cellphone and other signals it carries. Newer digital technologies dramatically increase carrying capacity, and the ballooning demand for digital services has created massive demand for additional spectrum to be released. The lack of bandwidth has been identified as a major obstacle to lowering data costs and hence promoting economic growth.
However, the traditional broadcasters are in the way. They are occupying the frequency bands between 700 MHz and 800 MHz and need to be migrated to digital to free up those bands for mobile data.
The government has had some success on the other end of the digital migration problem. After long and complex court battles, the Independent Communications Authority of South Africa successfully held an auction of frequency space in March this year, realising R14.4 billion (about US$900 million) from six mobile companies.
The amount far exceeded expectations and reflects how valuable frequency space is. Treasury will be glad of the tidy windfall, too.
The hurdle
The problem is that the real estate has been sold while its old occupants are still in possession and fighting attempts to move them off.
Some transmitters in five provinces have already been switched off, but switch-offs in the most populous areas of the country still lie ahead.
The government has been rolling out the free set-top boxes that will allow people with old television sets to receive the new digital signal. But the process is far behind schedule.
By late last year, just over 500,000 households had been issued with set-top boxes, according to government figures submitted in court, out of a qualifying total of 3.75 million.
The ministry argued that most of those left out had not registered for support. The government could only take responsibility for those who had, the minister said in court papers. But the Constitutional Court said this was not good enough, and that the 31 October 2021 deadline to register was irrational.
Though e.tv has emphasised the loss of information rights of millions for purposes of its application to the court, the broadcaster also fears a massive loss of business. With such a huge drop in audience numbers, advertisers will simply go elsewhere.
The South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC), the national public broadcaster, too, would lose money and initially expressed concern about switching off analogue too quickly. It later apologised to the minister for an alleged breach of protocol, after apparent pressure from the ministry. But, the statement has not been retracted and remains on the corporation’s website.
A question of timing and rights
All sides agree that the analogue switch-off needs to happen – it is only the timing that is at issue. Though the process has been running for many years, progress has been painfully slow while pressure for more bandwidth has grown exponentially.
It seems less than fair to expect millions of the most disadvantaged to do without television as a result of the state’s difficulties with delivery – in this case, of set-top boxes. After all, information is a basic right and necessity.
The Constitutional Court ruling means that until the government can roll out set-top boxes to those who need them, mobile data will remain scarce and expensive.
The study’s authors, Adrian Schofield, production consultant at the IITPSA, and Professor Barry Dwolatzky, Director of the JCSE, describe the growing trend to recruit foreign skills as “disturbing, given the continuing high levels of unemployment in South Africa”.
With pressures on business margins making employers less willing to wait for graduates to ‘get up to speed’, the number of enterprises saying it had become harder to recruit increased from 20% last year to 35% this year. Employers recruiting skills overseas say critical skills visas are growing in importance, and that changes to the critical skills list and critical skills visa (CSV) criteria have impacted many of them, with 25% saying the list amended in 2022 has made it harder to obtain the skills they need.
The study report notes that many holders of CSVs under the 2014 criteria will now not be able to renew or extend their visas.
Foreign skills markets have also become more attractive for local ICT practitioners, with almost 30% of respondents already working, or planning to work, remotely, and more than 50% saying they are considering doing so.
Dwolatzky says: “Although firm statistics are not readily available, we do know that many highly qualified and experienced ICT practitioners are taking their skills overseas, to more stable social environments, to more lucrative economies and to better futures for their families. This represents a massive drain on our education and training resources, as the return on our investment in these practitioners is gained by the foreign territory.”
MICT sector size in 2022
The Media, Information and Communication Technologies (MICT) sector now comprises 32 985 employers across five sub-sectors, representing a 7% decrease from the 35 569 in the previous financial year with the number of employees increasing to 228,990. However, more than half of ICT practitioners work in non-MICT sectors, including retail, financial, services, public sector, manufacturing, mining and health.
Changing enterprise skills priorities
The 2022 ICT Skills Survey tracked changes in enterprise priorities since 2008. It found that 14 years ago, the top priorities were Business Intelligence/ Knowledge Management, Application Development and Software as a Service, followed by Service Oriented Architecture, Web Development and Mobile Computing. This year, they are Information Security/Cybersecurity, Big Data/Data Analytics, DevOps, Artificial Intelligence and Internet of Things.
Top 5 hard-to-fill vacancies, slowing demand
The top five occupations reported by the SETA with hard to fill vacancies in the MICT sector are Software Developer (1435 vacancies), Computer Network and Systems Engineer (1070 vacancies), ICT Systems Analyst (1036 vacancies), ICT Security Specialist (270 vacancies) and Developer Programmer (252 vacancies).
The study authors note that these vacancy numbers are lower than they were last year, indicative of “a severe slowing of growth in the sector”.
Schofield says: “The demand for skills generally, and for ICT skills in particular, is subject to a wide range of influences. These include the depressed state of the economy, uncertain political stability, fallout from exposure to crime and corruption and the introduction of new and improved technologies.”
The key drivers of change influencing skills demand and supply across the MICT sector in future include artificial intelligence, cloud computing, big data analytics, 5G and internet of things. In other sectoral SETAs, the study authors find growing demand for 4IR skills, particularly in areas such as data analytics, artificial intelligence and machine learning, along with developer programmers and cyber security specialists.
Multi-tasking and upskilling across the board
The survey found that the average South African ICT practitioner continues to perform multiple task sets, with only a few identifying their role as “specialist” in nature.
100% of respondents believe they need to keep upskilling themselves to stay relevant in a changing environment, through a combination of on-site learning, e-learning/podcasts, and knowledge sharing. Around 70% seek ‘on the job experience or mentoring’, and almost half want ‘proof of learning’ in the form of a certificate, diploma or degree.
However, Schofield said: “The pressure of work makes less time available for continuing academic studies, even on a part-time basis.”
Education to support work-ready graduates
The survey also found that among ICT practitioners, only half of ICT graduates are able to find employment immediately after graduating, with around 25% taking 6 months to a year to find work.
Schofield said: “It continues to disappoint us that a significant proportion are still having to wait up to one year to become employed.”
The survey highlighted an urgent and persistent need to raise the game in the education pipeline, to close the local ICT skills gaps.
Said Schofield: “It is incumbent on the private sector to drive the required changes through partnership with government and expansion of the many initiatives taking place. We are heartened by the planned changes to curriculum and teacher training but it is vital that these plans are implemented without delay and with appropriate funding. Equally important as strengthening the skills pipeline is the creation of work opportunities for the newly-skilled.”
RPA, ML threaten jobs of young, black women
The research also found that while the job vulnerability of the female population as a whole has decreased between 2009 and 2019, the vulnerability of young, black women has increased in this ten-year period. The report noted that young, black women who ten years ago might have typically been employed in relatively unskilled occupations such as domestic work, cleaning and care had now moved into higher-skilled clerical and service-oriented occupations. However, these occupations –characterised by routine and repetitive occupational tasks – are highly vulnerable to displacement by artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) software systems, such as robotic process automation (RPA).
Major partnership to drive digital transformation in Africa
- Wits University
The Afretec network has made 20 million US dollars available to members, including Wits, to collaborate in engineering and technology.
The University of the Witwatersrand (Wits University) has secured the largest partnership in the history of the university, which will drive digital transformation in Africa. It made this announcement as it celebrates its 100thanniversary in 2022.
The Senior Deputy Vice-Chancellor: Academic at Wits University, Professor Ruksana Osman says, “It is an absolute privilege for Wits to have been selected as a member of this prestigious network, especially as we celebrate 100 years of excellence in 2022. We look forward to working with members of the Afretec Network to expand, educate, and empower the next generation of African technology leaders. We want to co-create opportunities and drive the inclusive digital transformation and growth of Africa, one of Wits’ centenary goals.”
The 2022 Afretec Conference will take place in Kigali, Rwanda from 6-8 November and will focus on the inclusive digital transformation of Africa. A plan of action will be developed to ensure the realisation of the goals and objectives of the network in advancing digital transformation, knowledge creation and entrepreneurship in Africa.
Professor Nithaya Chetty, Dean of the Faculty of Science at Wits University adds, “Some of the collaborative activities may include the establishment of joint capacity building programme; the exchange and sharing of best practices; the delivery of faculty enrichment and exchange programmes to promote teaching excellence; programmes to better prepare students for postgraduate programs in engineering and technology; the organisation of social leadership activities; and student and staff exchanges to advance research with a focus on job creation. We could also look at developing new certificate and degree programmes, online short courses and work across sectors and disciplinary and geographic boundaries to bring our best talent and resources to bear to solve 21st century challenges.”
The Afretec Network seeks to:
Promote and share effective approaches and best practices to engineering, technology, entrepreneurship, education, and knowledge creation activities to influence and shape practice and policy;
Advance the digital development of Africa by developing skilled educators, engineers, and technologists;
Encourage and support deep multidisciplinary research collaborations, to enhance research capacity and to develop focused engineering and/or technology research on African matters;
Identify and create pathways to opportunity for engineering and technology students through entrepreneurial development and opportunities;
Leverage the collective engineering and technology education, research and entrepreneurial strengths of members of the network and industry partners; and
Maintain a consistent commitment to social impact, diversity, inclusion, and sustainability as well as the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (2015-2030) and the Africa Agenda (2015-2063).
Driving digital transformation is a priority area for Wits University and forms a key component of its Centenary Campaign. The Centenary Campaign seeks to raise R3 billion to support Wits’ eight priority areas: driving digital transformation; catalysing innovation and entrepreneurship; ensuring better health for all; solving global challenges; advancing society, governance and justice; future-proofing our national treasures; developing the next generation of leaders; and energising broad-based alumni support, and this partnership fits squarely with these priorities.
“We are deeply grateful to CMU-Africa, to the Mastercard Foundation, to members of the Afretec Network, and to Professor Osman for leading, enabling and stewarding this important partnership at Wits, with her colleagues. May it grow from strength to strength and drive digital transformation in Africa,” concludes Professor Zeblon Vilakazi, Vice-Chancellor and Principal of Wits University.
Looking ahead from a life of new beginnings
- Wits University
Emeritus Professor Barry Dwolatzky launches inspirational memoir, smartly capturing his less-than-ordinary coded history.
Revered as the ‘Grand Geek’ of South Africa, the innovator, academic and software engineer has devoted his life to teaching, supporting and encouraging young people to lead Africa’s digital future.
In his new memoir, Coded History – A life of new beginnings, lauded as ‘revealing, inspirational and vulnerable’, Dwolatzky captures his extraordinary 'life of new beginnings'.
He shares stories of facing his death at 35, his life as an underground software engineer in the struggle against Apartheid, “the mission” that brought him back to South Africa from the UK where he lived in self-exile in the ‘80s, and how, on the eve of democracy, he embarked to help build the country’s IT industry.
In his memoir he also shares his love and connection with Wits University which spans more than 50 years, starting as a student in electrical engineering in the early 70s where he graduated with a BSc(Eng) degree and later his PhD, and where he has since devoted much of his time to prepare young people for the future. “I’ve discovered that idealism and naivety coupled with bold dreams and determination can get one very far,” he writes in the book.
An inspiration to generations of software engineers who have had the privileged to be taught and mentored by ‘Prof. Barry’, as he is affectionately known, Dwolatzky now hopes a new generation will read the book and rather than seeing him in the book, make connections to their own world.
In conversation with radio broadcaster and founder of Champion South Africa, Ashraf Garda, at the launch Dwolatzky said despite the current state of the country, he strongly believes in young people.
“I apologise to them because we’ve handed them such a mess (of a country) but they have the creativity and energy as the drive and the reason to build a new South Africa, a new Africa and a new world. So I believe in the future of our country,” he said.
That is also the point of a university, he said, “to prepare people for the future”.
“The greatest pleasure I get is to hear from former students about the success they are achieving,” Dwolatzky said at the launch hosted in the iClub at Wits University’s Tshimologong Digital Innovation Precinct that he founded, where hundreds of budding young African digital creatives, innovators and entrepreneurs have been honing their skills since 2017.
Also speaking at the launch, Wits Vice-Chancellor and Principal, Professor Zeblon Vilakazi, said Dwolatzky’s vision with Tshimologong has ensured that Africa is not in the backwash of the next wave of technology development but that "we are changing the face of this continent right, front and centre of this new wave. Thanks to him, this time around Africa is not being left behind".
The Wits digital innovation precinct now houses one of only 13 IBM Research Labs in the world, and is one of only a handful of tech hubs outside of the US that is connected to the global network of quantum computers – ‘the future face of computing’, Vilakazi said.
Many of his friends, colleagues, students and ANC struggle stalwarts who came together at the launch to celebrate the innovative engineer’s life were struck by stories from his layered life that they were not aware of.
This includes using his encryption and coding skills in the 80s to support the underground anti-apartheid movement’s clandestine communications network. And also the more person struggles of facing the devasting news of being diagnosed in 1987 with a rare form of leukemia with only few months to live. He vulnerably tells how he was lying in a hospital bed in London and not wanting to die at the age of 35.
But, as the book’s main theme charges, surviving the dire prognosis, he embarked on a new beginning that led him to become one of South Africa’s most influential IT personalities.
And he is not done yet. Dwolatzky was appointed as Wits’ Director of Innovation Strategy in 2021 where he is driving efforts to "take our amazing research being done at Wits and turn it into impact for our country, continent, and society in various ways. Innovation is a mindset and we can drive innovation by giving people the support they need to be innovators", he said.
Coded History – My life of new beginnings is available for sale at https://SoftwareEngineer.org.za or http://amazon.com and selected Exclusive Books, Wordsworth Books and Bargain Books bookstores.
More about Innovation @ Wits
Visit Wits Innovation at https://www.wits.ac.za/innovation/. The University’s Innovation Strategy is aimed at bringing brilliant minds together to share, collaborate and support innovation from first ideas and research to entrepreneurship and societal impact. It is a space to create, collaborate, and engage in impactful innovation, across disciplines and boundaries. We are committed to using our knowledge for the advancement of our community, city, country, continent, and the globe.
Wits physicist is joint winner of The World Academy of Sciences award
- Wits University
Professor Andrew Forbes shares the award for physics with Professor Jueinai Kwo of Taiwan.
Wits physicist Professor Andrew Forbes jointly won the award in the Physics category of the 2024 The World Academy of Sciences (TWAS) awards that were announced late in November.
Forbes was recognised for his seminal contributions in creating new forms of classical and quantum states of structured light, thereby advancing photonic-based applications and fundamental sciences.
Kwo won the award for her outstanding work in condensed matter research, with the invention of novel thin films for magnetism, superconductivity, nano-electronics and spintronics; and for her pioneering work in the field of artificial magnetic superlattices.
TWAS Awards are awarded every two years in nine fields: Agricultural Sciences, Biology, Chemistry, Earth, Astronomy and Space Sciences, Engineering Sciences, Mathematics, Medical Sciences, Physics, and Social Sciences. During the latest round, there were 13 prize winners: one from Brazil, four from China and three from Taiwan, China; one from India; one from Kenya; one from Malaysia; one from Türkiye and one from South Africa. The award winners include four women.
The TWAS Awards (previosuly called 'TWAS Prizes') are awarded to individual scientists from developing countries in recognition of an outstanding contribution to scientific knowledge in nine fields of sciences and/or to the application of science and technology to sustainable development.
Candidates for a TWAS Award must be scientists who have been working and living in a developing country for at least ten years immediately prior to their nomination. They must meet also meet at least one of the following qualifications:Scientific research achievement of outstanding significance for the development of scientific thought, and/or make an outstanding contribution to the application of science and technology to sustainable development.
“I often get asked by people why I work in South Africa, and I always explain that it is because I believe that I can do good science anywhere, but here in South Africa I can do more than just good science, I can make a telling difference,” says Forbes.
This contribution may be through advocacy to the government to create opportunities for the next generation of scientists, or by helping to educate our way out of our social crisis.
“Talent is spread evenly across the planet, but opportunity is not. I chose to be an opportunity creator for others, while doing what I love to do, science at the highest level I can. TWAS recognises people who select to do excellent science in places where they are needed the most, and although no awards are needed for me to do the right thing, it is most welcome when it is acknowldged in this way, for which I am truly grateful.”
Each TWAS Award carries a cash award of USD10,000. The winners will lecture about their research at next General Conference to be tentatively held in 2024, when they will also receive a plaque.
Africa’s first endovascular robotic unit will advance research and enable ‘outreach intelligence’
- Wits University
The new unit at the Wits Donald Gordon Medical Centre (WDGMC) is both a robotics research opportunity and a global responsibility.
The WDGMC, the first and only private teaching hospital in South Africa, launched a state-of-the art endovascular robotics unit on 14 September 2022.
The unit is the first in Africa and the Middle East to use the Corindus CorPath GRX vascular robotic for Robotic Assisted Endovascular Interventions (RAEI).
The WDGMC trains medical experts, specialists and sub-specialists in fields including endovascular [inside the blood vessel] surgery. Endovascular surgery is a procedure that uses microscopic incisions and long, thin tubes [catheters] inserted into a blood vessel to repair it.
Professor Jay Pillai is the Academic Head of the Division of Vascular Surgery at Wits and a vascular surgeon at the WDGMC. He explains that traditional endovascular therapy is a three dimensional, active process in which wires are manipulated through the body and observed on a screen as a [mechanical] arm moves up and down.
The new robotic unit removes the interventionist from the patient, with the interventionist ‘operating’ a joystick that guides a robotic arm to conduct the surgery. An interventionist is a physician specifically trained to perform interventional or minimally invasive procedures.
Pillai says, “The issue around robotics is removing that interventionist – you take away the interventionist, remove him from theatre – and replace him with a robot. This is artificial intelligence in reactive form, but why replace the human interventionists in the first place? This is where the philosophy of endovascular robotics arises.”
Robotic philosophy
Pillai intentionally uses the word philosophy because it is the study of the knowledge of things, and the new endovascular robotic intervention refers to looking for disease in the vessel [vein] in a novel way.
“I think that philosophy is probably the right word to use when we talk about medicine, evidence and science. It governs what we do on a daily basis. But evidence-based medicine has a ladder effect, so there’s a scale to it, and robotics, I believe, is at the bottom end of that scale. I think philosophy – the study of the benefit of it, of the knowledge of it at a fundamental level – is what we should be talking about,” says Pillai.
Although vascular surgery via robotics could expedite the procedure in a repetitive and continuous manner, which may not be possible by hand, the benefit of robotics to patients, at this stage, remains questionable, he says.
Thus, it is the research that this new endovascular robotic unit has the potential to stimulate that is fundamental to its existence and its philosophy.
A global responsibility
The Corindus CorPath GRX vascular robotic now installed at the WDGM, is a product of Corindus, a Siemens Healthineers company. This product was originally designed to protect and assist interventional cardiologists in complex PCI (Percutaneous Coronary Intervention), a family of minimally invasive procedures used to open clogged coronary arteries.
Although Siemens is based in Germany, the R&D facility is in the US, where the product is used extensively for PCI. It is only in Dijon, France, and now at the WDGMC in South Africa, that endovascular applications are being explored.
“The worrying issue is that the scientific peer reviewed efforts from all of them [US centres] is almost non-existent,” says Pillai. “This shows the pressure that’s on us to provide evidence in this new stratosphere to perform this, if we can find some benefit. We’ve got to research the fundamentals of knowledge – that’s the starting point of robotics. The fact that it can be done doesn’t mean that it should be done. That’s realism. We mustn’t live a lie. It’s our duty to show that it may or may not work.”
Evidence-based research
Vascular surgeons at WDGMC, Dr Pradeep Mistry and Dr Dirk le Roux are already using the Corindus at WDGMC to advance research into patient benefits.
Mistry says they’re exploring alternative applications, or “cheats”, of the technology, given that the Corindus was originally the domain of cardiac and not endovascular interventionists. This research helps Siemens advance products for patient benefit, he says.
Dr Zoya Iqbal, Product Manager at Siemens Healthineers, says that investment in telehealth, AI and medical robotics is at an all-time high, with revenues of $25.5 billion expected by 2027. “Robotics such as Corindus brings precision medicine to the patient,” she says, but she echoes Pillai’s sentiment that “we shouldn’t just do it because we can.”
Mistry and Le Roux have used the Corindus for “a mixed bag of pathologies” based upon which one research article has been produced so far, awaiting publication. The paper explores the potential of automation to standardise patient care, and the integration of imaging with robotics.
“The problem with vascular surgery is that we need a lot of ‘pushability’. We didn’t find this system [Corindus] very friendly towards the way we practice medicine, so we had to come up with our own fixes in terms of increasing pushability,” says Mistry. “One thing we did find is that the robotic technology works in conjunction with your standard C-arm or hybrid theatre facility, and it is a good ancillary tool to use with other procedures, and not just in isolation.”
This original research enabled the WDGMC team to come up with solutions in terms of advancing the technology in the field of vascular medicine. Mistry envisages that the WDGMC Endovascular Robotics Unit will ultimately become a centre of excellence in Africa.
Applications in Africa
Aside from the global responsibility for evidence-based robotics research, Pillai suggests two potential and uniquely African applications of the Corindus: firstly, endovascular robotic surgery during a viral pandemic, and secondly, what Pillai calls ‘outreach intelligence’.
During the second peak of the Covid-19 pandemic in August 2021, interventionists at WDGMC successfully performed endovascular robotic surgery on the world’s first Covid-19 patient in isolation.
“This was the first Covid positive patient that was done anywhere in the world. I’m certain of it because nothing else has been published, and we’re about to do that,” says Pillai.
The intuitive benefit is not the fact that robotic surgery was done and that the patient could be treated within the blood vessel, but rather that there was nobody else in theatre.
“The transmissibility, the viral infectivity to healthcare workers is born by this new technology. About 85% of the duration of this procedure was done without anybody in theatre,” says Pillai, but cautions that this is not “a massive scientific benefit, because it’s only one case”.
Outreach intelligence
Pillai coins the phrase ‘outreach intelligence’ to suggest how endovascular robotics can impact Africa. Outreach refers to Wits University’s capability and capacity to extend teaching, learning and clinical training to outlying hospitals. Sharing this intelligence could provide critical training, resources and support, he says.
“I don’t think anyone else in the world is looking at it from this perspective and I call it ‘outreach intelligence’. ‘Outreach’ meaning our University has this capability, and all of us participate in it and create an outreach performance to outlying hospitals, and ‘outreach intelligence’ – it comes from artificial intelligence – and there may be a benefit to it in hospitals who have limited resources, for example,” says Pillai.
Such ‘outreach intelligence’ could, for example, benefit a hospital located 30km away from WDGMC, which has a need for angiography [a type of X-ray used to check blood vessels], but has limited expertise.
“And these places actually have a demand [for such services], based on the pathology and the amount of disease that they have,” Pillai points out. “So we could have the cockpit here and the robot at another centre. This may actually not only treat a patient – a patient benefit – but create a teaching infrastructure. In other words, you can show people there how to do it.”
There are of course financial constraints implicit in this scenario, but what if the robot was a mobile unit?
“That would change things incredibly. If you look at that little thing attached to the table, it’s not impossible to create a mobile facility with a mobile technician, and you could easily get these things into various hospitals. And even if it’s just angiography, it would make a considerable difference," says Pillai. "I think this is for the future, it’s probably a public health type research project, but I think it’s something we need to start looking into."
Pillai concludes, “Robotic Assisted Endovascular Interventions [RAEI] will evolve. AI will evolve. We now have an opportunity to evolve synchronously. I think it’s at its inception, and later on when we add other features of AI, like memory, it’s going to be easier. AI will evolve into memory and from a radiology perspective, if you could feed a CT scan, for example, into a robotic machine it could memorise that and help us navigate the wires; it could choose the wires for us”, said Pillai, adding that he thinks we’re still a long way from that.”
About the launch of the WDGMC Endovascular Robotics Unit
The launch at the Centre in Parktown, Johannesburg, kicked-off the WDGMC’s 20th anniversary celebrations, which coincide with Wits University’s centenary. In attendance at the launch were Dr Sue Tager, CEO of WDGMC;Professor Lynn Morris, Deputy Vice-Chancellor: Research and Innovation; Professor Martin Smith, Head of the Department of Surgery; Professor Hellen Myezwa, Head of the School of Therapeutic Sciences; and Arnold Basserabie, Chair of the Wits Foundation Board of Governors, amongst others. Dr Judy Dlamini, the Wits Chancellor and Chair of the WDGMC Board did the ribbon-cutting honours.
About the Wits University Donald Gordon Medical Centre
The Wits University Donald Gordon Medical Centre (WDGMC) is a South African university hospital committed to providing best patient care as well as advancing specialist training and research. It envisages both training and retaining highly skilled medical experts in South Africa, whilst also providing highly specialised patient treatment and care. The WDGMC offers a superior training programme for specialist and sub-specialist training right here in South Africa. Through its innovative multidisciplinary approach, it seeks to establish models of care that can be replicated at a training and service level throughout the country.
New high-tech Digital Dome catapults Johannesburg Planetarium into the future
- Wits University
Wits University and Anglo American to transform the Johannesburg Planetarium into a world-class digital research, training, and science engagement facility.
Learners, students, researchers, and Joburgers will soon have access to a cutting-edge 360-degree visual experience in the new Wits Anglo American Digital Dome, where they will learn through immersion in multi-dimensional, cross-disciplinary worlds.
“We are creating a high-tech 360° IMAX-like theatre, just better,” says Professor Roger Deane, Director of the Wits Centre for Astrophysics and the SKA Chair in Radio Astronomy at Wits. Deane has served as Chair of the Digital Dome Working Group, which includes leading AI researchers, scientists, digital artists, and quantum computing engineers. “The Digital Dome will provide an incredible theatre experience, but it will also serve a greater purpose – it will assist researchers across all disciplines to visualise data in a profound way.”
Wits University and Anglo American have partnered to fund the refurbishment, expansion, and digitalisation of the 62-year-old Johannesburg Planetarium into a new, future-savvy, multidisciplinary research, training and science engagement events hub.
Deane adds: “For many researchers across various fields, we feel as if we are drowning in data, which is coupled with the challenge of datasets becoming more complex and more multi-dimensional. A facility like the new Wits Anglo American Digital Dome is a way of honing a more intuitive and immersive understanding of big data, where we will be able to visualise our work, whether it is in teaching anatomy to first-year medical students, visualising the myriad particle showers in the Large Hadron Collider at CERN, exploring the first galaxies in the Universe, or testing new games, built by Wits’ gaming design students.”
A three-stage project
Together, Wits and Anglo American have provided R75 million to fund the first two stages of the three-stage project, with the Wits University Council committing R20 million and Anglo American providing R55 million. During the first stage, the existing Planetarium will be refurbished and digitised with a new, state-of-the-art digital projection system, auditorium seating, and a Science and Technology Exploratorium. The second stage sees a north wing expansion for a new suite of operational offices, an exhibition area, as well as a seminar room and meeting space for Digital Dome show planning and design.
In the third and final stage, which is yet to be funded, a new east wing research-focused building will house open-plan office space for visiting multidisciplinary research teams to interface with in-house data visualisation and Digital Dome show rendering experts. It will include a creative studio, film and sound production facilities, to enable Wits to develop much of its science engagement digital content on site. This stage will be integrated with the Wits Football Stadium, and will include a media viewing deck and rooftop event space. Stage 1 and 2 , of the Wits Anglo American Digital Dome, will be completed in 2023 and open to the public in 2024.
A 100-year partnership
Wits’ history is inextricably linked with that of the mining industry and the development of the City of Johannesburg for over 100 years.
Duncan Wanblad, Chief Executive of Anglo American, said: “For a very long time now, supporting equitable access to education has been a priority for us as a business. As one of Africa’s leading Universities, Wits continues to play a vital role in providing access to education, not only to its students but the broader South African public too. The new Wits Anglo American Digital Dome will be a truly world-class and accessible centre that will inspire generations to take an active interest in the science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) disciplines and the digital arts. I am also delighted that this project tangibly builds on our legacy in Johannesburg by contributing towards the City’s aspirations to become a Smart African City.”
62 Years of Edutainment
“For the past 62 years, the Planetarium has entertained, inspired and educated hundreds of thousands of learners from all over Gauteng and beyond, who were introduced to the night sky, our solar system, and our Milky Way galaxy through shows at the Planetarium. With the new Wits Anglo American Digital Dome, we hope to continue inspiring people and to expand it through digital technology to other scientific disciplines, from climate modelling, artificial intelligence applications, to new avenues in the digital arts,” says Professor Zeblon Vilakazi, Wits Vice-Chancellor and Principal, who is leading the Wits Centenary Campaign. “We look forward to welcoming members of the public to the opening of the Wits Anglo American Digital Dome in 2024.”
Worker organisations can survive the digital age. Here’s how
- Edward Webster and Ruth Castel-Branco
In the face of a decline in traditional union membership, it’s critical to focus on where resistance is taking place, rather than where it is not.
There is a widespread view that labour has become irrelevant as a force for change. The argument goes that the proliferation of digital labour platforms – and the rise in job insecurity this brings – means that worker resistance is increasingly futile.
The problem with this pessimistic “end of labour thesis” is that it gives globalisation and the digital age a logic and coherence that they do not have. The result is the decentring of workplace struggles over the conditions of work and an obscuring of relations of exploitation. The outcome is that capital is let off the hook.
We argue that worker organising and public policy can play an important role in shaping the terms of digitisation.
In South Africa, Uber Eats workers have demonstrated their structural power by collectively logging off the app. In Colombia, Rappi delivery workers have successfully organised transnational strikes with support from established unions and social movements.
When it comes to policy, the Biden administration recently showed that platform business models can be changed. It proposed a rule which would reclassify platform workers as employees, extending labour and social protection to precarious workers.
We argue that unions continue to be important. But we also argue that, in the face of a decline in traditional union membership, it’s critical to focus on where resistance is taking place, rather than where it is not. While we are witnessing a decline in a particular form of worker organisation, worker organisation is still very much alive and effective.
The end of labour thesis
There is significant evidence in support of the “end of labour thesis”. Over the last decades there has been a decline in union membership globally. Established trade unions are particularly reluctant to organise platform workers because it’s a difficult sector to organise.
Platform workers are geographically dispersed and work in an individualised manner, which makes collective claim-making difficult. The elusive nature of algorithmic management muddies the nature of demands. And the misclassification of platform workers as self-employed means that it is not always clear who they should make claims from.
This ambiguity over platform workers’ class location raises difficult questions for union organisers. Who is a worker? Is a food courier who owns one scooter a worker? What about someone who owns two scooters and hires someone to ride the second one?
The picture is blurred further by how big technology giants are using data to manage workers. Data tracking has become critical to what is being called algorithmic management. It’s used to make decisions about recruitment and allocation of work, ratings and remuneration and even termination. One of the consequences of this is what’s been termed algorithmic insecurity – the fact that workers are aware that their performance is assessed on the basis of arbitrary ratings.
As Anita Gurumurthy, executive director of IT for Change, notes, demands for the extension of labour protections need to include demands over data ownership.
In defence of labour
Despite the challenge of organising platform workers, labour protests have grown. The Leeds Index of Platform Labour Protest shows that platform worker organisation, mobilisation and resistance have spread rapidly across the globe.
However, our research also points to the proliferation of self-organised groups, which blur the boundaries between traditional unionism and informal workers’ associations or cooperatives. These range from mutual aid associations like the Brothers of Melville in South Africa to women-owned worker cooperatives like Senoritas Courier in Brazil.
As labour scholar Maurizio Atzeni argued during a policy dialogue hosted by the Southern Centre for Inequality Studies, the processes that create conditions of exploitation also foster resistance.
The relationship between capital and labour
A key question is whether emerging forms of worker organisation have the power to reclaim control from digital capital and push back against “algorithmic insecurity”.
While emerging cooperatives may offer insights into alternatives to platform capitalism, they alone cannot transform platform capitalism, media and communications expert Rafael Grohman notes.
At the centre of platform capitalism are unprecedented levels of power in the hands of a few corporates, namely Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Microsoft, Netflix, Google and Spotify. Despite a drop in share prices with the potential introduction of regulatory reforms, they account for 20% of the US stock market.
Control and power is concentrated in a small, mathematically proficient elite dominating decision-making and policy by owning and controlling the “algorithm” in ways that generate even greater inequalities. Global IT giants have become more powerful than most countries and governments. They evade corporate governance codes, laws and policies, including anti-trust, competition and tax collection.
As Gururmurthy notes, data has become a new frontier of capital accumulation. It has also become a source of value in and of itself, to be bought and sold along the data value chain.
The role of the state
In the absence of an adequate regulatory framework for platform work, two broad pathways can be identified.
One involves a deepening of the domination of foreign-owned tech giants with no national or global agreement on how to operate. This could be described as a form of re-colonisation of the global south. This could create more jobs, but workers would be stuck in low-wage drudgery with none of the protections or benefits of formal employment.
An alternative pathway could be a “digital social compact” created with the active participation of platform workers and their organisations. This would involve coherent global and national policies, including legislation to protect workers.
This optimistic path opens the possibility of the extension of labour and social protections to informalised platform workers.
The Future of Work(ers) Research Programme at the Southern Centre for Inequality Studies, University of the Witwatersrand is hosting a seven-part dialogue series. The aim is to generate public debate on the relationship between digital technologies, the changing nature of work(ers) and the implications for inequality.
*This article is an extract from The Conversation and is republished under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article by Edward Webster, Distinguished Research Professor, Southern Centre for Inequality Studies, University of the Witwatersrand; and Ruth Castel-Branco, Research Manager, University of the Witwatersrand.
Global recognition for research and innovation in pharmaceutical sciences
- Wits University
Wits Professor of Pharmacy, Yahya Choonara, is the 2022 FIP Distinguished Pharmaceutical Science Award winner.
The Bureau of the International Pharmaceutical Federation (FIP), which represents over four million pharmacists and pharmaceutical scientists around the world, bestowed the award at the 80th FIP World Congress of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences in Seville, Spain.
The international accolade recognises Professor Yahya Choonara’s research and contribution to pharmaceutical sciences globally. As an advocate of pharmaceutical innovation, his work is at the forefront of producing advanced life-saving 21st century medicines for infectious, hereditary, and lifestyle diseases.
Choonara leads the Wits Advanced Drug Delivery Platform (WADDP) Research Unit. A Wits University flagship unit, the WADPP is Africa’s first, largest and only entity contributing to the design of novel targeted drug delivery systems, nano-medicine, functional biomaterials, and regenerative medicines.
Drug delivery systems refer to technologies that carry drugs into or throughout the body. These technologies include the method of delivery, such as a pill that you swallow or a vaccine that is injected. It is the method or process of administering a pharmaceutical compound to achieve a therapeutic effect in humans.
Choonara is a Personal Professor of Pharmaceutical Sciences and the National Research Foundation Chair in Pharmaceutical Biomaterials and Polymer-Engineered Drug Delivery Technologies. He holds the largest pharmaceutical product patent portfolio (43) aimed at providing patient-centric drug therapies for unmet therapeutic needs. His inventions include a WaferMat (the world’s fastest dissolving matrix), a VagiTab, Nanomedicine and BioInspired NeuroTherapeutics.
He is also the first South African pharmaceutical scientist and pharmacist to receive both the FIP Award and South Africa's Department of Science and Innovation Top Intellectual Property Creator Award, one of the country’s highest awards for distinguished contributions to innovation.
Choonara is passionate about developing the next generation of pharmaceutical scientists for South Africa and Africa. He has graduated more than 110 postgraduates and mentored more than 18 postdoctoral fellows from nine countries. He currently mentors several emerging pharmaceutical scientists at various academic institutions in Africa who are pursuing a career in pharmaceutical product development (including nanomedicine). In this regard, he was invited to co-author two UNESCO UniTWIN inaugural reports, titled A Needs-Based Pharmaceutical Sciences Education in Africa and Addressing Equitable, Inclusive and Quality Pharmaceutical Science Education.
‘Dad’s subwoofer’, an electric walking cane, and, is that lighting!?
- Wits University
4th year engineering students show off their bold and visionary solutions with amazing final-year projects.
Speaking at the School’s annual EIE Open Day, Head of School, Professor Estelle Trengove, said it is a special year as this cohort of students is not only the largest group ever but will be graduating in the year Wits is celebrating its centenary.
“It’s been a joyful year to be a Witsie and I hope it has made your year even more special,” she said in welcoming the students online to Open Day.
Every year 4th-year students gather for Open Day to showcase their capstone projects for the year. “This is the crowning glory of all the hard work they put in,” Trengove said. Projects are identified by academic staff and students, and each pair of students work together to find solutions to unique complex engineering problems that have a direct impact on everyday challenges.
This year Open Day was held for the second time on the Gather Town platform – a virtual, interactive, custom 2D-world. Following the welcoming address in the ‘main conference hall’, participants and visitors steered their avatars and ‘walked’ around the exhibition halls in the ‘EIE Gather Town’ to engage with students about their projects in real-time using the video chat function. Students were also able to display their project posters, videos and other virtual content during their presentation.
Africa’s youth and young entrepreneurs are the future job creators of the country and the best hope to tackle joblessness, and this year’s innovative projects show the creativity, resourcefulness and ingenuity of Wits students to come up with bold and visionary solutions.
Using ‘Dad’s subwoofer’ to detect underwater earthquakes and volcanos
Vera Fourie, an electrical engineering student, partnered with Mandla Masogo, an information engineering student, for their project titled: Underwater seismic event detection using visible light.
They set out to determine if visual light disturbances in water can detect whether an underwater seismic event, such as a volcano or earthquake, has happened or not.
But the scale of such a real-life test would be an oceanic problem to overcome. Instead, Fourie’s lightbulb moment came when she remembers how subwoofer speakers were used in MTV music videos from the early 2000s to ‘blow the girl's hair out’.
“Our project is conceptual because we had to build a very small testbed to work with. We used a water tank with a laser and photoresistor to sense whether there are any disturbances in the water,” she explained.
To create the level of disturbance needed for their measurements, though, would have meant they had to buy a very expensive high-speed linear actuator. “Cost considerations played an important role in our project. Seismic events typically have low frequencies and because a subwoofer has very low frequencies, I modified my Dad’s subwoofer to test if it could mimic the frequencies of an underwater earthquake event,” Fourie said.
To create a point of reference from which they can mimic an actual seismic event on a small scale, the team compared their seismic charts with those from actual event charts of the Japan quake in 2015, and the 2004 Thailand earthquake and tsunami, and events in Hawaii. And it worked.
Masoga was up next and with ‘a lot of coding’ wrote machine learning algorithms to analyse the actual data that was transmitted that could then classify an event as seismic or not.
“The light transmitter transmits data binary and then this data will go through the tank and to the light receiver, and as the disturbances (from the subwoofer) happen, the data would get distorted.
“We then take that data, capture it and extract different characteristics from the data, such as the mean, the mode, median, the variant, and then we put the data through the classification algorithms to determine if it was a seismic event,” he explained.
An electronically enabled cane for the visually impaired
With his project, Mukundi Mushiana investigated, designed, built and tested an electronically enabled walking cane that can provide real-time feedback to visually impaired people to help them navigate their surroundings.
“As a biomedical engineering student, I chose this project because it made me think about different aspects – not only from an electrical engineering point of view but I also had to research how visually impaired individuals live their everyday lives,” Mushiana said.
He explained how, traditionally, visually impaired people use a white cane to tap objects to get a ‘feel’ for what kind of object it is and where it is in relation to them.
“With my electronically enabled cane, an individual does not have to tap the object. The cane uses an echo-location application where an ultrasonic signal is sent from the cane and then bounces off the obstacle and echoes back to the device,” Mushiana explained.
Using the time between the signal sent out and received back, the device calculates the distance to indicate how far a person is from that obstacle in order for them to proactively make a decision to avoid the obstacle.
The device uses an ultrasonic sensor as well as an accelerometer that measures the acceleration of an object, and a gyroscope that measures the angular motion of an object.
“Normally the latter two sensors are used in aeroplanes. In this case, they can determine if a person has fallen by detecting that the person’s acceleration and angle have changed. This information then enables the device to raise an alarm which is audible to people nearby, as well as sends a SMS-alert with GPS coordinates to the cellphones of the next-of-kin who can then come to assist or direct help to the individual,” he said.
Automatic camera triggering system to capture lightning events
Wits has a rich history of world-class lightning research conducted through its Johannesburg Lightning Research Laboratory based in the School of Electrical and Information Engineering. The study of lightning is also crucial in saving lives in South Africa as Johannesburg has a high flash density for a country’s main economic centre.
With their 4th year project, Sipho Xaba and Londiwe Luvungo aimed to make the video capture of a lightning event more efficient.
“If you want to capture lightning events, your camera must run 24/7, which means the amount of video footage that is taken requires huge amounts of storage. We are devising an automatic triggering system for high-speed cameras. The camera is on standby and when a lightning event occurs, it is triggered to capture the flash on video but only stores the video if it is identified as a lightning event, after which the camera switches off again,” the team explained.
They embedded a central processing unit (CPU) with three algorithms that can detect the lightning flashes and identify if the event is actual lightning or just or another object, like an aeroplane passing by.
“So we can mitigate those false triggers. If it does detect an actual lightning event, only then will it store that video on the database, and if it is a false trigger, it won’t store the video,” they said.
Immersive, magical, hopeful - Africa leads #FromNowOn
- Wits University
Africa’s first Digital Creativity Awards brings a sense of wonder and applauds the meteoric rise of African creativity in the digital space.
Held at Wits University’s Tshimologong Digital Innovation Precinct, the Festival aims with its Fak’ugesi Awards to further the growth of Pan-African digital creative talent by awarding the best works in five categories: Arts (Visual, Performance), Animation, Music, Video Games, Extended Reality (AR, VR). (Watch the recorded livestream of the Awards ceremony below.)
Unveiling the unique Fak’ugesi Award trophy, a collaborative design by Fak’ugesi Festival and the Makerspace at Tshimologong, Eduardo Cachucha, Creative Director of Fak’ugesi Festival said by incorporating the Festival’s iconic lightning bolt motif and bringing it to life with an internal LED light array, the trophy represents the spark that activates creativity and innovation.
Cachucho said the decision to create the Awards emanated when it became clear that there is nothing in the digital creatives’ industries to benchmark what the best in digital creativity is in the sector. “That is a real problem if you want to grow the sector and you don’t have a kind of shining beacon to hit towards. Also for audiences, they do not know what is the best out there.”
The Awards will help build opportunities for young people and give them a clear sense of what to look forward to and what they can do and create in this vibrant and ever-changing innovation ecosystem.
Chairperson of the Awards and Jurors, Dr Tegan Bristow, said in the nine years Fak’ugesi has been running it has built a framework for how digital creativity is defined in Africa by Africans.
Bristow, Researcher and Senior Lecturer in the Wits School of Arts and creative director of Fak’ugesi from 2016 to 2020, said the inaugural Awards shows how the Festival has not only allowed for digital creativity to bloom but more importantly the critical awakening of what digital creativity for young Africans is. “The Awards is a convergence of criticality, of excellence, and basically showing how Africans themselves define digital creativity for themselves,” she said in congratulating the winners.
The five jurors for this year’s Awards come from the absolute top of the industry and from across the continent. With applications from 16 countries in Africa, the jury selected 26 nominees that ‘leaves us with a sense of wonder that you are helping us to reimagine where and what and how we could be, can do and apply immersive technologies,” said Lesley Donna Williams, CEO of Tshimologong.
2022 Fak’ugesi Awards for Digital Creativity winners
Extended Reality (AR, VR)
Extended Reality (XR) winners: Xabiso Vili and Sonwabo Valashiya with the project titled: Re/Member Your Descendants
Virtual Reality (VR) winners: Lo-Def Film Factory with the project titled: The Subterranean Imprint Archive
Animation
Animation Rising Star Award: Taija Hartwig, production manager for the film titled: Kua
Winner: Magic Carpet Studios with the film titled: Super Dad
Video Games
Video Games Rising Star winner: Space Salad Studios with the game titled: Hot Bunz
Winner: Arkitech with the game titled: Finke Desert Race
Digital Music
Cross-Sector Score winner: Rodney Abia with Halima’s Vote
Cross-Sector Sound Art winner: Hakeem Adam with Ghana Airways
Digital Visual Art
Graphic Digital Art winner: Themba Mashinini with the project: Umtwhalo: Own Your Crown
Conceptual Digital Art winner: m’lk with the project: Dintho - Objects - Material Culture
Animation Jamz
In a 48-hour marathon of non-stop animating with the theme: Africa Now Now, the teams had to produce a minute-long animation film.
Winner: Team Izrael
Digital Lab Africa’s Residency Pitch
Winner: Joseph Eseme, Nigeria, with the project: Okie - Ledgend of the Halfgod
****
Watch the 2022 Fak'ugesi Awards for Digital Creativity lifestream
Wits to kick-start a national quantum technologies initiative with R54 million funding
- Wits University
The South African Quantum Technologies Initiative (SA QuTI) aims develop a well-established critical mass in the national quantum community.
Wits University has led a national consortium that secured R54 million funding from the Department of Science and Innovation (DSI) to co-ordinate a national quantum technologies initiative.
Following on a proposal written by the consortium led by Professor Andrew Forbes from the Wits School of Physics, the DSI committed the first tranche of funding up until March 2025 to set up the South African Quantum Technologies Initiative (SA QuTI). It involves establishing quantum nodes at five centres – Wits University, the University of Zululand (UniZulu), Stellenbosch University, the University of Kwa-Zulu Natal (UKZN) and Cape Peninsula University of Technology (CPUT) – and eventually increasing the number of active centres across the country by finding and supporting new emerging quantum leaders.
“We managed to convince the government that quantum research is too important to leave to a small research group, and that they should invest in a national programme,” says Forbes.
Forbes co-drafted the national initiative document with inputs from all the national nodes, which was adopted by government last year. While South Africa is not the first country to adopt a quantum policy, Forbes believes this move put the country on the “quantum map”.
“It means we can drive the technology and get many quantum nodes up to scratch,” says Forbes, adding that the emphasis is on “quantum technology”, rather than “quantum science”.
“The aim is to develop people who can do something with the science, so that we can be part of the quantum revolution and develop a quantum economy,” he says.
Wits University will manage the project, and administer and distribute the funding, while strengthening other research nodes with existing quantum projects, such as Stellenbosch University, the CPUT, UKZN and UniZulu. The aim will also be to start and support new nodes at other research institutions.
“The aim is to eventually have a well-established critical mass in the national quantum community and to work with government to draft new legislation, where it comes to quantum technologies.”
As an example, new legislation might be needed to govern the use of quantum computers to crack existing bank security codes. In a new quantum world, a bank would for instance not be able to say its systems are secure, if they are not “quantum secure”.
“The moment quantum computers can crack the code, current encryption systems are going to fail. You will need to have quantum security in place,” says Forbes.
The national quantum project will not be focussed on building quantum computer hardware, but will focus on writing software and building apps for quantum computers, as Forbes believes this is where South Africa can play a strategic role in the international quantum community.
“It is important to see this not as a physics initiative. We want to involve people with different skill sets, wherever they are so that we can build a vibrant quantum community and a viable quantum industry.”
The funding will have a special focus on human capital development, development of emerging leaders, access to quantum computers, and advocacy, as well as support for quantum communications and quantum sensing and metrology deployment through start-up entities.
Wits Innovation Centre announces team
- Wits University
Dr Adam Pantanowitz has been appointed as Chair in Innovation and Director of the WIC, and Letlotlo Phohole as Senior Programme Manager.
Joining him as the WIC’s Senior Programme Manager is Letlotlo Phohole, a seasoned technology and innovation management professional with over 25 years of experience spread across industry, government agencies, academia and entrepreneurship.
The best is yet to come for Wits
Pantanowitz is well-known for initiating and leading the first group in the world to connect a human brain live and mobile to the internet in a project called the Brainternet – a term he coined. He joined the School of Electrical and Information Engineering at Wits University in 2009 where he lectures in engineering and medicine.
“Wits is a place brimming with all of the ingredients for innovation: brilliant minds, academic freedom, multi-disciplinary work, diversity of thought, and remarkable research. I see unbridled potential for us to solve problems from our unique vantage point, and ultimately to make change happen from within the Wits ecosystem for the benefit of society at large. The best part is that we can all be a part of this,” says Pantanowitz.
An artificial intelligence expert, technologist, and entrepreneur, Pantanowitz uses his applied sciences skills to make real-world impact. His areas of expertise are applied artificial intelligence, ethics, biotechnology, engineering, and robotics. His research has been published in international peer-reviewed journals and has also resulted in a number of patents. READ HIS FULL PROFILE.
Phohole is a seasoned technology and innovation management professional with over 25 years of experience spread across industry, government agencies, academia and entrepreneurship.
He has a proven track record of integrating engineering, systems engineering, technology management and business consulting to create effective holistic solutions that benefit multiple industries like mining, manufacturing, automotive, aerospace & defence, arts & craft and freight logistics.
Phohole says his aim is to continue to establish the Centre as a leading interface for research-led, researcher-led, and student-led innovation at Wits in collaboration industry and the National System of Innovation.
“My vision for the WIC is to ignite a passion for innovation and progress in all Faculties, inter-Faculty entities and members of the Wits community, with a focus on serving society through our efforts. We will achieve this by continuously embracing the spirit of learning, challenging our own mental models and collaborating with a diverse range of stakeholders both within and beyond the university. By doing so, we will maintain Wits as a leader in shaping the future and creating positive impact,” says Phohole. READ HIS FULL PROFILE.
The WIC seeks to develop an innovation mindset and will serve as a hub in the University’s innovation ecosystem that will enable a space to create, collaborate, and engage in impactful innovation, across disciplines and boundaries.
It will consist of services, programmes, and physical infrastructure to support innovation, and will help researchers and students transform their ideas from research outputs to innovation that impacts society for good.
Visit the new Wits Innovation website atwww.wits.ac.za/innovation/and follow our tags on social media: #WitsInnovation and #InnovationForGood.
Dr Mitch Cox named 2023 Optica Ambassador
- Wits University
He is one of 10 exceptional early-career members selected from around the world to serve as a 2023 Optical Foundation Ambassador.
The Optica Foundation is the charitable arm of Optica (formerly known as The Optical Society or OSA), a global society committed to advancing the science of light worldwide. The Foundation selects a group of Ambassadors each year as part of a program to support emerging leaders in their careers. These Ambassadors serve as mentors to other early-career professionals and students, providing guidance and support through both virtual and in-person programs.
As a 2023 Optica Ambassador, Cox has two main objectives for the year. First, he aims to develop the optics community in South Africa by ensuring that everyone working in optics is aware of the benefits of joining an Optica chapter, especially in cases where there are enclaves of "forgotten" people who are not aware of chapters in neighbouring faculties.
Secondly, Cox plans to visit some overseas student chapters to share his experiences and broaden his academic network, while learning from their experiences. He will then feedback this experience to local student chapters and try to develop sustainable connections between them. “At the same time, I hope to create awareness about Wits University and the work in optics that we do in my lab, and in the Structured Light Lab in the School of Physics,” he says.
Cox obtained his undergraduate degree in Electrical (Information) Engineering with distinction and then earned an MSc in High Energy Physics after working briefly in industry. He then pivoted his focus to his current passion and completed his PhD in Electrical Engineering, where he made several contributions related to increasing the range of free-space (wireless) optical links in turbulence by using what is called structured light – essentially customized laser beams that have novel shapes and properties, as opposed to a “dot” like a laser pointer.
At his lab, Cox and his team employ their expertise in structured light and "nerdy engineer skills” to create innovative solutions for long-range free-space optical communications, among other things. They utilise low cost, off-the-shelf components whenever possible – often in ways that were not intended by the manufacturers. With his broad and extensive interests, Cox has a vision of using his research to help bridge the digital divide and make high-speed internet access available to people globally.
“Since 2016, our Ambassadors have provided career advice, technical knowledge, and mentorship for our student members,” said Michal Lipson, 2023 Optica President. “Our guiding principles of inclusivity, impact, and innovation are embedded in this program to reinforce our core values in the next generation of scientists, engineers, and corporate leaders.”
Supported by the foundation’s annual fund, Ambassadors visit student chapters, provide training at meetings and share their insights on webinars. The new inductees are expected to promote the importance of a diverse and inclusive photonics ecosystem spanning academia to industry.
About the Optica Foundation
Established in 2002, the Optica Foundation carries out charitable activities in support of the society’s student and early career communities. We cultivate the next generation of leaders and innovators as they navigate advanced degree programs and become active members of research, engineering and business worldwide. The foundation also works to secure the endowments for Optica’s awards and honors programs. The foundation is registered as a 501(c)(3) non-profit. For more information, visit optica.org/foundation.
About Optica
Optica (formerly OSA), Advancing Optics and Photonics Worldwide, is the society dedicated to promoting the generation, application, archiving and dissemination of knowledge in the field. Founded in 1916, it is the leading organization for scientists, engineers, business professionals, students and others interested in the science of light. Optica’s renowned publications, meetings, online resources and in-person activities fuel discoveries, shape real-life applications and accelerate scientific, technical and educational achievement. Discover more at: Optica.org
Wits and Telkom launch new industry solutions lab
- Wits University
Telkom and Wits sign a partnership agreement to establish the new Telkom Industry Solutions Lab.
Telkom and the University of the Witwatersrand are joining forces to establish the new Telkom Industry Solutions Lab, a commercial research and development (R&D) facility dedicated to accelerating synergistic collaboration between industry and academia.
Bringing together multi-disciplinary teams from Wits, the Telkom Group, and beyond, this collaborative effort will pave the way for state-of-the-art innovations in telecommunications and the development of transformative digital solutions for various industries.
The new initiative formally came into being at a ceremony today where, on behalf of the Telkom Group, BCX CEO, Jonas Bogoshi and Wits University’s Vice-Chancellor and Principal, Professor Zeblon Vilakazi signed the agreement launching the venture.
“We are excited to sign the strategic agreement that puts this partnership with Wits into effect,” said Bogoshi. “We see the Lab as a platform to translate academic research into commercially viable and socially impactful solutions.”
The Lab is the first industry solutions lab to join the newly established Wits Innovation Centre (WIC) where brilliant minds from various disciplines converge to ideate, research, collaborate, and support innovation, from the initial stages to entrepreneurship and commercialisation.
“The WIC is the epicentre of our innovation ecosystem at Wits where we harness a wellspring of diverse expertise and talent to solve complex, real-world problems. Collaboration in innovation is key and we are excited to see the cutting-edge solutions that will emerge from the Telkom Industry Solutions Lab,” said Vilakazi.
The Lab is a key strategic initiative aimed at supporting innovation within the Telkom Group. It is also the latest in Telkom’s longstanding tradition of forging partnerships with South African universities, says Telkom Group Executive for Innovation and Transformation, Dr Mmaki Jantjies. "Globally, many of the most transformative inventions have been developed through innovation partnerships between industry leaders in technology and research-intensive universities," she explains. "Similarly, this partnership with Wits aims to foster an ecosystem where creativity and collaboration will flourish - leveraging the combined expertise and resources of the Telkom Group and the University."
Projects will span industry products and solutions, applied research for specific industries, disruptive innovation driven by local challenges, advanced technology solutions, and industry-led fundamental science and engineering.
The Telkom Industry Solutions Lab will be led by a team of Telkom and Wits research and innovation leaders: Dr Maletsabisa Molapo, Executive for Research and Innovation at Telkom, and Letlotlo Phohole, Senior Programme Manager of the Wits Innovation Centre.
About Telkom
Telkom SA SOC Ltd is a leading information and communications technology services provider in South Africa. Our mission is to seamlessly connect people to a better life. We carry this through in all our brands, whether at the consumer, business, or wholesale level. Telkom consists of the following business units: BCX, an end-to-end digital solutions provider; connectivity and wholesale division Openserve; Telkom Consumer and Small Business and property company Gyro.
About innovation at Wits
As Wits University celebrates its 100th anniversary, we remain dedicated to cultivating the next generation of researchers and innovators who are equipped to translate knowledge into meaningful solutions. We are committed to leveraging our knowledge to drive progress for good in our community, our city, country, continent, and the world at large. The new Wits Innovation Centre (WIC) is a dynamic hub of creativity and ingenuity that seeks to develop an ‘innovation mindset’ across all disciplines and boundaries, and strives to assist researchers and students to transform their ideas from research outputs to innovation and enterprise.
Sun-powered microgrid study launched in Pretoria
- Wits University
The Pecogrid pilot study will examine the viability of the large-scale rollout of microgrid inverter systems in informal communities.
Wits University, together with its partners in the Gauteng Research Triangle, have started a pilot project to study the potential of introducing small portable solar power systems into informal housing communities to provide electricity.
The project, that makes use of the Pecogrid power brick, developed by Professor Willie Cronje of the Wits School of Electrical and Information Engineering, aims to look at the viability of installing small microgrids into informal communities to assist in providing energy to these communities, while it may at the same time act as an income generator for individuals.
The project was launched after Professor David Everatt, Professor of Urban Governance at the Wits School of Governance, and Professor Imraan Valodia, Pro-Vice Chancellor:Climate, Sustainability and Inequality, wrote an opinion piece in the Daily Maverick news website, arguing that informal settlements could drive South Africa’s solar revolution.
Because of enlightened self-interest, the authors argued, solar power in these communities could provide dwellings with power, while at the same time producing a source of revenue for house owners if the power is sold back to the grid.
“As these households are not connected to the grid at the moment, local government will not lose any revenue, should these communities – who are in desperate need for energy – be connected to solar power,” said Everatt. “So, if they are connected with solar energy, and have excess energy that they can sell to local government for cash, they will not only have energy, but will earn a much-needed income, which is a win-win to everybody involved.”
The local community will be energised, the grid will be less strained as these communities feed energy into the grid, and over time, the government will spend less in social grants as households will get an income.
As part of the pilot study, technicians from Lightec installed two Pecogrid solar systems at houses in Kirkney, in Pretoria West. The systems both consisted of a portable Peco-brick – a 200 Watt inverter unit, connected to a 500 Watt Hour lithium-ion battery – connected to a 160 Watt solar panel. One of the systems was connected to the Eskom grid, while the other was a completely off-grid system.
“The whole system is based on so-called ‘plug-and-play’ technology, where you can buy the equipment at a vendor, go home, connect the wires to the solar panel and you’re done,” said Cronje, who spent the last 10 years developing the system. “We put a lot of effort in making the technology as simple as possible, so you don’t need a professional electrician to install it.”
A typical single-brick power system can power the lights in an informal dwelling, while also providing enough power to charge a cell phone. Additional batteries or power-bricks could be added to increase capacity to power a television and even a fridge.
“The system is modular, so you can add on further capacity as your economic circumstances changes,” said Mario Roos, CEO of Lightec. Even if you’re moving into a formal housing structure, you can unclip the panel from the roof, take your little portable unit with you and connect it to your new house.”
Everatt said the pilot study will run for six months to a year, to see whether the system can be used safely and sustainably, and whether it would add to the quality of life and economical livelihoods of the communities.
“The proof of concept is to see whether it generates excess power once the household used what they needed. The excess power will then be used by the whole community to charge their cell phones.”
The Gauteng Research Triangle (GRT) is a collaboration of the three research universities: University of the Witwatersrand, the University of Pretoria and the University of Johannesburg in Gauteng. Following a multidisciplinary approach, the GRT aims to ensure the analysis of vital statistics, migration and other key data generated from multiple angles.
The GRT operates a research node in Atteridgeville and Melusi in Pretoria for the South African Population Research Infrastructure Network (SAPRIN), a major investment in research infrastructure which aims to help South Africa respond to some of its biggest issues – including poverty, inequality, unemployment, lack of access to effective health care – and now to Covid-19.
Two leading Wits scientists appointed to National Advisory Council on Innovation
- Wits University
Professor Lynn Morris and Professor Bavesh Kana will advise government on how to harness and grow innovation.
Professor Lynn Morris is Deputy Vice-Chancellor for Research and Innovation at Wits, while Professor Bavesh Kana is Director of the Department of Science and Innovation/National Research Foundation (DSI/NRF) Centre of Excellence for Biomedical TB Research.
Another Witsie in a leadership role at the Council is acting CEO of NACI, Dr Mlungisi Cele, who also serves on the Wits Council on appointment by the Department of Higher Education and Training.
The members of NACI (other than the CEO and the officer from the Department of Trade and Industry) are appointed in their personal capacities due to their outstanding achievement in any field of science and technology, or in the context of innovation, special knowledge, experience and insight into the role and contribution of innovation, in promoting and achieving national and provincial objectives.
As NACI members, Morris and Kana thus do not represent Wits University specifically. Rather, Morris represents higher education and Kana innovation. In their personal capacities, they will provide a high-level view of innovation nationally, advise on innovation priorities, and expenditure.
A National Research Foundation A-rated scientist, Morris is internationally recognised with demonstrable experience in research management and leadership. She was previously the interim Executive Director of the National Institute for Communicable Diseases (NICD) where she led the NICD through the listeria outbreak of 2017/18 and the Covid-19 pandemic from 2020. She has published some 270 journal articles, 11 book chapters, registered five patents and 11 scientific opinions. She has consistently been included in the Web of Science’s most highly cited researchers in the world.
“South Africa doesn’t fare well in innovation indicators. Zero point 62 percent of our GDP goes into research and development in South Africa,” says Morris. “NACI demonstrates that government values science, technology, and innovation and it’s very important to have that buy-in.”
Zero point 62 percent is the 2019 figure in the South African Science, Technology and Innovation Indicators report (STI Indicators report, pg. 29), which NACI produces as a tool to monitor the National System of Innovation (NSI).
The report compares South Africa’s performance with selected countries and aims to identify relative strengths and weaknesses of the national research and innovation system and inform priorities to improve innovation performance.
The Indicators report is influenced by the South African Innovation Scorecard and the NACI Monitoring and Evaluation Framework, as well as the expansive impact of the Covid-19 pandemic.
According to the Indicators report, “Due to the prolonged Covid-19 pandemic the South African economic growth has declined with consequent negative impact on the NSI. The gross expenditure in research and development [GERD] as a percentage of growth domestic product has declined to 0.62%, which is a worrying trend regarding the 1.5% target.”
As a NACI member, Morris can tap into different networks to gauge where South Africa is nationally and globally. Morris says there was a big push on innovation during Covid-19 and NACI now is “about introducing technology to grow the economy.”
Such technologies include patents and the report shows that, in 2020, South Africa ranked below all four of the BRICS group of countries in Rankings in Patent Applications per Million Inhabitants. Furthermore, South Africa also ranked lower than India for the first time in a decade (STI Indicators report, pg. 33).
Fortunately, Professor Bavesh Kana – who researchers tuberculosis (TB) – is no stranger to successful patent applications. The introduction of technology that tests for TB using molecular diagnostics was a game changer for national TB programmes. This tech increased access to TB testing, which then improved diagnosis and treatment, and ultimately inhibited further infection.
However, when the World Health Organization endorsed this molecular diagnostic test, there was no quality assurance in place to check the accuracy of the testing instruments. Kana was part of the Wits team that developed the SmartSpot technology which, in South Africa, has been used on all 289 GeneXpert testing instruments in the national TB programme since 2011.
In 2020, Kana pivoted this technology to support national diagnosis of Covid-19 through supporting laboratories in the public sector. He created a new series of products that enabled mass testing in South Africa, which have now been rolled out to 34 countries. For these and related activities, his team was awarded the South African NSTF-South32 Innovation Award: Corporate Organisation, for 2020/2021.
Read how Wits University approaches innovation to advance society for good via the new Wits Innovation Centre (WIC).
Be(IE) innovators of the future
- Wits University
The first Biomedical Innovation and Entrepreneurship Training Course sparks a new era for #WitsInnovation.
The new Wits Innovation Centre recently presented its first official innovation and entrepreneurship-related course, the 2023 Biomedical Innovation and Entrepreneurship (BIE) Training Course.
The BIE Program Director Professor Michael Wallach from the University of Technology Sydney and CEO of the Centre for Innovative Medical Research (CIMR), was joined by local and international lecturers from academia and industry, among others, Dr Isabella Hajduk from the CIMR, Michael Wilter from Bowmans, Professor Lee Fairlie from Wits Reproductive Health and HIV Institute (Wits RHI), Allon Raiz, CEO of Raizcorp, and Solwazi Majola, innovation specialist at the WIC.
Open to participants from all disciplines who have an interest in health innovation – including health and engineering, science, arts, commerce, law, and others – the course was aimed at providing an understanding of how biotechnology projects, (including drugs, medical devices, and general medical science) and companies are created, established, managed, and funded, so asto develop students’ creative, innovative, and entrepreneurial skills.
Some 32 postdoctoral, Master’s, PhD and MBA students from Wits and other institutions participated in the two-week course that consisted of lectures, group work and presentations. The students were divided into nine that set out to develop a new project or product that could potentially lead to the formation of real start-up companies.
On the last day of the course, the groups pitched their ideas to the panel of course instructors and experts.
Leveraging the local for global solutions
Group 6 with their project ProbiPep went about addressing the rapid emergence of antibiotic resistance pathogens that threatens the future efficacy of antibiotics crucial to human and animal medicine.
Speaking on behalf of the group, Taryn Adams explained that the prophylactic and excessive use of antibiotics in livestock and animal production is haphazardly addressing the diseases that impact the quality of animal health and life as well as the generating significant economic losses (especially for small scale farmers in South Africa).
“We as a team are passionate about leveraging local flora, fauna and microbial diversity to generate the next generation of highly efficient antimicrobials and reduce the impact of bacterial pathogens (especially antibiotic-resistant ones) in a sustainable and targeted manner while localising production as far as possible,” said Adams.
“The course has encouraged me to think of the commercial and social value of our research and technical expertise. There is significant need for researchers to ensure their work and subsequent innovations are addressing the right problems in the most appropriate manner.”
Taking on the big AD
Puseletso Manyaka, spokesperson for Group 2 named Fola Pharmaceuticals, said the team set out to work on a solution to treat the cognitive impairment associated with Alzheimer’s Disease as the number of people who will suffer from this yet uncurable, rapid neurodegeneration disease is predicted rise to 80 million in the next seven years.
“The course has been amazing. Experts and mentors in biomedical engineering and innovation shared their knowledge and experience with us and we were introduced to the different aspects of innovation, business, presenting and pitching these ideas to sponsors and investors. We have been given the necessary knowledge we need regarding innovation, its protection and it helps that institutions such as the Wits Innovation Centre are here to support and train innovators locally who can come up with great solutions for the world’s problems. What sets us apart is that there is so much support, opportunity and investment in our midst for innovation, so great inventions and ideas are definitely to come.”
Think, think, think
Group 8 with their project called Glucoview, tackled the problem of low affordability of Continuous Glucose Monitors and found a way to redesign them to make it far more affordable for diabetics.
Speaking on behalf of the group, Jacques Snyman said the biggest takeaway from the course is the process of design thinking and how this differs from the conventional scientific method.
“Where the scientific method is primarily focused on finding answers to questions, the design approach is primarily focused on finding solutions to people’s problems. The part of this that really stuck with me was the importance placed on focusing on the problem for an uncomfortably long time,” he said, explaining, ‘Once we identified a problem we wanted to solve, we spent an entire afternoon focusing on getting to the root of the problem. This made generating a solution much simpler and easier, as we were actually solving the cause of the problem, and not just a symptom of a deeper problem.”
This is only the start (up)
Dr Adam Pantanowitz, the Angela and David Fine Chair in Innovation and first Director of the Wits Innovation Centre (WIC), said while the BIE course is the first one offered by the Centre, many teams associated with the WIC have been offering innovation courses.
“The WIC is also developing a PGDip in Innovation. We are also running a course for young entrepreneurs and innovators from across our community called the Prospector’s Course – it is also planned for this year and we will make those announcements soon,” he said.
The WIC aims to cultivate innovation on campus and working with innovators within the University is of utmost importance in its mission to develop this innovation mindset.
“It serves as a hub in the University’s innovation ecosystem that will enable a space to create, collaborate, and engage in impactful innovation, across disciplines and boundaries,” Pantanowitz said.
It offers Intellectual Property (IP) support (for patenting, agreements, and advice on commercialisation and partnerships), the establishment of industry partnerships, engagement with the Wits community, and various other activities to foster innovation.
“We're are reaching out for partnerships with various people, labs, and centres within the University, and have some exciting events coming up. We are also working on establishing and streamlining processes so that innovators at Wits can find the right path to achieve their visions,” he said.
Fine advice on failing, luck and limiting expertise
- Wits University
Wits University awarded Dr David Fine an honorary degree at the Faculty of Science graduation ceremony on 17 April 2023.
What do the Lockerbie bombing, landmines and pulmonary hypertension have in common?
Apart from being either deadly or potentially lethal, all three were a focus for innovation by the entrepreneurial chemist, Dr David Fine, who delivered the keynote address at the Faculty of Science graduation ceremony.
“The last time I was in this Hall was 59 years ago, when I received my BSc Honours degree, second-class, in chemistry. That was before all you graduates were born. It was before even most of your parents were born, so I feel it’s appropriate for me to mention some of the lessons learnt that I wish I’d known very much earlier,” said Fine, after congratulating all graduands and especially "those who are first in their family to receive a university degree”.
Lesson 1: Expertise blocks innovative thinking
The first lesson, Fine said, was in solving tough technical problems, “when you are taught that the way to solve a problem is to study it, become an expert, then you can solve the problem.”
But Fine says this approach doesn’t work, and he quotes Zen Buddhist master Shunryo Suzuki, “In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert’s, there are few.”
The lesson is clear. Fine says, “If you’re an expert, it blocks a lot of your innovative thinking. You want to be the beginner. So the right way to solve the problem is to read about it just enough to understand. No more. Stop. Then think of all the possible solutions.”
For Fine, it’s always been the guiding principle: Don’t become too much of an expert if you want to innovate in that field.
Lesson 2: Expect resistance
Lesson two is the realisiation that you’re going to get push-back. “When you have new ideas, people very often don’t understand what you’ve done or don’t believe what you’ve done,” said Fine.
He recalls how, at an international meeting, his innovations irked some scholars in the field, who didn’t believe his findings, declared his work “rubbish”, and called him incompetent and a naïve fool – an unfortunate and ironic response to an innovator who now, at age 81, holds no fewer than 105 patents in the United States.
Over the course of his career, Fine has published 88 papers focusing on environmental hazards involving carcinogenic compounds, which he identified in foods, beverages, cosmetics, and industrial products.
He has made a significant contribution to the scientific understanding of chemical engineering processes, combustion engineering, and air pollution.
He pioneered the detection of hazardous levels of nitrosamines in foods, body fluids, and in the factory environment, which has important health implications given that chronic nitrosamine intake is associated with cancers, particularly of the digestive tract.
Nitrosamines are organic compounds that we are exposed to in our everyday lives. They exist in low levels in our water and foods, including meat, vegetables, and dairy products. Some nitrosamines may increase the risk of cancer if people are exposed to them above acceptable levels and over long periods of time.
Lesson three: The importance of chance
“We all meet our spouses and our lovers by pure chance, by pure accident, serendipity. That’s a very powerful tool. If it works so well in our personal lives, I started to use it in science as well,” said Fine.
Fine’s PhD at the University of Leeds in 1967 focused on thermal explosions and combustion chemistry. This sparked his interest in chemical engineering, fluid dynamics and heat transfer. After a postdoctoral stint at Leeds and then the University of Winnipeg, he joined the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he ran the Combustion Laboratory.
He later moved to Thermo Electron (now Thermo Fisher) where he worked for 28 years, and where he started his own federally funded research department.
This research focus would prove serendipitous some 20 years later, when explosions would feature frequently.
On 21 December 1988, Pan Am flight 103 exploded over Lockerbie, Scotland, after a bomb was detonated. All 259 people on board were killed.
Fine, then in his late forties, led the research on the detection of explosive residues, which was used to identify the explosives used in the Lockerbie bombing.
His team also developed the first airport sniffers for explosives and narcotics, and thousands of these devices are now used in airports worldwide.
The same decade, a US intercontinental ballistic missile blew up because of a leak in rocket fuel. Fine got fascinated by the compound in the fuel, called N₂O₄.
Fine’s curiosity reimagined that same compound for a drug to treat pulmonary hypertension. The US Federal Food and Drug Association approved the innovation in 2019.
In 2006, Fine established GeNO (now called Vero-Biotech), to develop the inhalable drug.
“It sounds very zigzag … but it was fun to just let your mind wander and go into the next area and start at the beginning again; be that young student again who has no clue what he’s getting into … Branching out into something different was very, very powerful.”
Lesson four: Thrive on failure
Fine cautioned the graduands: “When everything works when you’re a scientist, when everything’s going great, and you’ve had no failures for a while … beware of getting in trouble. And I say that very seriously, because you’re not pushing the limits of your mind, you’re not pushing the limits of your knowledge. You have to have failure. Failure is how you learn. You have to enjoy failure, thrive on failure, because that’s how you jump to the next level.”
In 1998, a decade after the Lockerbie bombing, Fine got interested in detecting landmines – but his efforts to unearth landmines failed spectacularly originally, due to TNT being undetectable in the real world for various reasons.
TNT is the chemical compound trinitrotoluene, one of the most widely used military high explosives.
The failure sparked renewed thinking about using then-emerging mobile phone technology and image analysis software, with metal detection. It worked. And the US army acquired the revolutionary metal detectors.
In 2000, Fine founded his own company, CyTerra, which developed radar and metal detection-based detectors for buried landmines.
"The lesson here was we had to fail. And this time it failed pretty badly before we could step back, rethink, and then come up with the right solution.”
Fine’s closing words to the graduands were: “Wits is a world-class university, and you graduate today with a world-class degree and with the skills and knowledge not only to change South Africa but the world. This is especially true if you have graduated today with advanced degrees. You are the future. You are the chosen. And you’re going to have so much fun as a world-class scientist.”
Fine’s generosity enabled the establishment of the Angela and David Fine Chair in Innovation at Wits University. The Wits Centre for Innovation (WIC) was launched the same day that Fine received his honorary degree from Wits.
Wits Innovation Centre signals a new era in #InnovationForGood
- Wits University
The WIC will harness the creativity and ingenuity of the University’s rich, diverse community of innovators to solve complex, real-world problems.
The new Wits Innovation Centre (WIC) was officially launched last night and is a dynamic multidisciplinary hub that enables a space to create, collaborate, and engage in impactful innovation, across disciplines and sectoral boundaries.
The WIC is poised to make significant impact by harnessing the creativity and ingenuity of the University’s rich, diverse community of researchers, academics and students, to solve complex, real-world problems confronting humanity and our planet, such as climate change, global health threats, poverty, and inequality, and developing ethical and sustainable technologies, among others.
The WIC will play a crucial role in fostering an innovation mindset and culture at Wits to assist and help turn new ideas, innovation and methods arising from research-led, researcher-led and student-led innovation into products, processes and services.
The Chair in Innovation is being held by Dr Adam Pantanowitz, iconic biomedical and electrical engineer at Wits. He is also the first Director of the WIC.
An artificial intelligence expert, technologist, and entrepreneur, Pantanowitz is well-known for initiating and leading the first group in the world to connect a human brain live and mobile to the internet in a project called the Brainternet – a term he coined.
“When we look around, we might see our world filled with challenges. We have, however, all of the tools available to us to find solutions. The WIC’s arrival ushers in a new impetus to do so, leveraging the great assets, minds, and tools at our University.
“Wits has always played a leading role in South African society, and can now take a leading role in innovating for societal good. The WIC is a model for how Universities can adapt and change in a fast-changing world to leverage internal assets, partnerships, and most importantly, knowledge creation to help the broader community and impact the world.
The Chair in Innovation brings forth the opportunity to engage in a creative approach to the academic environment, assembling new structures, processes, and ideas to foster the path to getting our innovations out the door,” says Pantanowitz.
Slideshow of the launch of the Wits Innovation Centre - Monday, 17 April 2023
The appointment of Letlotlo Phohole, a seasoned technology and innovation management professional, as Senior Programme Manager, will also help establish the WIC as a leading interface to foster collaboration between Wits and industry. Recently the WIC announced the first such collaboration with the establishment of the new Telkom Industry Solutions Lab, a commercial research and development (R&D) facility where multidisciplinary teams from Wits and Telkom will collaborate to research and develop ideas and opportunities that adds value to the business and the broader telecommunications industry.
"Through our Solutions Labs, the Wits Innovation Centre will provide a powerful platform to address industry, community, and societal problems with an entrepreneurial mindset. By involving multiple faculties, disciplines, entrepreneurs, students, and industry partners, we will foster a collaborative environment that promotes cross-pollination of ideas and a diversity of perspectives. This will not only enhance the quality and breadth of innovations but also create a community that encourages experimentation and risk-taking, and instills an entrepreneurial mindset that values agility, resilience, and adaptability,” says Phohole.
According to him, the Solutions Labs may draw inspiration from a variety of design processes and concepts, including systems thinking, IDEO, biomimicry, double diamond, TRIZ, and more.
“This will allow us to explore multiple avenues of problem-solving and leverage the strengths of each approach to create innovative solutions with real-world impact. Through an entrepreneurial mindset and collaboration with researchers, entrepreneurs, SMMEs, and industry partners, we will work towards solving industry, community, and societal problems and creating a better future for all. This multidisciplinary approach will enable us to tackle complex challenges and create solutions that challenge the status quo, disrupt industries, and make a positive impact on society, with a focus on commercialization opportunities for SMEs and industry partners,” says Phohole.
Knowledge For.Good
Professor Lynn Morris, Deputy-Vice Chancellor: Research and Innovation, who was recently appointed to the National Advisory Council on Innovation that advice the government on how to harness and grow innovation, says it is crucial for universities to meet society’s needs by turning knowledge into impactful solutions.
“We must use our knowledge for the advancement of our community, city, country, continent, and the globe to produce both tangible and intangible outputs for the benefit of society, for good.
“It is therefore important that we create an environment that is conducive for innovation to take place and there is a strong correlation between innovation and a willingness to take risks. For universities to develop and grow an innovative mindset, it is essential that risk-taking is supported and encouraged,” says Morris.
Wits mourns the passing of Prof. Barry - SA's 'Grand Geek'
- Wits University
South Africa has lost an innovator, a strategist, a humanitarian, and a much-loved Professor who dedicated over 50 years of his life to Wits.
It is with great sadness that the University of the Witwatersrand announces the passing of Professor Barry Dwolatzky – an innovator, a strategist, a humanitarian, and a loyal Witsie who dedicated over 50 years of his life to Wits. His passing is a great loss to the Wits community where he touched the lives of students, staff, researchers, academics, industry partners, innovators, entrepreneurs and friends in so many ways. In addition to his many achievements and awards, he will be remembered for his humility and humanity, and his ability to make every person with whom he came into contact, feel special.
We extend our condolences to his family and friends, colleagues and students around the world, and those who knew him well. The Wits Flag above the Great Hall will fly at half-mast tomorrow in honour of Professor Dwolatzky. May he rest in peace, knowing that his legacy will live on for generations to come.
Young people have the creativity and energy, the drive and the reason to build a new South Africa
- Prof. Barry
Professor Barry Dwolatzky was known as the ‘Grand Geek’ of digital innovation in South Africa.
Most recently he served as the Director of Innovation Strategy in the Office of the Deputy Vice-Chancellor: Research and Innovation, where he used his experience and knowledge and his network of local and international collaborations to drive the strategy that supports research, innovation and entrepreneurship at Wits. He was instrumental in conceptualising, developing and imagining the Wits Innovation Centre which was launched in April this year.
Dwolatzky was also an Emeritus Professor in the School of Electrical and Information Engineering in the Faculty of Engineering and the Built Environment. He was the Founder and the Director of the Joburg Centre for Software Engineering (JCSE) and the Founder of the Wits Tshimologong Digital Innovation Precinct, the University’s digital innovation hub located in Braamfontein.
A Wits alumnus, Dwolatzky started his undergraduate studies at Wits in Electrical Engineering in 1971 where he continued to excel until he achieved his PhD. After graduating, he left South Africa in 1979, and spent a decade in the United Kingdom as a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology, Imperial College London, and the GEC-Marconi Research Centre. Over this period, he worked on a number of large software research and development projects. He returned to Wits as an academic in 1989, worked his way up the academic ladder and became a Full Professor in 2000. He continued with his teaching and research activities until very recently.
His primary focus over the past 30 years has been the growth and development of the South African software engineering sector. In 2005, he was the major driver in setting up the JCSE at Wits. In 2013, he spearheaded the establishment of a major digital innovation hub in Braamfontein which became the Wits Tshimologong Digital Innovation Precinct. Tshimologong has attracted significant support from government and a range of major local and international companies, including the IBM Research Laboratory.
In recognition of his contribution to the South African IT industry, Dwolatzky was named the South African IT Personality of the Year in 2013. In 2016 he received an award for Distinguished Service to IT from the Institute of IT Professionals of South Africa as well as the Vice-Chancellor’s Award for Academic Citizenship.
In 2020 Dwolatzky launched his own podcast series titled Optimizing: Leading Africa’s Digital Future. Last November, he launched his inspirational memoir, which smartly captured his extraordinary life. Coded History – A life of new beginnings captures Dwolatzky’s 'life of new beginnings'. The book revealed how he faced death at the age of 35, his life as an underground software engineer in the struggle against Apartheid, “the mission” that brought him back to South Africa from the UK where he lived in self-exile in the 1980s, and how, on the eve of democracy, he helped to build the country’s IT industry. He dedicated a chapter in the book to Wits that speaks to his love and connection with the University, and his reverence of young people. At the launch he said: “Young people have the creativity and energy, the drive and the reason to build a new South Africa, a new Africa and a new world. I believe in the future of our country. That is also the point of a university - to prepare people for the future.”
These are wise words from one of South Africa’s most influential academics that we take to heart, as we continue to celebrate his legacy. Professor Dwolatzky, go well – knowing that you have lived a fulfilled and well-lived life and that your impact and influence will reverberate through our society for decades to come.
Wits scientists opens up the world of pharmaceutical research at National Science Week
- Wits University
Wits Advanced Drug Delivery Platform use the national science fair to interact with future generation of scientists, healthcare professionals, and innovators.
The Wits Advanced Drug Delivery Platform WADDP took the opportunity to engage with learners to show them the exciting possibilities in the field of drug delivery at the national science week this year. The science week, which was held from 31 July to 4 August 2023 was hosted at the Mondi Science, Career Guidance and FET Skils centre in Mpumalanga, and was aimed at providing learners the opportunity to learn more about science in a bid to create a scientifically literate and critically engaged society.
The exhibition provided a unique opportunity for the researchers to engage with students, who represent the future generation of scientists, healthcare professionals, and innovators. By explaining the importance of nanomedicine, advanced drug delivery and tissue engineering in modern medicine, the researchers highlighted how their work contributes to optimising treatment regimens and reducing side effects for patients.
Drawing inspiration from DSI's Science Engagement Strategy goals, the WADDP researchers designed interactive displays that transcended the confines of traditional classrooms, hands-on activity where students were encouraged to experimenting with materials to solve challenges allowed them to experience the complexities that pharmaceutical scientists face in their research. It offered a glimpse into the critical thinking and creative problem-solving aspect of the field and fostered an interest in pursuing careers in pharmaceutical science and related disciplines.
“The National Science Week provided an exceptional platform for these motivated high school students to immerse themselves in the world of higher education and scientific exploration,” says Sameera Khatib from School of Therapeutic Sciences, Department of Pharmacy and Pharmacology.
“Witnessing their eagerness to learn, ask probing questions, and actively participate in discussions with us and other presenters has reinforced our belief in the potential of the next generation.”
The WADDP is a world leading research entity established in 2007. It focuses on researching and producing 21st century patient-centric pharmaceutical product innovations as neat solutions for the most challenging unmet therapeutic needs globally. The WADDP is a formally recognised research enity at Wits University and is a recognised African Network for Drugs and Diagnostics Innovation (ANDI) Center of Excellence in Nanomedicine and Advanced Drug Delivery.
“I am super proud of what the WADDP team has achieved at this event,” says Professor Yahya Choonara, Director of the Wits Advanced Drug Delivery Platform (WADDP) research unit.
“It’s the kind of passion nurtured in the labs that transcends into public spaces to ensure that the disruptive scientific innovations produced respond to the needs of humankind. In providing the youth with access to scientific minds and spaces it makes science ‘’fashionable’’ and helps promote improved collaboration among stakeholders toward us achieving the ‘science relevant’ UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) as a country.”
Dr Gillian D. Mahumane, School of Therapeutic Sciences, Department of Pharmacy and Pharmacology, who coordinated the WADDP visit to National Science Week 2023, says engagements such as the WADDP’s involvement in National Science week offer a platform to demystify complex concepts, inspire the youth, and emphasise the role of pharmaceutical research in addressing healthcare challenges through robust science communication.
“Science communication is one of the many ways in which WADDP works to bridge the science-society divide, fostering mutual understanding, driving innovation, and propelling society toward a healthier and more knowledgeable future. It's like a perfectly balanced chemical equation: when the public engages, curiosity reacts, and understanding precipitates."
Immersive experiences with Wits NeuRL
- Wits University
NeuRL’s Immersive Virtual Reality Lab uses innovative body owner illusions to understand cross-cultural bias.
The Wits Neuroscience Research Lab (NeuRL) is working with an interdisciplinary team of researchers to build an immersive virtual reality laboratory. The team recently welcomed close collaborator Dr Harry Farmer, aSenior Lecturer in Psychology from the University of Greenwich, who delivered a hybrid seminar on how embodiment using virtual reality technologies can change previously held attitudes and beliefs.
Dr Sahba Besharati, a Senior Lecturer in Cognitive Neuroscience and Neuropsychology explains that, “The interdisciplinary team is making use of innovative immersive virtual reality methods to create a body ownership illusion - putting yourself in the body of a virtual avatar. We are exploring how virtual embodiment can be used to help understand and possibly reduce cross-cultural prejudice.” The pioneering project is being spearhead by Postdoctoral Fellow Dr Stephanie Alcock who is funded by the National Institute for Humanities and Social Science Research.
The event, hosted in the refurbished Emthonjeni Centre in the School of Human and Community Development, was followed by a lively panel discussion with neuropsychologist and sleep scientist Dr Gosia Lipinska, Wits-based research psychologist and gender studies expert Dr Mpho Mathebula and immersive and artistic director Isobel Mascarenhas-Whitman from Typeone.
A virtual reality demonstration in the new Immersive Virtual Reality Lab also generated excitement amongst Grade 9 learners from Redhill School.
Learner Alex Frenkel said: "It was a lot of fun, I learnt how the brain works and understood how much more complicated the brain is than I thought. It was incredible."
Aziza Leotlela added her own testament, expressing gratitude for the opportunity: "It was an interesting and eye-opening experience, to come to Wits and engage with scientists and professionals who generously shared knowledge applicable to our daily lives."
Honours students inspired the Redhill learners with brain anatomy demonstrations, while PhD and master’s students showed examples of paper-and-computer-based cognitive tasks.
Redhill educator Dr Angie Mullins commented: “Not a single child came away without something that challenged and excited them. Thank you, Wits.”
Wits-UoE research partnership ‘heads to Space’
- Wits University
Researchers from Wits and the University of Edinburgh held a symposium to explore collaborative opportunities for Space Research projects.
Already nestled in a strong strategic partnership, both universities recognise that as Global South and Global North institutions, there are unique opportunities to utilise their complementary strengths to collaborate on future-thinking research projects such as Space Research.
The aim of the symposium held in Scotland, was to connect academics, researchers and also Scottish and Nordic space companies, and to hold discussions focussed on research areas related to space and satellites, such as big data, bio-mimicked propulsion, biorecycling in space, robots and AI applications, removal of space junk, remote monitoring of fires, and counting livestock and elephants from satellite images.
Professor Ken Nixon from the Wits School of Electrical and Information Engineering, explains: "The ‘space’ part was about looking up from the earth, the ‘satellites’ part was about looking down at the earth.”
Researchers engaged through panel presentations and discussions about their research areas and projects. From Wits, Professor Benjamin Rosman, Head of Robotics, Autonomous Intelligence and Learning (RAIL), highlighted that RAIL, as one of the biggest AI research labs in the southern hemisphere, is ensuring African involvement in Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, and Robotics.
Similarly, Professor Sally Archibald from the Wits School of Animal, Plant and Environmental Sciences and Principal Investigator of the newly established Future Ecosystems for Africa (FEFA) – an Africa-led, Africa-centred programme that aims to identify African ecosystem vulnerabilities and tipping points while leveraging African-informed transformative change opportunities - presented on how FEFA uses satellite-generated earth observation data to monitor mining land use, plan and rehabilitate vulnerable ecosystems and livestock systems, and develop biodiversity funding models, among other activities.
The following Wits researchers also made presentations: Randall Paton, Senior Lecturer in the School of Mechanical, Industrial, and Aeronautical Engineering, and Laven Naidoo, Senior Researcher from the Gauteng City-Region Observatory. Researchers from various Labs and Schools also joined the discussions online.
Says, Lynda Murray, Head of the Wits UK Office, the longstanding Wits-UoE partnership has significantly expanded its collaborative research projects in the last five years, and priority areas relate to inequality studies, health informatics, digital innovation, rangeland management, amongst other fields. Enterprise and innovation are also common priorities for both institutions.
"This was a first exploratory workshop with Wits and Edinburgh colleagues on Space, a hot topic for research and innovation internationally. It brought together researchers as well as possible industry partners, with the aim to ensure that, from inception, collaborative projects cross multiple boundaries,” says Murray.
The next generation is essential to Africa's future and to global shared interests in creating a safer, healthier, and more prosperous world.
With the world’s youngest and fastest-growing populations, African countries are changing rapidly. The economic growth and international relevance of the continent show that there is opportunity for youth to contribute to their society. If empowered Africa’s growing youthful population could support increased productivity and stronger, more inclusive economic growth across the continent.
However, majority of youth in Africa do not have stable economic opportunities. In South Africa, the Covid-19 pandemic brought to bare the realities of youth unemployment in the country as reported by Statistics South Africa.
Youth account for 60% of total unemployment
3% of youth aged 15-43, and over 63% aged 15-24 are unemployed
40% of graduates aged 15-24, and 15% of graduates aged 25-34 are unemployed
4% of youth aged 15-24 are not in employment, education or training
To empower youth potential, British Council designed a project to foster the culture of innovation and entrepreneurship within Higher Education Institutions and facilitate the development of skills required to build industries, companies and products. The Innovation for African Universities (IAU) project is designed to support the development of Africa – UK Higher Education partnerships to build institutional capacity for Higher Education engagement in entrepreneurship ecosystem in selected African countries.
As part of this project the University of the Witwatersrand (Wits University) in Johannesburg, South Africa launched and established the Wits Entrepreneurship Clinic. Under this initiative the Wits Entrepreneurship Clinic aims to build the capacity of students and graduates through experiential learning and mentorships to become volunteer clinicians who provide professional and quality business advice and support to entrepreneurs within the University and surrounding communities.
“Universities have a pivotal role to play in fostering a culture of innovation and entrepreneurship for the good of the world. This is why British Council developed the Innovation for African Universities project, to catalyse innovation and entrepreneurship because young entrepreneurs have a crucial role to play in solving the employment crisis in Sub-Saharan Africa as employees and job creators. As an organisation, we believe now is the time to focus on building engagement and being deliberate about actions to create safe and prosperous environments for young people to thrive,” says Scott McDonald, Chief Executive Officer, British Council.
"Wits University is making a significant impact by fostering entrepreneurship and addressing critical challenges such as poverty and unemployment, not only in our country but also beyond. We recognize the pressing need for young entrepreneurs to emerge as job creators and catalysts for economic development in Africa. Through our Wits Entrepreneurship Clinic, supported by the new Wits Innovation Centre (WIC), we are tapping into the immense creativity and ingenuity of our diverse community of innovators and entrepreneurs. By empowering these future leaders, we are equipping them to discover transformative solutions for complex real-world problems." says Professor Lynn Morris, Deputy Vice-Chancellor: Research and Innovation, Wits University.
Since its launch in July 2022, the Wits Entrepreneurship Clinic (WEC) has so far trained over 60 clinicians who have provided professional and quality business advisory services to the entrepreneurship community to accelerate viable entrepreneurial opportunities. Additionally, a 12-module training programme for clinicians has been developed and piloted alongside the delivery of intensive masterclasses focussing on digital entrepreneurship, as well as the circular economy. The long-term vision for the clinic is to develop a culture of and appreciation for entrepreneurship as not only a viable alternative to employment but also as a mechanism to address many of the grand challenges confronting South African society.
About the British Council
The Innovation for African Universities (IAU) project, part of the British Council’sGoing Global Partnerships programme, seeks to foster the culture of innovation and entrepreneurship within universities and facilitate the development of skills required to build industries, companies, products and services in Africa. The IAU programme is implemented by the Centre of Excellence (CoE), a partnership between the City, University of London, Nairobi, and ChangeSchool UK. The Programme comprises 24 UK universities, Sub-Saharan African universities, and entrepreneurial ecosystem organizations. The Programme is running in Kenya, Nigeria, Ghana and South Africa.
About #WitsInnovation
The Wits Entrepreneurship Clinic (WEC) is one of the first initiatives aligned with Wits’ new Strategic Plan for Innovation that is being implemented by the newly established Wits Innovation Centre (WIC). Celebrating 100 years of excellence, Wits University is actively growing the next generation of researchers, innovators and entrepreneurs who can turn knowledge into impactful solutions to solve real-world problems. This is where brilliant minds come together to create, share and collaborate across disciplines and boundaries. We are committed to using our knowledge for the advancement of our community, city, country, continent, and the globe.
Smarter human oversight is crucial in facial recognition AI
- Wits University
Enhanced human verification techniques and practices will always be required to ensure accuracy and ward off inherent biases.
Machines have their place in the world and AI israpidly changing the definition of modern living, but humans equipped with better skills may still have the edge on doing some things better.
For Dr Nicholas Bacci, one of those things is in forensicfacial comparison. Bacci is a lecturer in the School of Anatomical Sciences and comes from a background in forensic anthropology. His area of study isan emerging field and focuseson improving techniques of manual facial comparison especially for applications in the medical and legal fields.
Enhancing techniques and validating methods
His PhD, which he completed in 2021, involved collecting a large database of over 700 facial images including stills, standardised and non-standardised images and CCTV image and running these through a series of validation studies to create comparison and validation techniques and checklists.
“We also combined this with the gold standard of facial comparison that of morphological analysis. This is an anatomical process of looking at each feature of the face in thorough detail and trying to ascertain whether the person would be a match or another face,” he said.
He said the techniqueshe’s working on developing can be taught to train the likes of police officers, those who work in security and crowd control, forensic anthropologists and auditors and down the line, virtually anybody who works with large groups of people or faces – including hospital workers and even lecturers and teachers.
The importance of human expertise
Bacci presented a lecture at the beginning of Juneat Wits outlining his work and the future plans for his research. He argued the importance,in a world heavily reliant on artificial intelligence, toinsert trained people back into the process of facial identification and comparison. This is especially relevant, he said, in the medical and legal fields. For Bacci, human beings with adequate training working and within a framework of independent peer oversight can bring a level of critical judgement and considered analysis for successful facial comparison. As such it still trumps the rigid automation of algorithms and recognition software.
Addressing bias and limitations
One of the major drawbacks of current facial recognition software lies in its inherent biases, mirroring the societal divides and inequalities prevalent in the world.
Bacci, in his lecture, set out the evolution of facial identification. The development of photography meant photographic imagerycould use faces – the still enduring standard of the “mug shot” - as a record for identification. The technology has advanced to facial recognition and identification being driven by AI withever smarter software. It’s now widely used in everything, from banking to cyber security, passport control and public surveillance.
But there are limits to AI and the current-day facial recognition software, Bacci says. These limits come in partbecause they mirror the massive divides and inequalities in the world. It meansthese systems and software have built-in bias and can turn up more false positives or cannot reliability adjust for nuances and contexts when they are not applicable to experiences related to the developed world.
“With those systems being developed inwestern locations and by people inthose populations it means for instance that any person of colour tends to be misidentified more easily because the algorithms are simply not trained as extensively,” he said.
The role of human verification
Bacci said there cautions should come from the numerous examples of AI and automated facial recognition software resulting in people being wrongfully accused of crimes and convicted. This comes with severe consequences for upholding justice and the ability to createpublic trust in the capabilities of law enforcement and the fairness of the judicial process.
“The presumption of innocence under proven guilty is a core tenant of the countries that go by the Geneva Convention. Hence we would rather err on the side of a false negative than on a false positive so we don’t end up incarcerating someone who’s actually not responsible for a specific criminal activity,” he said, adding that the role of manual or human-led facial comparison can become a kind safety net that's vital in a democratic society.
“AI cannot be a complete replacement for human expertise. There should be a person at some point in the operational loop of the system so that theycan still analyse, compare, evaluate and verify. AIshould strictly be an enhancement adding to the efficiency and helping to make processes quicker for us. Human verification should always still be required in the process of facial identification,”Bacci added.
Empowering professionals and ensuring accuracy
Bacci and his colleagues at Wits have for some years already been working to use manual facial comparison techniques to enhance the skills of police officers in South Africa. Because of rising demand and growing applications for these skills – especially when they can stand up in a court of law - Bacci and his colleagues are developing an accredited short course in forensic facial comparison that will be launched in 2024.
The training will delve into aspects of anatomical training; basic image analysis training, improving photographic capture for better analysis and deepening the understanding of how these overall processesare practically used through hands-on training.
Researchers demonstrate noise-free communication with structured light
- Wits University
A new approach to optical communication that can be deployed with conventional technology.
The patterns of light hold tremendous promise for a large encoding alphabet in optical communications, but progress is hindered by their susceptibility to distortion, such as in atmospheric turbulence or in bent optical fibre. Now researchers at the University of the Witwatersrand (Wits) have outlined a new optical communication protocol that exploits spatial patterns of light for multi-dimensional encoding in a manner that does not require the patterns to be recognised, thus overcoming the prior limitation of modal distortion in noisy channels. The result is a new encoding state-of-the-art of over 50 vectorial patterns of light sent virtually noise-free across a turbulent atmosphere, opening a new approach to high-bit-rate optical communication.
Published this week in Laser & Photonics Reviews, the Wits team from the Structured Light Laboratory in the Wits School of Physics used a new invariant property of vectorial light to encode information. This quantity, which the team call “vectorness”, scales from 0 to 1 and remains unchanged when passing through a noisy channel. Unlike traditional amplitude modulation which is 0 or 1 (only a two-letter alphabet), the team used the invariance to partition the 0 to 1 vectorness range into more than 50 parts (0, 0.02, 0.04 and so on up to 1) for a 50-letter alphabet. Because the channel over which the information is sent does not distort the vectorness, both sender and received will always agree on the value, hence noise-free information transfer.
The critical hurdle that the team overcame is to use patterns of light in a manner that does not require them to be “recognised”, so that the natural distortion of noisy channels can be ignored. Instead, the invariant quantity just “adds up” light in specialised measurements, revealing a quantity that doesn’t see the distortion at all.
“This is a very exciting advance because we can finally exploit the many patterns of light as an encoding alphabet without worrying about how noisy the channel is,” says Professor Andrew Forbes, from the Wits School of Physics. “In fact, the only limit to how big the alphabet can be is how good the detectors are and not at all influenced by the noise of the channel.”
Lead author and PhD candidate Keshaan Singh adds: “To create and detect the vectorness modulation requires nothing more than conventional communications technology, allowing our modal (pattern) based protocol to be deployed immediately in real-world settings.”
The team have already started demonstrations in optical fibre and in fast links across free-space, and believe that the approach can work in other noisy channels, including underwater.
What to see and what to do at the 2023 Fak'ugesi Festival
- Wits University
A virtual feast of Africa’s best creative showcases, digital workshops, talks, music, and digital art exhibitions
Get ready for an electrifying 10th-anniversary celebration of African creativity at the Fak’ugesi African Digital Innovation Festival. Taking place from 26 September to 1 October 2023, the festival is an unmissable event at the forefront of Africa’s culture and technology scene.
For a decade, Fak’ugesi has proudly led the charge in supporting innovation in technology, art, and culture across the African continent, and is now, once again, proud to deliver an outstanding lineup geared towards bringing tech innovation to people in a fun, accessible and playful way.
“Fak'ugesi has been a pioneer in bridging the gap between African culture, technological innovation and creative encounters,” says Eduardo Cachucho, Fak’ugesi Festival’s Creative Director. This 10th-anniversary celebration promises to be a milestone in the journey of creativity, and we invite everyone to join us in this unique experience.”
The Fak’ugesi Festival public programme is open to everyone, with each day tailored to offer a journey like no other. The Fak’ugesi Conference is made for the inquisitive mind looking for engaging talks, panels and speakers, Student Day is crafted for students 18 years old and up looking for masterclasses, expo and exhibitions, while Beats brings thumping bass and dazzling pan-African and international music performances to the heart of Joburg. Lastly, the Fak’ugesi Family and Maker Day is back by popular demand offering a variety of activities and digital artistic content for children and their parents.
This year, Fak’ugesi has added some exciting events to its lineup to commemorate 10 years and this year’s theme #MoreFlow which questions how we use digital innovation and creativity to build new worlds. “In a world asking for more data, more information, more work, and more pressure, the festival is a call to search for #moreflow – paths of least resistance with the most benefit,” says Cachucho.
Two virtual reality films produced by WITS students in the TV & Film and Digital Arts departments are featured in this project.
The viewers are thrust into the heart of two hip-hop videos shot in and around Braamfontein, Johannesburg - home to the largest student population in South Africa. You'll be drawn in by these 360 music videos, depicting either the shady deals of "Keys" or the heart-breaking tale of "Let Me Go."
Fak’ugesi Trailer - Mollo Partnership
Fak’ugesi’s collaboration with Mollo is set to take creativity to new heights with a first of its kind Fak’ugesi Animated Trailer. Tshimologong’s Mollo Animation Academy and Studio develops the South African animation industry into a dependable contributor to the creative economy and opens doors for new talent. Video Here.
Création Afrique Exhibition Showcase
See two outstanding VR works by the AfroCyborg delving into African spiritualism, eco-consciousness, and AI. The showcase is installed at Fak’ugesi ready to travel to Paris from 6-8 October for the Création Afrique Forum Supported by the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Ministry of Cultural Affairs, the forum strives to honour and showcase the newest, bravest, and most brilliant works of African innovation.
AI to Amplify
Explore the fascinating world of Artificial Intelligence and its role in amplifying creativity and innovation. Here, socially conscious individuals are invited to contribute their viewpoints to the creation of public good-focused artificial intelligence applications and products in a variety of teams that were selected from Goethe Institut’s global programme. Through virtual courses and meetings, the fellowship programme broadens AI skill sets.
Noga Mo Jozi
Noga Mo Jozi delves into the many possible African urban imaginaries of Johannesburg with the help of AI as an iterative tool for creation. It sees African urban futures not as sci-fi but as the extension of a millennia old engagement with spiritualism, humanity, the earth, and design intersecting with technology. The exhibition by Dr Sechaba Maape (co-curator of the SA pavilion at the Venice Architecture Biennale), brings together for the first time in South Africa, together with AI Joburg African urban speculations from Dr Sechaba Maape, Menzi Ndlovu, Dirk Coetser, Anita Szentesi. It’s showing at the Fak’ugesi Festival is made possible with the support of the WITS School of Architecture and Planning.
The Fak'ugesi Beats Party
The week’s activities at Fak'ugesi culminate in this sensational party, reigniting the energy and spirit created at the inaugural event. Returning to Johannesburg in celebration of the Fak'ugesi African Digital Innovation Festival's 10-year anniversary. On Saturday, 30 September, the Beats Party takes over Braamfontein’s tech hub at the Tshimologong Precinct.
Live performances will feature Muzi, K Le Maestro (UK), Morena Leraba x Leeu, and COCO EM (KE), with support from Kaddy, Deniece Marz, Yolophonik, and Sis Madlisa.
Prepare for a union of performance, music, technology, and digital innovation, showcasing the best in alternative talent, both local and international.
To avoid disappointment, kindly note that this venue has limited capacity, so book your tickets now to secure your space!
Fak’ugesi Ticket Options
Student Tickets: Day Pass at R50, or a 4-Day Festival Pass for R200
Standard Tickets: Day Pass at R100, or 4-Day Festival Pass for R350
VIP Tickets: 4-Day Festival Pass for R600
Family Day: Family of four for just R200
Beats Party: Limited early bird tickets for R250
The full programme can be viewed via Fak’ugesi Festival website here. Tickets are available for purchase online at Quicket, here.
Wits launches new PGDip in Science in the field of Innovation and Entrepreneurship
- Wits University
Graduates and third year students encouraged to apply now for the new PG Diploma to drive business ownership and job creation.
Graduates and third year students in engineering, science and health sciences are encouraged to apply for the new Postgraduate Diploma in Science in the field of Innovation and Entrepreneurship before 30 November 2023. Developed and led by the Wits Innovation Centre, the new diploma aims to bridge the gap between academic research and real-world innovation, with a focus on driving job creation and solutions-driven entrepreneurship.
Traditional academic pursuits, such as publications and patents, are vital but not sufficient in today's rapidly changing world. This is according to Professor Nithaya Chetty, the Dean of the Wits Faculty of Science, and a distinguished physicist who spearheaded the programme together with the Wits Innovation Centre: "South African universities must give attention to both discovery and innovation,” says Chetty.
The PGDip in Science in the field of Innovation and Entrepreneurship has been meticulously crafted to draw on the entrepreneurial spiritof young scientists and engineers. Chetty adds: "The outcome of their work should not be a thesis on a shelf to gather dust, but the spark for lighting a fire in them to see their work in practice."
This ambitious initiative will involve all faculties at Wits, inspiring students to explore the potential of their research and understand the journey from science to innovation. Professor Christo Doherty, the course coordinator, emphasises, "We want them to fast-track their ideas and research into forms that are commercially viable or that have significant social impact."
The curriculum is intensive and hands-on, with a year-long research project at its core. Students will have the unique opportunity to develop their ideas under the guidance of an interdisciplinary team of lecturers. The coursework includes essential subjects such as The Basics of Business for Innovators, Innovation and Research Commercialisation, Venture Creation for Innovators, and Design Thinking for Innovation.
But who are the ideal candidates for this pioneering programme?
The 2024 pilot is open to candidates who have completed a minimum of a three-year degree in Engineering, Science, or Health Sciences, both from within and outside the University.
Doherty explains: "We particularly encourage candidates who are planning to study a Masters or PhD in any of these areas, so that they can go into the advanced degree empowered with an understanding of how to commercialise their research. The career opportunities for graduates of this programme are immense. Equipped with the skills and mindset to innovate and create, they are the future entrepreneurs and job creators. They won't just find jobs; they'll make them.”
In the year following the 2024 pilot, Wits Innovation Centre intends to expand the programme beyond commercialising research to ensure that it has broader social impact. The Faculty of Humanities and other faculties will be included, making this initiative even more inclusive and impactful.
Chetty concludes: "This is a very exciting new development which will utilise the flexibility of the PGDip qualification to pioneer dynamic new methods of teaching and group learning to fast-track researchers into careers as innovators and entrepreneurs."
The PGDip in Science in the field of Innovation and Entrepreneurship at Wits is not just an academic endeavour; it will be a catalyst for change, innovation, and job creation. This programme is poised to make a significant impact on society, a testament to the Wits Innovation Centre's commitment to fostering innovation and entrepreneurship, not just within its campus but throughout South Africa and beyond.”
Applications to study the PGDip in Science in the field of Innovation and Entrepreneurship in 2024 are open until 30 November 2023. Apply here.
How do we use Artificial Intelligence in Higher Education for Good?
- Wits University
Wits workshop on Learning and Teaching debates responsibility, equity, and access of generative AI in Higher Education.
The Wits Centre for Learning, Teaching, and Development (CLTD) is tackling accelerated technological development head-on through critical multidisciplinary conversations around artificial intelligence technologies and its implications for learning and teaching.
This week it hosted a workshop focusing on Ensuring Responsibility, Equity, and Access: Artificial Intelligence in Higher Education. The topics proposed personal, professional, and scholarly perspectives on how AI tools could augment, shape, or impact future academic endeavours. It reflected on recent experiences of learning and teaching with these tools, describing the challenges and opportunities encountered, and how this is playing out in learning and teaching.
Can we use Artificial Intelligence in Higher Education for Good? This was the topic put forward by Professor Ruksana Osman, Senior Deputy Vice Chancellor: Academic, who opened the workshop. “I commend this very progressive workshop; I hope that we are not debating whether our students should or should not access large language platforms or the like. I would like to think that as a University with the edge, we are embracing artificial intelligence platforms and using them as tools to enhance teaching and learning for good, across all disciplines,” she said.
“The creation of AI models and platforms is the easy part,” she added. “It is a natural evolution of the Internet or Google or online encyclopaedias, just must faster and much more powerful. The difficult part comes in the intangible aspects, in regulating the use of these platforms for teaching and learning purposes, in deciding what is allowed and what is not, in ensuring that these tools are used responsibly to advance the public good, eliminating bias and prejudice, enhancing transparency and accountability, and abiding by the Protection to Access to Information Act and protecting data privacy, amongst other aspects,” she added.
Generative AI presents many challenges and opportunities for higher education. From literacy to ethics, responsibility to malpractice, AI is forcing higher education leaders to rethink and redesign teaching, learning and assessment. A talk on a hybrid (Human + AI) model as it relates to teaching and learning was presented, along with new design and delivery options to address this new educational reality. Mairead Pratschke, Professor and Chair in Digital Education at the University of Manchester, was one of the speakers and said: “It’s great that we have these AI tools to assist us with our tasks and to help us use the AI ecosystem of tools to rethink and redesign our activities intentionally and purposefully.’’
Some may view the AI chatbot era as a 'Chatpocalypse Now' event, with its phenomenal uptake in a short span of time assailing academic integrity, infringing on copyright in the creative industries, and raising concomitant concerns about data, privacy, and ethics for both individuals and society. Others see its promising applications across various disciplines, and, more importantly, in the higher education sector, as an opportunity to re-evaluate the purpose of higher education and to herald new ways of assessment, learning, and research.
Ms. Phaladi Sethusa, who lectures in the Wits Centre for Journalism presented on AI in journalism education on Misinformation or Automated Personal Assistant stated: "To paraphrase, albeit imperfectly colleagues at Wits University have adopted a more optimistic outlook, which can be summarised as: 'If you can't enforce it, endorse it.'"
The workshop sparked passionate debates and thoughtful discussions about the responsible integration of Artificial Intelligence in higher education. Academics and experts explored the potential benefits and ethical considerations surrounding AI in learning and teaching. Key topics included the transformative potential of Generative AI in reimagining student assessment, the importance of developing critical AI literacy, and the role of AI in promoting social justice through equitable assessment practices. The event emphasised the need for responsible and ethical AI implementation in higher education, acknowledging its potential to revolutionise learning while emphasising the importance of informed decision-making and inclusive practices in the AI age.
The Summit is another step forward in developing mining tech and skills to drive a low-carbon future and just energy transition.
Hosted by the Wits Mining Institute (WMI) on 28 and 29 September 2023, the 21st Century Mining Technology, Skills and Exhibition focussed on four key areas:
Integrated critical raw materials for the just energy transition
Circular mining and minerals
Digital technologies and cybersecurity
Waterless mining
According to WMI Director Professor Glen Nwaila the summit is a unique platform bringing together industry leaders, experienced academics, students and stakeholders from the mining sector – to exchange knowledge, share insights and explore the latest advancements in mining to envision future trajectories.
The first focus was to promote research and innovation in the exploration, extraction and processing of critical raw materials that are essential for a sustainable and just energy transition. “This has become imperative to achieve the global target of net zero emissions by 2050,” said Nwaila.
The next focus emphasised the importance of circular economy principles in the mining industry.
“We explored secondary sources of metals, such as stockpiles and metallurgical tailings, and discussed how the mining industry can transition to a service-oriented model,” he explained. “This contrasts with the traditional ownership model, and instead aims to achieve a metal for a subscription model that is relevant to modern investors, consumers and employees become more socially conscious.”
As advancements in digital technologies transform the mining landscape, the summit addressed the challenges and opportunities of implementing digital technologies such as material traceability or fingerprinting of commodities from mining operation to the market. The solutions will be applied while ensuring robust cybersecurity measures, responsible use of artificial intelligence and effective governance.
“Water scarcity is another pressing concern for many mining regions, so the summit highlighted innovative technologies and collaborative strategies that enable waterless mining processes,” he said. “Progress on this front will reduce the industry's environmental impact and help ensure sustainable resource management for water security in line with the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals for 2030.”
As the host organisation, the WMI advances research, innovation and collaboration in the mining industry, with a strong focus on cutting-edge technologies and sustainable practices.
A recent report by the UN has highlighted that over 4 billion people in the world are “not connected”, with Africa having the lowest penetration (22%) and the highest gender divide (25%). “What is tragic is that economic upliftment is hindered by these divides, yet they are widening not shrinking with time,” says Forbes The UN estimates that $400m (just under R5 billion) allotted to bridging the gender digital divide remains unspent. The Wits team has already made several technical advances to address these issues and is about to embark on a commercialisation programme with a local listed company.
Professor Bruce Mellado is the National Contact Physicist of South Africa at the ATLAS experiment at CERN and holds a dual appointment at the University of the Witwatersrand and iThemba LABS of the NRF. He supports the idea to build an accelerator that would be almost four times the size of the current LHC, which, at the moment is the world’s largest and most powerful particle accelerator.
In his talk, Mellado – who has published a number of seminal papers on the advantages of electron-proton collisions, including in the prestigious Physics Review Letters – discussed the possibility of attaching a small accelerator of electrons to the FCC that would create head-on collisions with the protons, to happen at the same times as proton-proton collisions.
The Department of Science and Technology funds the South Africa CERN (SA-CERN) consortium. This avenue is essential for South African students and researchers to access this leading global research infrastructure. 
“Dingane giving a plenary presentation summarising the upgrade activities of the Tile Calorimeter of the ATLAS detector was a honour to us all,” says Mellado.
“I’ve been able to attend lots of conferences, where I’ve met different kinds of people from different parts of the world, and I’ve also learnt a lot about High Energy Physics,” she says. 
Ideally, the descendants of those who built and inhabited this city should be involved in future research at this site. Some of my postgraduate students are already in contact with representatives of the Bakwena branch of the Tswana who claim parts of the landscape to the south of Johannesburg. We hope that they will actively become involved in our research project.
Effective, cheap and scalable diagnostics are urgently required for TB. For this, the new DMN-trehalose stain has great promise. It’s also an excellent research tool to help understand TB transmission and how TB bacteria remodels their cell walls during TB disease.
The Optical Society of America (OSA), the leading international society for the field of optics, has named research into 
The elements and isotopes that this laboratory aims to separate are normally present in extremely low abundance in rocks, meteorites, fossils and water. “Elements like Pb, Sr, Cu, Zn are normally only present at the part per million or part per billion level in these materials and so it is crucial that we process these samples in an extremely clean and contamination-free environment,” says Bybee. “If not, researchers run the risk of contaminating precious samples with elements from the surroundings, obscuring the natural isotope signal of the samples.” 
The use of elemental and isotopic analysis is extremely important in geosciences, where scientists study the composition, age and processes operating on the Earth. However, isotopes are also highly effective in other scientific fields such as medicine – for example in the diagnosis of cancer and bone diseases – and in palaeosciences for establishing the origin, movement patterns and diets of now extinct animals, including our human ancestors. 
Following the discovery of the Higgs boson in 2012, the LHC is developing a long-term plan to increase the intensity of the collisions. This is necessary to provide a lot more data with which to explore the Higgs boson and its coupling to other particles; the search for other bosons and other new particles. In 2016 the LHC delivered collisions with an intensity significantly surpassing the initial design. The LHC envisions major upgrades in the future that will increase the data available by about 100 times.
We will also learn whether these three entirely new concepts, the result of years of research by scientists across the world, can reshape the HIV prevention landscape and, hopefully, take us closer to ending the HIV pandemic.
Being able to manipulate or reconstruct artefacts and use them helps us to understand how and why they were used or created. Being in the team that has conceptualised and created the Origins Centre’s VR content has reminded me that collaborative and interdisciplinary work – even though sometimes tricky to start – can be so fulfilling and revolutionary.
,-Thapelo-Sekwena-(1)-and-Absalom-Mpanze-(3)_430px.jpg "Professor Barry Dwolatzky with the three winners Methembe Dlamini (2), Thapelo Sekwena (1) and Absalom Mpanze (3)")
The first, second and third place winners are:
The Optical Society (OSA)
Researchers at the Nanoscale Transport Physics Laboratory from the School of Physics at the University of the Witwatersrand have found a technique to improve carbon superlattices for quantum electronic device applications. Superlattices are made up of alternating layers of very thin semiconductors, just a few nanometers thick. These layers are so thin that the physics of these devices is governed by quantum mechanics, where electrons behave like waves. In a paradigm shift from conventional electronic devices, exploiting the quantum properties of superlattices holds the promise of developing new technologies.
Through their work, the group reported one of the first theoretical models that can explain the fundamental electronic transport properties in disordered carbon superlattices.
Superlattice electronic devices can operate at higher frequencies and optoelectronic devices can operate at lower frequencies than their conventional counterparts. The lack of terahertz emitters and detectors has resulted in a gap in that region of the electromagnetic spectrum (known as the “terahertz gap”), which is a significant limitation, as many biological molecules are active in this regime. This also limits terahertz radio astronomy. 
, Michael Westgate (PhD Candidate), Mpofana Sihoyiya (MSc candidate), Prof.jpg "Kenneth Rapetsoa (MSc Candidate), Michael Westgate (PhD Candidate), Mpofana Sihoyiya (MSc candidate), Prof. Musa Manzi (Director, Wits Seismic Research Centre), and Philip Staley (Senior project geologist, Sibanye-Stillwater)")
.jpg "Fak'ugesi Festival 2019 | http://fakugesi.co.za/")
The team, led by Wits Professor Andrew Forbes, have demonstrated that multiple quantum patterns of twisted light can be transmitted across a conventional fibre link that, paradoxically, supports only one pattern. The research, 
The grant award supports COVID-19-related visualisation and analytics for Southern Africa. The nature of the project is interdisciplinary, where medical data and expertise need to be combined with the wealth of methodologies and algorithms used in advanced analytics, Big Data and Data Science. Assumptions used in the project revolve around our current level of understanding of advanced analytics driven by Data Science and other disciplines. Both main-stream statistical frameworks, frequentist and Bayesian are an underlying assumption to model development. Input from the different medical, virology and custodians of static data pertaining to populations, social and medical vulnerabilities, access to medical infrastructure, prevalence of various relevant pre-existing conditions are also underlying assumptions. 
From making air travel safer to detecting chemicals that can cause cancer, from developing advanced technologies for finding buried landmines, the curiosity of Dr David Fine, a Wits University alumnus, has resulted in innovations that have impacted on society for over 45 years.
The study report notes that many holders of CSVs under the 2014 criteria will now not be able to renew or extend their visas.
In his memoir he also shares his love and connection with Wits University which spans more than 50 years, starting as a student in electrical engineering in the early 70s where he graduated with a BSc(Eng) degree and later his PhD, and where he has since devoted much of his time to prepare young people for the future. “I’ve discovered that idealism and naivety coupled with bold dreams and determination can get one very far,” he writes in the book.
Forbes 
The project, that makes use of the Pecogrid power brick, developed by Professor Willie Cronje of the Wits School of Electrical and Information Engineering, aims to look at the viability of installing small microgrids into informal communities to assist in providing energy to these communities, while it may at the same time act as an income generator for individuals. 
