Given SHINGANGE
There is no shortage of enthusiasm in South Africa, and across the developing world, for adopting new technologies. Governments procure systems. Delegations travel abroad. Study tours are arranged. Benchmarking reports are written. And yet, time and again, the tools and frameworks acquired from elsewhere fail to deliver the promised results. The question worth asking is not whether the technology works. Often it does, somewhere else. The more important question is: why does it not always work here?
Part of the answer lies in a concept that rarely features in procurement discussions or policy briefings: strategic culture.
What Is Strategic Culture?
Strategic culture refers to the accumulated beliefs, historical experiences, institutional habits, and collective values that shape how a nation approaches decisions, particularly consequential ones involving governance, security, and development. It is not a policy document. It is not an ideology. It is the sediment of history that settles into how a society thinks, what it trusts, how it organises itself, and what it assumes to be normal.
For South Africa, strategic culture is inseparable from the legacy of apartheid, a system that deliberately fragmented institutions, created parallel structures of governance, cultivated deep distrust between citizens and the state, and produced a security establishment that was as much an instrument of repression as it was of protection. The transition to democracy was historic, but transitions do not erase strategic culture. They layer over it: the assumptions, the reflexes, the institutional memories, these persist, sometimes visibly, often not. This matters enormously when a country decides to look outward for solutions.
The Benchmarking Assumption
Benchmarking, as a practice, is not inherently flawed. Learning from others is sensible. The problem arises when benchmarking is conducted without asking a foundational question: does the country we are learning from share our strategic culture, and did that culture contribute to the success we are trying to replicate?
When a South African delegation visits a Scandinavian country and observes a highly functional public institution, one with transparent processes, high citizen trust, and effective outcomes, it is not only observing a system. It is observing the product of centuries of institutional development, civic culture, relatively homogeneous historical experience, and a particular relationship between the state and its citizens. The system works, in part, because of who built it, why they built it, and the cultural soil in which it was planted.
To return home and recommend adopting that system, without interrogating whether our soil is comparable, is to misunderstand what benchmarking is for. It is to mistake the fruit for the tree.
The New Variable: Technology Is Moving Too Fast for Anyone to Lead
There is a second, more contemporary dimension to this problem that makes it even more urgent. For much of the twentieth century, the benchmarking hierarchy was relatively stable. Certain countries were clearly ahead in technology, institutions, and the economy, and it made sense to look to them for models.
That hierarchy is no longer what it used to be. The pace of technological change has become so rapid that the old leaders are no longer necessarily leading. Artificial intelligence, cybersecurity, digital infrastructure, surveillance technologies, data governance; these domains are evolving so quickly that no country has definitively “solved” them. Many of the countries we might traditionally benchmark with are themselves scrambling, piloting, reversing course, and learning in real time.
This changes the terms of the conversation. We are no longer in a world where the developed world has the answer and the developing world needs to import it. We are in a world where, in many critical technology domains, everyone is figuring it out together. The playing field has not been levelled, inequalities in resources and capacity remain real, but the epistemic hierarchy has shifted. No one has a working model we can copy.
What This Means for How We Choose
Taken together, these two observations, the persistence of strategic culture and the instability of technological leadership, should fundamentally reframe how South Africa and similar countries approach the adoption of new technologies and governance models.
First, before benchmarking, we should understand ourselves. What are our institutional realities? What does our strategic culture predispose us toward, and what does it make difficult? What historical conditions shaped the way our public institutions behave? These are not soft questions. They are the foundation on which any imported solution will either stand or collapse.
Second, we should be more selective about who we benchmark with. Countries with comparable historical experiences, similar institutional legacies, and similar relationships between state and citizen may offer more transferable lessons than those we traditionally regard as models. A country that has navigated post-colonial institution-building, managed deep social inequality, or rebuilt public trust after a period of authoritarian governance may have more relevant insights than one that has not.
Third, we should approach the current technological moment with appropriate humility and appropriate confidence. Humility, because no one has the answers. Confidence, because South Africa is not behind in the ways we sometimes assume. In many emerging technology domains, we are at the same starting line as everyone else.
Conclusion
The instinct to look outward for solutions is understandable. It reflects ambition and a desire to improve. But looking outward without first looking inward, without understanding our own strategic culture, our own institutional DNA, our own historical conditioning, is how we end up with systems that work beautifully in their country of origin and struggle to take root in ours.
Technology will keep advancing. The opportunities to adopt, adapt, and innovate will multiply. The countries that navigate this moment well will not necessarily be those who benchmark the most. They will be those who benchmark most wisely, with clear eyes about who they are and honest questions about whether the comparisons they draw actually hold.
Given SHINGANGE 