Foldscope a small glimpse of the future

One of the issues I believe our country suffers under is the fact that we are in the digital age – and yet we don’t take full advantage of this fact.

As an example of what I mean by this, our country has a major issue with science education.

The thing is there is stuff available online that can help solve that issue.

Take for example a recent project out of Stanford to create origami microscopes. For under R11 each we can have our children not only equipped with their own lab gear, but also making it themselves.

It is the sort of thing which doesn't cost a lot of money to do, and it would build confidence in our learners. It is the sort of thing our government should be keeping an eye out for.

For the past few years we have felt a bit beaten down as a country with regards to education – and yet there are these small things which we can take and utilise just waiting out there.

It just takes us going out and using them. This was the basic error to Thabo Mbeki’s “African solutions” idea – we shouldn’t be wasting time “catching up” with the rest of the world by reinventing the wheel.

The nature of the digital world is that we are already pretty much there, the information is readily available to us so there isn’t much point in reproducing it, we should be thinking about ways to take the lead.

And part of that is using every possible resource available to us, which means looking at projects like the foldscope and using them.

A leader is very rarely the person who is the absolute best at everything the group does – good captains generally aren’t the best players on their teams, they are the players who can utilise the talents of others.

That is the secret to every empire that has ever lasted – they weren’t the best, they were the ones who could use what the best had to offer.

We could be the nation that captains the world – we just need to start using what the other players are willing to give us.