The earlier focused on the four pertinent requisites for any country to fully engage in the new-found global knowledge economy being a strong drive towards Education and Training, developing the Information Super-Highway, having a government-wide promotion through Economic Incentive and Institutional Regime, and the fourth being Innovation Systems. These and more can be found here in the link.
However, this article will touch on data as the new oil, while considering opportunities available in a techonomy and how players (individuals, businesses and governments) should be positioned to work interdependently as a learning system that self-improves and self-creates.
It is pertinent to know that the digital technologies of today have created a very different kind of economy, which veers more towards a virtual and autonomous one, and this will continue to be on the rise as the fusion between humans and robots become more second-nature. We will be welcoming a lot of inventive works as knowledge of what is possible continues to be on the increase. Humans and learning organizations must continue to push forward the knowledge frontiers as more businesses grow to service the gaps created.
Moreover, cloud computing, big data, FinTech, and artificial intelligence among other digital technologies help to collect, store, analyze, and share information via digital platforms, while transforming social interactions and most of our reality today. The continuous adoption of techonomy opens up myriads of interconnected opportunities for individuals, businesses and governments, while continuing to support improved work and life efficiencies as digital technologies drive innovation, reduce unemployment numbers, and drastically grows the economy. Businesses must become more flexible to begin with the end in mind, as being too rigid on services or products can completely wipe out business operations.
Furthermore, the digital economy affects the way people work and interact as social media redefines new neighbors and friends across different continents. What is known as job, or work-from-home today, has come to redefine how individuals will interact with organizations and governments of different countries. Take for an example, a human who lives in Nigeria, works in Canada and United States (from home as a software developer), shops on Alibaba (China) and Amazon (United States), schools in France and America (Udemy and Coursera), gets entertained on Netflix and attends conferences in different countries of the world (via Zoom and Youtube livestreams). We must continue to adapt to this reality in the new world without barriers, as several governments and businesses grapple with same at different levels of engagement. There are significant difficulties in reconciling the notion of national sovereignty traditionally associated with country territories with the borderless nature, and openness of the digital space in which data flows. This almost unrestricted flow of data, is considered the new storage of oil wells as data analysts continue to mine and refine for native intelligence resident in what seems to us as obvious.
It is noteworthy that Asia’s eCommerce transactions account for up to 25% of the business to consumer (B2C) market in the world, led by China, where organizations such as Alibaba and Tencent have grown at astronomical rates. In 2020, the total trade volume of the retail e-commerce market of China reached 11.92 trillion yuan (approx. $1.875 Tr), and expected to maintain its growth and surpass 13.6 trillion yuan ($2.14 Tr) in 2021, with a people population of 1.402 billion (2020) just about Africa’s size – yes size is an advantage with demand and supply powered by tech.
To further reiterate the afore, the lessons we are learning from the pandemic underscore the importance of greater international cooperation to facilitate the cross-border movement of goods and services, narrow the digital divide, and level the playing field for micro, small and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs) – in short, for our efforts to achieve the SDGs in this decade. All these can become huge information leverage where businesses in Africa today (2022) think of the over 1.406 billion people in need of a technology superhighway to connect them with everything that the universe can offer juxtaposed with China – imagine what $2.00 Tr crisscrossing the African continent does to the businesses that think such is possible. This is why I like what companies in the African e-commerce space like Konga and Jumia are making possible while we continue to work from home. We however need many more as the gross people population remains underserved as time to fulfillment still needs to be shortened with a lot of communities yet to be reached. Entrepreneurs across Nigeria and by extension Africa need to rise to this occasion to provide sustainable plugs to this challenges, like what Amazon is doing in the United States, and Alibaba in China.
That said, I strongly believe that the main feature of this autonomous economy is that it makes possible a virtual one where we must all work hard to play effectively. It is steadily providing an external intelligence in business—one not housed internally in human workers but externally in the virtual economy’s algorithms and machines. The interactions of the technologies such as what IoT and VR can make possible with AI will even bring more amazement to what we know as reality. Business, engineering and financial processes can now draw on huge “libraries” of intelligent functions and these greatly boosts their activities—and bit by bit render human activities obsolete. Yes, automations will continue to reduce how much of human touch or care we get while receiving service.
Moreover, four major contributing groups – civil society, academia and think tanks, the private sector, and international organizations – contribute to the conversations on cross-border data flows. In addition, some international organizations – especially the OECD, the World Bank and the World Economic Forum (WEF) – support the free flow of data, particularly with a focus on trade and as a means to create value. The motivation for relatively free flows of data (trade, business and personal) across borders is supporting economic growth and international cooperation (World Bank, 2021) which require a system of data exchange that is as frictionless as possible – and ideally does not lead to further fragmentation between countries. These thoughts posit that the information highway connecting countries will ultimate open up the African continent to unthinkable opportunities due to a very diverse culture that tech can seamlessly harmonize. Value delivery from data through the processing of raw data into digital intelligence (the data value chain) is increasingly in the hands of a few global digital platforms (like Facebook, as Africa remains grossly untapped and data analytics, as topmost rated in-demand skill), which is also reflected in the unequal exchanges in cross-border data flows. Where should governments at the grassroots play in all of these?
To better support individuals and businesses on this drive, Small Business Administration (SBA) centers need to be domiciled in our Local Council Development Areas (LCDA) in Nigeria. These LCDAs also will need to co-host tech hubs (which should be democratized) with workstations that service the local communities seamlessly through tech-driven governance, administration and sustained techvironment. Imagine walking into any of the 774 local governments (LG) in Nigeria and having access to free WiFi connection like most hotels do today – How do we make this reality, bearing in mind that it gives us easy access to big data? What if the 774 LGs are rated based on performance every year? – What this will do is to make people begin to see things very differently.
In conclusion, we are already at a point when humans are preparing the way to welcome more hubots and humanoids while everything goes to where humans live – smart banks, smart food, smart homes, smart supermarkets, smart government and smart cities, because each is a unique part of the whole tech ecosystem that must continue to become smarter with each day.
I am open to conversations that further on the foregoing thoughts while thanking you for your investment in time. Yours in tech, Olufemi Ariyo. Email: [email protected]
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