Trends in Emerging Technologies in the Cannabis Industry in South Africa

This chapter focuses on analysing the trends, developments and innovations of emerging technologies in the South African cannabis industry.

The South African government has identified cannabis as one of the country`s strategic sectors for development and commercialisation in order to increase economic production, investment, diversification of the economy, poverty alleviation and job creation. Globally, emerging technologies are playing an important role in the cannabis industry in various ways, including monitoring of cannabis plants, and compliance and regulation. Outside of Africa, there is a considerable amount of literature on the potential, role and impact of emerging technologies on the cannabis industry. However, in Africa, there is a lack of research studies on emerging technologies and cannabis. The research gathers data from existing sources such as books, journals, reports, websites, databases, cases studies and other published materials to provide a landscape analysis of ICT-based emerging technologies being promoted, developed, deployed, adopted or used in the South African cannabis industry. Preliminary findings reveal that various types and examples of ICT-based emerging technologies targeted at different cannabis value chain stages exist in the country. This research is still at the preliminary stages; hence the author has presented the preliminary literature and preliminary findings. The author will conduct further literature analysis. The author will gather more data and information on the topic.