The 55th Annual World Economic Forum (WEF) Meeting, 20 – 24 January 2025 in Davos-Klosters
By Professor Bonang Mohale Davos in Switzerland is the highest town in Europe at 1 560m situated in the mountains and as result, a very popular skiing destination precisely due to its cold weather, ice and snow at this time of the year! Yet ever since the World Economic Forum (WEF) brought its Annual Meeting to the alpine venue, the name resonates with the flagship event. The 20 – 24 January 2025 is the 55th Annual Meeting of the World Economic Forum (WEF) that has brought together nearly 3 000 leaders from over 130 countries and 350 governmental leaders, including 60 heads of states and governments, from all key regions; over 1 600 business leaders, including over 900 of the world’s top CEOs and Chairs from the WEF Members and Partners – over 120 of which are Global Innovators, Tech Pioneers and Unicorns who are transforming industries; civil society; the foremost scientific and cultural thinkers. Today, the programme contains more than 300 sessions – 200 of which are livestreamed to a global audience that aim to accelerate progress and tackle global challenges. The agenda changes every year to address the world’s most pressing issues – from pandemic preparedness and reskilling, to the state of the global economy and the energy transition. The WEF releases the Global Risks Report ahead of the Annual Meeting each January, to identify and analyse the upcoming near- and longer term critical global risks that underpin discussions. The Forum continues this work year round with a range of initiatives via its Centres. Geo-economic fragmentation, geopolitical polarisation and divisions over values continue to impact countries and communities across the world. At the same time, exponential innovation and deployment around whole sets of inter-connected technologies – from Artificial Intelligence (AI) and quantum to energy tech, biotech and health tech – offer an unprecedented opportunity to increase productivity and hence standards of living. Reviving and reimagining growth is critical to building stronger and more resilient economies. Given these powerful forces at play, three questions are guiding the conversations, namely how can we avoid an age of Fragmentation and instead work together on a can-do, people-centred agenda for an Intelligent Age; how can we reinvent the muscle of collaborative innovation to get out of the current low-growth, high-debt world economy and address common challenges from climate change to the ethical use of AI? To respond to this dynamic context, the WEF has convened leaders under the theme ‘Collaboration for the Intelligent Age’. Building on the core roles of the WEF as the International Organisation for Public Private Cooperation, it serves as a trusted global platform for dialogue and cooperation; brings together a diverse community of stakeholders; seeks to connect the dots in an era of complexity; firmly future oriented both in terms of insights and solutions and leadership in complexity to look at the necessary toolkit to navigate this fast-evolving environment. The programme is oriented around five distinct but highly interconnected thematic priorities, viz. reimagining growth; industries in the intelligent age; investment in people; safeguarding the planet and rebuilding trust. It is accessible to the wider public through livestreaming of the public sessions, complemented by the presence of media leaders and reporting press and through local engagement at the Open Forum in Davos. It brings together these leaders to set the year’s agenda for how leaders of social partners can make the world a better place for all. Its relevance as a global gathering sits within and beyond the official programme. The importance of dialogue – often happening in private conversations – reveals an ever important mission to convene leaders when ‘threats to world stability are multiplying’. Following its founding on 24 January 1971 by Professor Klaus Schwab, the European Management Symposium (EMS), as it was then known, held its first meeting in Cologny, Canton of Geneva, Switzerland. The WEF tries to embody ‘the spirit of Davos’, which is an attitude of openness and cooperation that is core to the mission of the Forum. The ‘Davos Manifesto’, created in 1973 and renewed in 2020, lays out the principles of stakeholder capitalism or a system of shared goals for businesses. Inaugural participants discussed Professor Schwab’s ‘stakeholder theory’, his vision that businesses should serve all stakeholders, rather than just shareholders, including employees, suppliers and the wider community. Today, ‘stakeholder capitalism’ is a guiding principle of the Forum. In 1973, the Annual Meeting endorsed the ‘Davos Manifesto’s “Code of Ethics for Business Leaders” which was updated in 2020 to set out the purpose of business in the Fourth Industrial Revolution – itself a concept coined by Professor Schwab in his 2016 book. Politicians were first invited to take part in the WEF, Davos in 1974 and in 1987 the EMS became the World Economic Forum, with a broadened aim to provide a platform to address the pressing issues of the day via public-private cooperation. The WEF recognises the severity of the climate crisis and does its best to lead by example and boost sustainability at Davos. Since 2017, all Davos-related carbon (CO2) emissions have been calculated and offset through environmental projects in Switzerland and abroad. It also ensures that energy consumption at Davos is limited, takes steps to reduce waste and that only renewable electricity is used for the event. These efforts include the use of repurposed event materials, the removal of single-use plastics and collaborations with local associations to distribute non-used furniture and food leftovers. Transportation remains the primary source of CO2 emissions at Davos. Therefore, it encourages attendees to travel in the most sustainable manner and offers a 100% discount for all participants in Europe who travel by train. Davos also serves as an opportunity to showcase climate research and sound the alarm on the many pressing climate-related issues. At Davos 2019, David Attenborough delivered a powerful address on the ‘new geological age’ and in 2023 the USA Climate Envoy, John Kerry called for the ‘biggest transformation, economically, since the industrial revolution.’ Aligning with the Forum’s Global Gender Gap Report,
Top technology trends that will continue to dominate 2025
By Dr Mmaki Jantjies Let’s take a look at the key technology areas that will continue to dominate the tech sector in 2025. Anticipating these shifts is not only crucial for the companies seeking to remain competitive, but for the policymakers, educators and individuals aiming to adapt to the evolving demands of the future. Immersive technologies While multinational technology companies such as Apple, Meta and Microsoft continue to invest in R&D exploring various spatial technologies, we will continue to see an improvement in technologies seeking to combine the physical and virtual worlds. For example, Meta has extended its partnership with Ray-Ban on fashionable smart glasses aiming to provide better ergonomic experience offerings and still offer users great style. The glasses are generally comfortable, allowing users to make calls, send texts, live-stream and listen to music using Meta AI alongside many other capabilities and features. In 2025, the rising use of immersive technologies will be stimulated by the reduction in cost of their hardware and increased comfort of devices. Coupled with improving network speeds underlying the experience, more regular device use points toward more universal access to fast speeds from network infrastructure such as fiber and 5G which is required to power up and ensure improved AR and VR experiences without any network lag. Possible applications of these technologies vary from their use as training technologies – especially in areas which are considered dangerous such as mines, oil rigs etc. – to applications in healthcare where, for instance, they can be used to support the rehabilitation process. They can also be used to overlay the user experience in entertainment and sports. Artificial intelligence Over the past two years, AI has received increasing attention owing to the accelerated growth of investment in the field. Meanwhile, increased computing power and data availability have enabled algorithmic breakthroughs, allowing the field to attract more investment and talent. With the ability to create new human-like content spanning from images, text and code, generative AI promises to experience higher adoption as various organisations continue to deploy it in a variety of use cases. Next year will see a surge of organisations pushing for enhanced AI adoption, but this time companies will adopt a sharper focus on extracting value for business in 2025. The key integration of generative AI will be to accelerate innovation and provide bespoke experiences, examples of which are customer service teams making increased use of far more intelligent AI-powered chatbots. These bots are available in multiple languages, including those indigenous to many countries. They seek to improve personalised experiences of customers, being able to handle routine inquiries in order to allow human call center agents to solve much more complex problems. In transport and logistics, for example, warehouse optimisation is being powered by AI-powered robots that navigate warehouses with precision, autonomously picking and packing orders, optimising storage space and dramatically accelerating fulfillment processes. Parallel to these innovations, 2025 will see the continuing sharpening of focus on AI governance and related platforms. Here, countries, organisations and society will need to get to grips with the demand for responsible use of both AI technology and data across multiple economic sectors. As we observed locally, South Africa also developed a national AI Policy Framework with private sector organisations developing similar strategies and policies to guide its use in business. While generative AI technology continues to strengthen, AI systems will go beyond doing single tasks to resemble “a team of specialists” working together. Categorised as “agentic AI”, this new type of AI will essentially give bots the ability to act independently. Think of it like this: instead of just following your commands, agentic AI can figure things out on its own like a detective solving a case. Agentic AI can analyse information, make decisions and take action, all in the name of achieving a specific goal. We could take another real-world example here, imagine a company that uses AI to manage its warehouse. With agentic AI the system would not only track inventory but also predict future demand for products, optimising storage space based on real-time needs, ordering new stock automatically when supplies run low and even controlling how robots move and organise goods within the warehouse. This application is just one example of how agentic AI can make business more efficient and intelligent across a range of industries. Cybersecurity With digital transformation remaining a key focus within the 4th industrial revolution, cybersecurity will remain an important investment area in ensuring the security of technology systems and related data. There are various forms of cybersecurity threats which have continued to impact organisations within South Africa, both within the public and private sector. TransUnion is an example of one of the large organisations in South Africa which was impacted by a ransomware cyberattack in 2022 where the attackers demanded $15-million threatening to expose the customer data which it had access to. There were many similar such experiences in 2023 and 2024. The cyber threat landscape has been further complicated by the rise of AI-powered attacks, cloud vulnerabilities, third-party exposures and insider threats. All of these potentially criminal interventions demand increased vigilance and proactive security measures, and as enterprises integrate AI into various processes so does the growth of AI-powered attacks. Cybercriminals are increasingly using AI to enhance their attacks, making them more difficult to detect and defend against. AI models themselves may be vulnerable to attacks like data poisoning, model stealing and adversarial examples. Economic sectors such as finance and telcos are predicted to strengthen investments significantly in this area as they seek to counter the risk of cyber threats identified globally. Furthermore, we will see a rise of investment in technologies that address disinformation and deepfakes. Quantum computing It was in the early 1980s when the tech world first glimpsed a few of the theoretical concepts representing the breakthrough of quantum computing. Now potential applications of quantum computing are endless and span diverse fields. In drug discovery, quantum computing can simulate molecular interactions, speeding up the development of new treatments.