President Jacob Zuma. CC image courtesy of the World Economic Forum.
The South African government will expand affordable ICT infrastructures across the country, improve technical skills training for young people, and support small and medium enterprises (SMEs) over the next five year term, president Jacob Zuma promised in his State of the Nation Address (SONA).
Speaking yesterday in Cape Town, the newly re-elected president said over the past five years the government has pumped investment into providing internet for all South Africans, conceding that over the coming five-year term further work is necessary to “modernise” infrastructure including internet and broadcasting infrastructures, and improve on the cost of these technologies.
“During the past five years, we invested about one trillion rand in new infrastructure to provide water, energy, transport, sanitation, schools and clinics and internet connections to our people,” Zuma said.
“We will expand, modernise and increase the affordability of information and communications infrastructure and electronic communication services, including broadband and digital broadcasting.
“Cabinet adopted “South Africa Connect”, our Broadband Policy and Strategy, in December last year to take this mission forward.”
Zuma pledged ongoing infrastructure development in order to grow the country’s economy.
“We will continue with various other infrastructure projects that will change the living conditions of our people and boost economic growth,” he said.
Among the education based projects to be rolled out over the coming term, Zuma said technical skills training would be a key area of improvement.
“12 training and vocational education colleges will be built to expand the technical skills mix in the country,” he said.
The Square Kilometre Array (SKA) project also received the president’s attention during the speech, promising to begin construction of the first dish antennas during the next five years, as well as complete construction of 60 MeerKAT dishes – which form an integral component of the SKA project.
The president said startups and small businesses will receive support as a priority this term, given their potentially significant contribution towards developing the economy.
“Over the next five years, we will prioritise support to small business, as well as township and informal sector businesses in particular, thus using the SMME development programme to boost broad-based black economic empowerment.”
HumanIPO reported in February 2013 Zuma’s SONA speech made little reference to technology, making mention of fibre-optic cable rollouts taking place and reiterating the government’s aim to achieve 100 per cent broadband penetration by 2020.
The need to improve technological education was also highlighted in last year’s speech, and was restated in yesterday’s talk.
In February this year, Zuma made a SONA speech in which ICT references were limited to pledging further fibre-optic deployments.
