Technology ate our breakfast and is coming for our lunch
By The implications of the unemployment data released by the National Bureau of Statistics are sobering. They should inspire a full National Conference on Labour and Nigeria’s Future to identify the issues and plot a national roadmap to tackle the menace of growing unemployment. The aspect of the matter concerning youth unemployment should make Nigerians raise the alarm.
Twenty-three percent of the workforce is currently unemployed, in a negative progression from the 18.8% in the third quarter of 2017. Those in part-time employment and under-employment constituted 20.1 per cent of the workforce. It was a marginal improvement on the 21.2 per cent of 2017.
NBS records a marginal increase in total employment numbers. It grew from 69.09m in third quarter 2017 to 69.54million in Quarter 3, 2018. The significant fact though is that the unemployment numbers overall increased from 17.6million last year to 20.9million in 2018.
Beyond the headline figures are changes, mostly slow but sometimes fast, affecting the workplace and the role of humans in production. Technology is in the mix. Technology is an enabler of many positive developments. For the worker, technology has offered mixed blessings. It is more so in Nigeria and other parts of Africa.
Technology has eaten the breakfast of the worker in many places. It is changing the nature of work and the role of humans. Many assured jobs of the past are disappearing before our very eyes. It cuts across many industries and occupations.
I shake my head ruefully each time I drive to the famous newspaper stand at Ojuelegba, in Surulere, Lagos. It is difficult to recognise the once bustling place with vendors who earned their living with hope in their eyes. Their stock items and the stock count have reduced considerably. Patronage is a far cry from what it was even as recently as five years ago. Only die-hards now come, some to buy and many to just take a peek or do the free reading. Only one stand offered international magazines last week, an index of patronage. A communication professional in a major multinational informed me that the company no longer buys newspapers for directors. They do content summaries and direct their senior executives to online versions. Only one online platform in Nigeria charges for access, a courageous act based on market analysis of their offering and niche.
The readers have gone online and to various mobile platforms. Research by Hootsuite says many of them are on WhatsApp, the number one social media platform in Nigeria. It is a formidable platform from the stable of Google, offering text, audio and video possibilities. So it is now carrying most of what other platforms offered. Even a bank has created a space on the platform. It has implications for labour.
The Accounting or Finance Departments of many corporates used to have many bookkeepers. Technology has decimated that class of workers as their function is nearly redundant. Banks are threatening to close rather than expand branches in many towns for the same reason of technology rendering many redundant and unnecessary. Lawyers find that the availability of templates everywhere threatens the documentation and agreement function that fetched some income. Who needs a lawyer unless compelled to notarise it?
The development threatens many professions. The “confluence of Big Data, connectivity and artificial intelligence”, as described by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is propelling positive developments in innovation, productivity and workforce numbers in many nations of the world. Our lack of the framework for any of that means that it is causing the opposite here.
Humanity and nations of the world always struggled with the consequences of technological change. The typewriter made way for the word processor and eventually for the computer — each development built on what existed. The anthem of my secondary school, United Christian Secondary Commercial College, Apapa captured it memorably when it stated that “the subjects you shall master here are but the tools of future life”. We learnt typewriting and shorthand, many of us with higher ambitions protesting that we do not want to be secretaries. In the university, the shorthand became an asset, and in later years with the computer, the typewriting skills became invaluable as everything depended on the QWERTY keys.
Foundations matter. Nigeria now does not have the foundations to compete in the fast-changing world technology is creating. The consequence is a contribution to the growing unemployment and underemployment numbers. We need to look at the related numbers for workforce quality. Our workforce is largely uneducated, consisting of persons with primary and secondary education in the majority of over 70%. How are we going to compete in the VUCA economy based on science technology engineering and mathematics? VUCA is the acronym to describe the current global situation characterised by high levels of volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity.
In 1996, before VUCA came into common usage, Intel CEO Andrew Grove advised that only the paranoid will survive. His book, Only The Paranoid Survive: How To Achieve a Success That’s Just a Disaster Away advised company bosses on the imperative of adapting or dying in the face of massive change.That counsel for corporates applies now to Nigeria and its citizens.
Citizens must now develop high levels of positive paranoia for themselves and their future. Learn new skills for today and tomorrow. Check in on the trends in your profession or business. For the young, a certificate is clearly no longer enough even as we do not have enough persons with higher education to drive the entrepreneurial and innovative economy required to pull us out of unemployment. Before the national conversation, do something for yourself.
May your 2019 bring more positives.
Chido Nwakanma