Day: November 11, 2022

Higher Education, Science and Innovation Deputy Minister, Buti Manamela, has officially launched a Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR) micro-laboratory at Goldfields Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) college in Welkom, Free State.

Manamela described the launch of the third 4IR Centre of Excellence in South Africa as the country’s “gateway to create skills development, innovation, and entrepreneurship”.

“There is no question about the fact that 4IR is now upon us. The advent of the 4IR is not just changing the labour market, but the very world we live in and how we function within it.”

The Deputy Minister said all industries are rapidly transforming, while many occupations are becoming obsolete.

“New ones are being born in areas such as artificial intelligence, cloud computing, robotics, 3D printing and advanced wireless technologies.

“We are also seeing how these rapid advances in technology are fundamentally altering the skills requirements for various jobs.”

Citing World Bank data, Manamela said 65% of children entering primary school today would ultimately end up working in completely new jobs that do not exist yet.

“As is evident, the 4IR is all about new solutions and new technologies that can provide new, better, and faster solutions. This is why it is also anticipated that a wide range of occupations will require a higher degree of cognitive abilities, such as creativity, logical reasoning and problem solving, as part of their core skills.”

The Deputy Minister said his department has embraced President Cyril Ramaphosa’s call and the recommendations of the 4IR Commission.

“As a product of these discussions, we agreed to roll out the 4IR concept at TVET colleges in our country. We agreed to sponsor 10 TVET colleges to establish 4IR Centres of Excellence in them.”

As a result, the department has since identified several TVET colleges where these centres will be located. These include Ehlanzeni in Mpumalanga, Ikhala in the Eastern Cape, Lephalale and Vhembe both in Limpopo, Vuselela in the North West, Northern Cape Urban in the Northern Cape, Western College in Gauteng, uMgungundlovu from KwaZulu-Natal, Wes Coast from Western Cape and Goldfields in Free State.

“In rolling our 4IR centres at TVET colleges, we have adopted a multi-pronged approach.”

Industry-Partnered Learning Factories

Meanwhile, the department’s entities — the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) and the Manufacturing, Engineering and Related Services Sector Education and Training Authority (merSETA) — have also collaborated to establish 18 Industry-Partnered Learning Factories (IPLFs).

According to Manamela, two IPLFs in each province, at a cost of about R120 million, will support 4IR skills development, innovation and entrepreneurship.

“These learning factories will also serve as platforms for upskilling and re-skilling of the industry workforce through short courses to support the adoption of advanced technologies.”

Meanwhile, as part of this partnership, 261 students and 51 instructors have been trained, while 10 TVET colleges have been approved to offer a new stream on robotics programme from 2023.

The Deputy Minister announced that the department has also partnered with Intel South Africa to provide information and communications technology (ICT).

“The pilot project was started with Orbit College in the North West to develop a blueprint for the implementation of the project. The project consists of two aspects, which are ICT infrastructure and comprehensive 4IR training at different levels.”

He believes that the academic staff and the students here at Goldfields TVET college will benefit greatly from this investment.

“We are making significant progress in our efforts to ensure that students in the TVET colleges are empowered to respond creatively to the challenges and opportunities of the 4IR.”

Source: South African Government News Agency

For South Africa to meet its close-to-zero greenhouse gas emissions target, there will need to be significant private investment to facilitate this transition, says National Treasury.

This investment, Treasury said, will require both domestic and external resources, including from jurisdictions such as the European Union (EU).

“Mechanisms to encourage, simplify and facilitate the necessary cross-border capital flows for South Africa to facilitate its just transition will be critical if the country is to meet its objectives.

“Such mechanisms will need to be sufficiently comparable and interoperable to reduce the cost of cross border flows necessary for the just green transition,” the department said.

Treasury said a comparison study between the EU Green Taxonomy and SA Green Finance Taxonomy has found that SA and EU taxonomies both pursue the climate ambition of a “net-zero economy to 2050” as a core environmental objective, and have a very high degree of similarity between the criteria specified at the level of individual economic activities.

The study was undertaken by independent international experts, who were part of the EU Platform on Sustainable Finance.

Treasury said the study was intended to assist policymakers, companies, and financial market participants to understand the commonalities and divergences between the EU and the SA taxonomies, so as to ultimately foster seamless green financial flows between the EU and SA.

“This is crucial in the context of both the EU and SA achieving the net-zero goals by 2050. Overall, for the criteria of significant contribution to climate change mitigation and adaptation, the SA taxonomy has very similar and more ambitious and/or more detailed criteria compared to the EU Taxonomy for 85% of all matched economic activities (71% for significant contribution to climate change mitigation and 99% for climate change adaptation).

“The areas of divergence are primarily where adaptations were made for the SA context, which allows five or 10 years for the activity to meet the thresholds within an investment plan. This approach contrasts with the EU approach, which does not incorporate investment plans and only focuses on economic activities which are currently green.”

For green buildings, the SA Green Finance Taxonomy sets out three levels of eligibility (top-level equivalent to net-zero level, middle-level, and entry-level), while the EU Taxonomy only has one tier.

The EU taxonomy requires mandatory disclosures through the EU Taxonomy Regulation, whereas the SA taxonomy is currently voluntary, although work on incorporating the Green Finance Taxonomy into formal regulatory instruments is being undertaken.

The EU has recently taken steps to include, under specific criteria and time frames, nuclear and gas in their taxonomy, whilst these transitional elements are currently excluded from the SA taxonomy, but may be incorporated in future interactions.

Next Steps

Since the release of the SA taxonomy, the focus has been on embedding its use through raising market awareness and case studies, which are being finalised and will be released together with open access knowledge products.

The South African regulatory authorities — the Prudential Authority and Financial Sector Conduct Authority — will provide guidance and undertake assessments to inform the development of future regulatory instruments. Presentations, webinars, and additional briefing reports are available via the following link: https://sustainablefinanceinitiative.org.za/taxonomy/.

South Africa’s Green Finance Taxonomy was released in April 2022 as a catalogue or classification system that defines a minimum set of assets, projects, and sectors that are eligible to be defined as “green” or environmentally friendly.

It supports emerging national policy and voluntary private sector initiatives toward sustainable finance by reducing costs and uncertainty in classifying a core set of green activities. It takes account of the model adopted by the EU, given its comprehensive technical foundation and to ensure interoperability in global reporting.

In particular, the taxonomy focuses on the performance level of activities that make a substantial contribution to a set of six environmental objectives while doing no significant harm to any of those objectives and meeting minimum social safeguards.

Source: South African Government News Agency