Scientific progress through the global knowledge commons has afforded us the evolutionary capacity to create technological solutions to endure the challenges presented by our ecology and to secure our very survival. But we need to recognise the combined yet uneven distribution of productive capabilities which excludes the global majority from sharing in the benefits of our collective ingenuity, writes Rasigan Maharajh, Chief Director of the Institute for Economic Research on Innovation at the Tshwane University of Technology (South Africa). This article is based on his presentation at the Valdai Club’s Youth Conference as part of the World Youth Festival
In the modern world, science and technology have become key drivers of economic development. Each state strives to develop innovative potential in order to improve the quality of life of its people, increase productivity through the automation of processes, and build its economic capacity to strengthen its position in the world. However, modern technology also poses a threat in terms of the potential risk of data breaches, the weakening of state sovereignty in certain digital spheres, and the prospect of replacing humans in critical sectors. Experts face the challenge of finding optimal ways of pursuing technological development while ensuring the benefits of innovation and minimising potential risks. During the session, participants will discuss the opportunities and challenges of technological progress in an international context.
In addressing the opportunities and challenges presented by technological progress in an international context, I must first acknowledge that we now collectively constitute a human species with a population of over 8 billion people. This a priori demographic fact plays a key role in defining our contemporary conjuncture.
As was mentioned in yesterday’s session, history has not ended and in thoughts and deeds is being expanded and reframed.
While we invoke the idea of a common era to counteract the colonial, cultural, and religious biases implied in utilising previous global calendars, our contemporary epoch displays characteristics which are certainly not common. I want to suggest that we have much to gain from reinvesting in reframing our past so as to fully account for how the peoples of the world were incorporated into world systems on an extremely unequal and uneven basis. The biases preset by our misunderstanding of our species’ history persist into our present and tends towards obscuring and even excluding emergent progressive potentials for our further evolution and development.
Key to our species-level population success has been our intrinsic capacities, capabilities, and competences in creating and diffusing knowledge. Science has played a crucial role in establishing methods of understanding our bio-physical environment, our social nature, and our general precarity. Scientific progress through the global knowledge commons has afforded us the evolutionary capacity to create technological solutions to endure the challenges presented by our ecology and to secure our very survival.
As the Buran spacecraft exhibited at the entrance to this venue attests, we are not solely bound to our home planet, and besides venturing beyond the protection of our atmosphere, we can communicate with artefacts of our making which are now in interstellar space. Yet while we ascribe these demonstrated scientific and technological competences to mankind, we also need to recognise the combined yet uneven distribution of productive capabilities which excludes the global majority from sharing in the benefits of our collective ingenuity.
Africa, which is my birthplace and home, is a continent of approximately 1.46 billion people. Were we to be united and not segregated by the Berlin Conference subdivision by imperialist forces, we would be the largest country in world systems, ahead of India and China. The impacts of expropriation, extraction, and exploitation that followed colonialism, however, continue to be reproduced in both post-colonial and neo-colonial incarnations because of the unfinished struggles for decolonisation and decoloniality.
Having expressed a core challenge to the kind of technological progress, which would work for all, I would like to share a few optimistic opportunities. International cooperation and collaboration are expanding, and the increased attention that Russia, India, and China have directed towards science and technology presents young Africans with massive opportunities for learning and teaching. Building upon this momentum with improvements in domestic policies and frameworks, Africa would be able to redress the curse of marginalisation and racist exclusion.
Our discussion yesterday about empathy must be embraced for us to better appreciate our current situation. Positing a better world ahead of us demands that we pay attention to the processes of redressing epistemicide, pushing back the neo-liberal apparatuses of our real neo-colonial subjugation, and asserting our collective rights to development according to our national imperatives. Creatively destroying the mental and physical constraints to development for all is possible through expanding scientific research and through technological development through international cooperation and collaboration. Mutual teaching and learning offer the global majority such progressive opportunities, yet we must remain vigilant against those who continue to profit from the iniquitous international political economy. Whilst neo-colonial ties still bind much of the continent, the young people of Africa have agency and are expressing themselves in favour of a better world for all. Science, technology, and innovation offers pathways to the realisation of our ambitions and the future of us all depends upon us working together.
