Abstract
The Fourth Industrial Revolution is fast emerging and slowly taking over the world. The invention of the Fourth Industrial Revolution includes blockchain, artificial intelligence, and robotics, to name a few. Countries in Africa may not be ready to implement and adapt to it, which may cause a gap between the global North and South and a gap between African countries. The study is therefore going to explore the introduction and the implementation of the Fourth Industrial Revolution and the readiness of the SADC region thereof by looking at South Africa, Botswana, Namibia, and Malawi. This study aims to investigate and explore how ready South Africa, Botswana, Namibia, and Malawi are for the implementation of the Fourth Industrial Revolution by looking at whether they have passed the first three Industrial Revolutions and by also looking at the availability of technologies of the Fourth Industrial Revolution and how they are used. This study argues that of all the four chosen countries of this study, South Africa is the only one that seems to have passed the first three Industrial Revolutions and seems ready to implement the technological inventions of the Fourth Industrial Revolution. Artificial Intelligence, the Internet of Things and Robotics were considered the available Fourth Industrial Revolution technology in South Africa, Botswana, Namibia and Malawi, and the Absorptive Capacity Theory was employed to assess how they were used to stimulate innovation in the countries. The study is going to make use of both qualitative and quantitative approaches. The data that will be collected is both numerical and non-numerical data, which includes states, newspaper articles, journal articles, websites, and books. In South Africa, Artificial Intelligence, the Internet of Things and Robotics have been adopted swiftly and they have all been used to stimulate innovation. In Botswana, there was a challenge to swiftly adopt Artificial Intelligence, the Internet of Things, and robots due to the necessary measures needing to be put in place. Artificial Intelligence and the Internet of Things have been hard to embrace. However, the country has identified ways in which they can be used. Namibia faced challenges during its quest to adopt Artificial Intelligence, as many measures need to be put in place for its adoption. Malawi is well on its way to swiftly adopting Artificial Intelligence into its various economies and is willing to use it for innovation and growth.