By Olukayode Oyeleye
The era of real rat race is here and there is an urgent need to brace for it. A GLOCAL phenomenon is unfolding before our very eyes. In Nigeria, retirement age is gradually moving up to 65 years. Teachers in public schools may now work for 40 years instead of 35. That is no cause for cheers. They would be lucky if future reality of the next ten years allows them a space for relevance.
The world greeted the fourth industrial revolution with optimism, hope and fear: with optimism because it was novel; with hope because it appeared promising; and with fear because many jobs were about to disappear. Twenty one years into the millennium, all three have been fulfilled. More new millionaires have emerged. It is not a new thing for people to resist new inventions. Almost all products arising from industrial revolution have been resisted at one time or another. Even car seat belt was initially resisted and railed against in the US. Many tasks have been made a lot easier to perform and productivity has been enhanced.
Millions have become pauperised by the change they were not prepared for and unemployment rate has risen astronomically on a global basis, even in developed countries as job displacement came with the higher technology-induced productivity, confirming the fears of many at the outset. Cases of job insecurity have risen in number and frequency. Misery has spread widely all across the world, particularly in the developing countries. Look at the world misery index, calculated from addition of unemployment rate to inflation rate, then figure out where Nigeria stands in the comity of nations.
Look at the mobile phone in your hand. The concept of technology convergence is epitomised in a typical handset. Albeit being elegant and trendy, it has taken business away from wrist watch manufacturers, the calculator makers, the camera with video and photo accessory companies, and the transistor radio designers, to mention but a few. Television makers are not left out. It may have enriched you, though, if you have learnt how to tap into its transformative power. But many more old time businesses are now becoming obsolete and getting replaced by mere apps you slide on the screen of your phone or your computer.
Many time-honoured professions have been overtaken, and the professionals are becoming side-lined, by technologies that are supposed to aid their efficiency. When last did you hear of confidential secretary in offices? And what is the future of secretariat studies, for instance? Majority of patients no longer have to consult the doctor for the diagnosis and treatment of many ailments as online resources have supplanted the human patient-doctor interface. Many legal documents no longer have to be drafted by professional lawyers, nor do even certain accounting documents necessarily require any chartered accountant today as they are easily available online. Estate managers will attest to the fact that many deals are now closed directly online between prospects and those giving offers, with just fringes of paperwork left for them to legalise such deals. Professionalism is therefore on the brink and would require radical personal interventions to keep sustain it in the mainstream.
The recent and on-going mass purge of labour in the banking sector is a foreboding of greater shock ahead as expertise is now moved into the realm of the ICT. The filling station attendant that short-changed you sometimes ago might soon find that new pumping machines that simply require you alone to dispense fuel will soon put him out of business. Have you travelled to Changi Airport in Singapore lately? A time may come in Nigeria when those pompous, nasty, saucy and gratification-seeking airport attendants will be sent packing as you undergo do-it-yourself personal and luggage check-in procedures at the counter through all automated computerised programs. Algorithms of financial derivatives will replace stockbrokers, pensions and insurance personnel.
The mainstream media in Nigeria is already a victim as many newspaper, radio and television houses now tether at the brink, while online media mushrooms are springing up, many operated by untested and incompetent operators. Perplexity and awe now run deep as users of new technology products are inundated with innovations not imaginable some three decades ago. People’s skills are becoming irrelevant. The idea that technologies help to enhance human skills appears now irrelevant as artisans’ skills are getting eroded by disruptive technologies which create few overnight billionaires but, at the same time, millions of pauperised and jobless people whose skills have been rendered obsolete.
If governments in the developed countries are trying hard to adapt to the changing technological landscape and having difficulties in adjusting their laws, policies, practices and regulatory oversights, it is much worse for the third world nations who are helpless, confused and caught in the middle. Artificial intelligence is all the rage just now. In OECD countries, according to a recent study, no less than one third of available jobs have already been lost to robots. We are not done yet. China will experience an unprecedented rise in unemployment and human misery as more and more AI is deployed. Outsiders will not be allowed to know how it has affected many families’ incomes as the state-controlled media outlets will concentrate only on the material gains to the country, not to individuals. The world at large will experience a sea change in unemployment rates as the number of jobless people rise astronomically.
Yet, not all workers in the post-industrial world will be experts. The gap between the rich and poor has widened in the past two decades and is set to widen even more. The number of poor people has risen tremendously globally despite the idealistic and ambitious Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) and is poised to rise even more as there is no effective global mechanism for equitable distribution of wealth, made more complicated by ideologies and faulty economic schools of thought. Communism has failed at the national levels, and so cannot deliver on a global scale. Yet capitalism – of late – has created a more unequal world of greater inequalities, unfair competition, few intractable monopolies, millions of struggling but weak enterprises and secular stagnation which are inspiring discontent, violence and upheavals all over the world.
These crises are here to stay. They are not going away, and there can be no relapse of the pre-millennium fantasies and relative calm as inflationary trends are worsening globally, with inadequate safety nets for the poor, the artisans and small scale enterprises run by them. The urban communities are witnessing more and more complications in terms of economic and social security challenges brought about by unabated rural-urban population drift and attendant changes in demographics. The rural area populations are diminishing while the cities are getting more crowded under inadequate and overburdened infrastructure, a complication found more in fast urbanising developing countries.
Think, how relevant are you likely to be in 10 years? Do you still cling to the illusion of lifetime employment and job security? How attractive is your current job likely to be in 2030? Who is likely to employ you based on your current level of competence in a decade’s time? Is your current employer likely to still consider you useful within the next couple of years? Is your employing organisation likely to crumble under the weight of innovation-induced changes or go out of business because of lack of competitive edge? How do you hope to adjust if your employer creates a higher post but chooses to hire an outside over you instead of promoting you to fill the post? Are you likely to become a victim of rightsizing in the looming corporate purge? What other skills have you apart from the one that currently fetches you the income you presently depend on? Will your customers today still have reasons to patronise you in the next few years for the products you make today or the services you render now?
Make no mistake. Your unique selling point today could be eroded by the unexpected and disruptive technologies springing up daily. Years of do-it-yourself are here already and are ahead in many areas of products and services. Many shops are closing, not because owners really want to, but because they have no need or economic justification for them as they have moved their businesses to virtual space online with unlimited ease and access to customers, while cutting overhead costs. So, welcome to a ‘glocal’ world of just-in-tine production and delivery, particularly as supply chain resilience has come under severe strain locally and internationally under the COVID-19 pandemic. The hotel and hospitality industry will experience a period of lows ahead as tourism is taking a pause and big conferences are done in the virtual space as webinars.
Expect gate fees for football and other sports to transform to strict pay-per-view bills online henceforth as sports clubs owners must have learnt a bitter lesson from COVID-19 in the past one year from losses in revenues. A rebound to pre-COVID-19 era may not happen soon, or may never happen. Scientists, explorers and innovators will not apply brakes in their quest for new things, on how to make life easier and reduce the relevance of ‘humans’ in the affairs of mankind. Costly mistakes will be made, but the world will move on. Emergence of new ideas will not be deterred by the cost of such mistakes. What with the Boeing’s experiment that sought to reduce the in-flight dependence on human pilots that has caused two deadly crashes of Indonesian and Ethiopian airlines’ aircraft in the past two years? And the world has moved on.
Coping in the contemporary times will require devoting a lot of time, energy and resources to self-development to adapt to the constantly changing socio-economic and political systems. Yesterday’s skills may not be suitable for today, let alone for tomorrow. Unfortunately, many changes don’t give enough premonitions. So, a lot of anticipation, extrapolation, speculation and preparation need to be done daily. Whoever wants to survive should be prepared to discard the obsolete, let go of the past, be less attached to the consistently changing and be eager and ready to embrace the new. These are important for subsistence in the world of changes that regularly stun pundits, confuse the experts and upset the forecasters.
The post-COVID-19 world faces the challenges of equipping individuals with job-relevant skills as economies undergo some forms of unprecedented and sudden transformation, with short-term and long-term impacts, ranging from managing change to increased emphasis on automation. Countries of post-industrial Africa and many parts of Asia where the service industry is yet to develop may encounter huge impediments to the use of digital technologies for driving economic activities, especially in underdeveloped informal sector that still forms a big chunk of their national economies,, estimated at 34 per cent weighted average for Africa. Although Global Skills Index 2020 reported that countries with higher skill proficiencies will see greater GDP returns in the long-term, this will only be in aggregate terms, which will hide the inequalities between individuals’ earnings.
Above all, individual and nations need to make their ways right with God because the end of the world is drawing near, faster than ever before.
- Dr. Olukayode Oyeleye is a global affairs/policy analyst and consultant.