‘Dubai Expo shows we can make this world a great place to live in, also in SA’ – CapeTalk

Futurist Graeme Codrington returns from the Expo excited about possibilities, also for power generation in SA - The Money Show Image of Dubai Expo 2020 posted on Facebook @Expo2020_teamsa

Expo 2020 Dubai finally kicked off in October 2021 after being delayed for a year.

It closes its six-month run at the end of March.

The world expo's described as a showcase of "the best global examples of collaboration, innovation and cooperation" through the theme of Connecting Minds, Creating the Future.

It features Pavilions from 192 countries around the world, including South Africa.

Bruce Whitfield chats to futurist Graeme Codrington (partner at TomorrowToday) about his impressions during the week he spent there as a guest of the Institute of Directors SA (IOD).

Its been billed as the greatest show on earth and it was spectacular... I walked 29 kilometres in two days!

I think I first saw an advert for Dubai 2020 on Emirates Airlines probably at least eight years ago! They had this idea that they would bring the whole world together... It was not a tourism expo to show off your country but a future-focused expo.

It's amazing to see what they've achieved in Dubai... It's that mindset of 'we can do anything', and when you've got oil revenue and a lot of low-cost workers you can do quite a lot.

This expo site was built, again, in virgin desert and will be converted into a new business district over the next few years.

Codringto highlights some of the national pavilions, where countries chose from the overarching themes of opportunity, mobility and sustainability.

Finland built this massive, weirdly shaped wooden room... When you get into the building they show you that room is actually capturing carbon dioxide out of the air... which they turn into methane that runs a machine that then sucks the desert air in and extracts water (100l a day) ... and then powers a coffee machine... You could literally have a cup of coffee that came from thin air...

I thought it would be almost a science fiction view with gadgets of the future... but then I realised they weren't in fact trying to show us a science fiction view of some far distant future fuelling our imaginations. They were trying to show us what's possible now.

Singapore's was literally just a building in the desert that was entirely self-sustaining, beautifully green in this searing heat... to say we don't have to wait twenty or thirty years... We can do this now.

Codrington came away inspired that the world _can _solve especially mobility and sustainability issues.

... and that's hugely important here in South Africa as we see the ravages of extreme weather and climate change hit our economy and our country.

Whitfield asks whether the expo also made Codrington apprehensive about the future, considering how far South Africa is behind in this technological sphere.

We're not as far behind as many think we are Codrington retorts.

I think, for example, that there are some very quick-win solutions we can get with power generation... In terms of putting up wind farms, solar farms, we're doing jolly well in South Africa.

All we need now is for the government's will to allow us to connect some of the private generation of power into the national grid and we're talking, within the next 12 to 18 months, about a very different system.

That's what I came away with... The one way of looking at the world is looking at everything that's not working, and the other looks at possibilities and opportunities.

"We can make this world a really great place to live in (even here in South Africa)" Codrington says in conclusion.

Listen to the uplifting interview on The Money Show:

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'Dubai Expo shows we can make this world a great place to live in, also in SA' - CapeTalk