Page 60 - UKZN Proceedings of the Conference Report

and improve crisis management in South Africa. The research aims to provide policymakers, stakeholders, and practitioners with actionable insights. It will examine the application of AI in addressing the specific challenges faced by South Africa, with a particular focus on how AI intersects with public innovation, development, and sustainability. This study is timely and significant, offering key recommendations for how South Africa can build a more inclusive, resilient, and sustainable future.
To sum up, it is evident that AI can be used to improve public systems in South Africa through its capacity of providing crisis management tools, enhancing inclusivity and maximising resource utilisation. This research will inform policy and practices aimed at promoting the country’s resilience and sustainability amid current and emerging challenges.
Materials and methods
This study used a desk-based approach to investigate the prospects of AI in addressing the multifaceted problems in South Africa. This started with a thorough literature review on academic-oriented content and other information pertaining to the subject matter. The aim was to procure peer-reviewed articles, government papers, case studies, and white papers on the influence of AI on crisis response management, issues of sustainable development and policies on innovation in the public sector. To narrow down the results of the searches and make sure that the reviewed literature was relevant for this study, keywords like Artificial Intelligence (AI), crisis management, economic stability, environmental conservation, public innovation, and sustainable development were used.
After assembling a large pool of information, all sources were evaluated for their relevance and reliability. The focus was on the articles and reports discussing the potential of AI in critical sectors of South Africa, like energy, justice, employment, and governance. A lot of the literature was then analysed under several main categories with the following themes constructed: energy optimisation, crime detection, job creation, governance improvement. Analysis exposed knowledge on existing patterns, trends and voids, and provided the authors with invaluable vision as to how AI can be useful to address some of the problems that South Africa currently faces.
The study included an assessment of industry trends in the use of AI technologies and practices through successful cases outlining examples of robotics designs in crisis management across different nations. This was done with the target of analysing the context of international examples as including South Africa, questioning the practicability and impact of doing the same AI integrations in South Africa. A systematic literature review and meta- analysis was performed to summarise the findings from
numerous studies and to present a thorough exploration of the significance of AI as a tool in crisis management and issues of sustainable development. This was aimed at showing how AI can be used to improve resilience and sustainability and would therefore be useful to policymakers and implementers in South Africa.
Several challenges were faced during the study, including unavailability of country-specific data on AI use and integration in South Africa as it pertains to the region. Most of the available works talked about the use of AI in developed countries, and this forced the study to modify those findings for use in South Africa. In addition, rapid development of AI technologies was also a hindrance to this research, because some of the cited materials became very old fast, requiring the study to be updated and cross- referenced often. Because of the inherent limitations on certain information, especially that from researchers who are supported by an AI corporation or a government interested in the positive outcome of the study, more emphasis was placed on reading other materials to ensure fair and unprejudiced opinions were drawn upon.
A key takeaway from this research was how valuable an interdisciplinary method is. The incorporation of knowledge from innovation, finance, government regulations and ecology into the study made it possible to have a comprehensive view of what AI can do. The speed with which advancements in AI occur necessitates perpetual observation on its growth – hence, being cognizant of what trends are developing becomes imperative.
While this research provided valuable insights, it also had limitations, mainly due to relying on secondary data which might not fully capture the real-world complexities of AI usage, especially in South Africa. Without primary data, we could not validate the findings through empirical testing, particularly in the context of South Africa. Although comparing global examples was insightful, it may not have fully accounted for South Africa’s unique socio- political landscape, which could affect how AI is adopted and used differently from other countries. The country’s economic and political factors are key to understanding AI’s potential impact. The desktop research helped identify how AI could potentially address some of South Africa’s challenges, but future studies would be more robust if they included primary data and real-world case studies. While the comparisons made with other countries offered valuable lessons, they might have missed important socio- political factors specific to South Africa. In the end, while desk-based research gave us an understanding of AI’s role in solving some of South Africa’s problems, future investigations could be much stronger by integrating primary data and real-life examples for comparison.
58 | Proceedings of the conference on Public innovation, develoPment and sustainability