A major project is being launched in Mozambique to help prepare the country to meet the challenges of the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR), also known as the Next Production Revolution (NPR), or Industry 4.0. This is the Smart Ecosystem for Innovation, Technology and Knowledge Growth in Mozambique Project.

“The NPR developments represent challenges to less developed countries like Mozambique, in particular [with respect to] the skilled workforce necessary to address the complexities related to the application of Industry 4.0 technologies, given their weak infrastructure and limited technological knowledge,” highlight Mozambique Research and Education Network (MoRENet) CEO Lourino Chemane, Eduardo Mondlane University Economics Faculty dean Fernando Lichucha, University of Saint Thomas of Mozambique lecturer Lucia Ginger, and World Bank energy specialist Claudio Buque in their joint paper, Smart Ecosystem for Innovation, Technology and Knowledge Growth in Mozambique, published in the 2019 World Manufacturing Forum Report: Skills for the Future of Manufacturing.

“The current education system in Mozambique needs to include relevant content [to] the NPR,” they affirm. “The graduates lack the skills to be employed in NPR-based industries.” Fortunately, the Mozambique government is aware of this. “It also acknowledges the role of technology, in particular digital technologies, as facilitators of innovation and transformation of teaching and learning processes.”

The Smart Ecosystem project is centred on Web-based learning. It includes the use of Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) to deliver digital educational content (which is being developed). This will be done using the country’s existing MoRENet infrastructure. In addition, MoRENet will be greatly extended to locations, institutions and enterprises which it had not previously served. This will include schools, industries and industrial research laboratories, agribusinesses, health centres and communities.

“The project aims to build a partnership of stakeholders engaged in contributing [to] skills development of the youth and communities in four provinces of Mozambique, namely Cabo Delgado, Tete, Inhambane, and Maputo, to enable them to become relevant actors of 4IR,” they report. Cabo Delgado, the country’s most north-easterly province, is also the centre of Mozambique’s emerging offshore natural gas industry; Tete is the most westerly province, and is a major mining centre (particularly for coal); Inhambane is a coastal province in the south of the country, important agriculturally and with a growing tourist sector; while Maputo hosts the capital, Maputo.

The project is being phased in and some activities have already started. Several partners are already making MOOC educational content available for the project. These include the Polytechnic of Milan, in Italy; Portugal’s National Scientific Computing Foundation; and South African fibre-optic, satellite and international carrier services company Liquid Telecom. Three Mozambique universities have joined the project – Eduardo Mondlane, Saint Thomas of Mozambique, and Rovuma University – as has the Research and Technology Transfer Centre of Mozambique.