Technology will disrupt economic structures we have built for years


Technology will disrupt economic structures we have built for years

According to the Global outlook for 2020, the world economy is weakening, in no small measure because of a deep, widespread sense of uncertainty. As much as we desire control and predictability, uncertainty is a permanent fixture in business and life.
For instance, in 2020, global growth rate is expected to be 2.5 per cent as per the World Bank data, higher than the estimated 2.4 per cent in 2019, but lower than the 3.0 per cent recorded in 2018. And Sub Saharan Africa is expected to register economic growth of 2.9 per cent, higher than the estimated 2.4 per cent in 2019 and 2.6 per cent recorded in 2018, according to the World Bank in their Sub-Saharan Economic Prospectus 2020.
However, for our current political, business and social structures to be prepared or capable of absorbing the changes a Fourth Industrial Revolution will bring, major changes to the very structure of our society may be inevitable. The Fourth Industrial Revolution refers to how technologies like artificial intelligence (AI), autonomous vehicles and the internet of things are merging with humans’ physical lives. Think of voice-activated assistants, facial recognition or digital health-care sensors, robotics among others.
To thrive, business leaders must begin questioning everything, from rethinking their strategies and business models, to discovering the right investments in training and potentially disruptive research and development investments. Also, small and medium enterprises and the youth need to take advantage of AI, in the distribution and technology pro-cesses.
In the future, we will see tremendous change, we must rise to the challenge to meet it and thrive in the new industrial revolution. In the African and global cybersecurity sector, Kaspersky researchers predict a growth frequency and sophistication of cyber threats in 2020. Although security professionals have better visibility into what is happening in their networks, the benefits of public cloud environments are compelling.
Organisations, therefore, look to public cloud service providers for network infrastructures that enable more agile responses to customer needs and deliver high availability and network performance while reducing costs. However, the use of cloud technology will decrease the physical presence of employees in the work place significantly, providing options to work from home or other remote locations.
Looking at the agriculture sector, have you thought about how the farms of 2100 will look like?? Will they be autonomous? Will the type of crops farmers grow be like those we grow today, or can we expect new ones to feed the growing population? Drones, telematics, crop sensors, and precision agriculture technologies all help farmers increase productivity on their land while cutting back on physical labour.
For instance, here in Kenya, multinationals buy produce from small scale farmers who rely on mobile services that have platforms supporting agribusiness.
Meanwhile, precision agriculture technology can do everything from monitoring, giving each plant individualised care and efficiently dispensing water and fertiliser. This is key to reducing wastage, which may be why the industry is expected to grow in 2020. Another technology we can expect in the farms of the future is swarms of tiny robots. For in-stance, the University of Applied Sciences in Germany is already exploring a concept called MARS — Mobile Agricultural Robot Swarms. Groups of anywhere from five to 100 bots would plant and tend each seed’s needs. This specialised care can cut down on food waste and create healthier crops.
And by 2050, there will be gene-edited crops, allowing more variety. In the future, gene editing should enable farmers to select specific crop varieties that have features like resistance to diseases, drought tolerance or more desirable oil content.
Moreover, since the Industrial Revolution, Earth’s climate has been changing fast. Human actions are a major factor promoting this intense pace. The massive use of fossil fuel (oil, charcoal, gas) releases a large amount of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, which concentrates, and warms the planet. We have already observed global warming over the last several decades. And as a result, patterns of precipitation and storm events, including both rain and snowfall, are also likely to change. However, some of these changes are less certain than those associated with temperature. Projections show that future precipitation and storm changes will vary by season and region.
In the meantime, people all over the world are working together to lessen the effects of climate change. The Paris Agreement, which started in 2016, is a good example of this. It is a global effort to prevent temperatures from rising more than two degrees centigrade. The basic idea is to drastically reduce global emissions.
The future is in the hands of mankind to improve and take action. Further, the private sector drives Kenya’s economy and should contribute more towards entrepreneurship, creating employment and mitigating climate change efforts.




Source link