The Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR) is not a neutral or benign technological advancement—it is a construct engineered by the global ruling and moneyed elite. It serves as the foundational pillar of the 21st-century global business model, one dominated by corporate behemoths such as Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon, Alphabet, Microsoft, and their ilk. These entities control the intellectual property regimes, cloud infrastructure, and digital capital that undergird the contemporary techno-economic order. Through this control, they are entrenching monopolistic dominance, deepening class antagonisms, perpetuating systemic racism, and alienating the masses from the means of production and the equitable distribution of wealth.
This digital imperialism is nothing short of a modern tool for enriching the same intergenerational imperialist forces responsible for genocide and mass exploitation across the globe. For Africa and the African Union, and for all progressive forces worldwide, the 4IR represents a new front in the struggle against global capitalist domination. It demands resistance. The nation-state, already weakened by neoliberal globalization, is being rendered increasingly anachronistic by this imperial digital onslaught.
We must therefore reject this exploitative system and mobilize a united front—as Africans, and as a global humanity—to resist and dismantle this emerging architecture of digital colonization.
Dr Malusi Mncube
University of Johannesburg
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