• Stellenbosch University, the German government, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the Presidency have established the South African Policy Innovation Lab.
• This lab will be used to explore how data science and AI can inform policymaking in South Africa.
• The university has invited academic staff to work with Prof. Willem Fourie in pursuit of the UN’s Sustainable Development Goal 17.

The developments and improvements in the field of artificial intelligence and machine learning have started to become more useful than fun chatbots over the last few months.

We’re now starting to see projects that improve business processes, iron out inefficiencies and enhance the work done by human workers. However, the benefits of this technology can extend beyond an office space and into governance.

In a bid to explore this further, Stellenbosch University, the German government, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the Presidency have established the South African Policy Innovation Lab at the university’s School for Data Science and Computational Thinking.

The lab will be used to explore how data science and artificial intelligence can improve policymaking in South Africa in a bid to accelerate the nation’s work toward achieving the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) set out by the United Nations.

“Our entry point to the SDGs is SDG 17, particularly its focus on the importance of policy coherence and policy coordination. This is why its current projects focus on improving coordination and efficiency in South Africa’s policymaking and reducing duplication and policy conflict through the application of data science and AI tools and approaches,” project lead at the South African Policy Innovation Lab, Prof. Willem Fourie, said in a statement.

The SDG Fourie refers to focuses on, among other things, how technology can be leveraged to improve collaboration among nations and ultimately, improve the lives of citizens. This journey is, however, fraught with roadblocks and stumbling points. The UN itself says that achieving SDG 17 has been stymied “in areas such as development aid, remittances flows, and access to technology”. Funding is perhaps the biggest hurdle, particularly in low-income countries.

A quadripartite project such as the South African Policy Innovation Lab then is a good way to tackle this goal head on.

“Many of the Policy Innovation Lab’s projects are conducted in cooperation with the Policy and Research Services branch in the Presidency, its government partner. Other projects are run through its membership of the ARUA-Guild Cluster of Research Excellence on the Politics of Sustainable Development. The Policy Innovation Lab also hosts two projects with a strong social impact focus. Firstly, the Lab is the custodian of the South African network of the Gates Foundation’s Goalkeepers initiative – a project aimed at amplifying stories in SDG impact from across South Africa,” Stellenbosch University wrote in a statement.

The university has invited academic staff members at Stellies who want to collaborate with Fourie on developing solutions to express their interest via email.

Let’s see how what fruits this lab bears in the months to come.

[Image – nugroho dwi hartawan from Pixabay]