iAfrica Image: Pexels Share with your network! As industry eyes recovery after 2020, a year in which South Africa saw the biggest economic contraction since 1946, businesses big and small are looking to drive growth with automation, cost-containment and innovation. In March 2021, SA Statistician-General, Risenga Maluleke, revealed that the South African economy had contracted by 7% in 2020 on the back of stringent lockdowns brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic. With South Africans facing one of the worst downturns in living memory, technology and innovation will be critical to economic reconstruction say local technologists. “The pandemic has stress-tested business locally,” says Stephen Howe, a founder of Times 3 Technologies (T3T), a national South African IT company that uses software to modernise accounting and people practices. “Research by World Wide Worx shows that accountants have been real life savers during the pandemic. The other unsung heroes of industry are the human resources practitioners who are creating new worlds of work, while containing cost, to bring growth to beleaguered sectors.”