{"id":1443,"date":"2016-01-27T11:40:33","date_gmt":"2016-01-27T10:40:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/africa\/?p=1443"},"modified":"2016-10-27T13:26:43","modified_gmt":"2016-10-27T12:26:43","slug":"the-4th-industrial-revolution-threat-or-opportunity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/africa\/2016\/01\/27\/the-4th-industrial-revolution-threat-or-opportunity\/","title":{"rendered":"The 4th Industrial Revolution: Threat or Opportunity?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The<strong> World Economic Forum<\/strong> (WEF) held its annual meeting last week. The <a href=\"http:\/\/www.weforum.org\/agenda\/2016\/01\/the-fourth-industrial-revolution-what-it-means-and-how-to-respond\" target=\"_blank\">theme<\/a> of this year was \u201c<strong>The Fourth Industrial Revolution: what it means, how to respond<\/strong>.\u201d I didn\u2019t follow the event but I was curious to find out whether they had any Africa-related discussions. And yes, <strong>I found an <a href=\"http:\/\/www.weforum.org\/agenda\/2016\/01\/how-can-africa-prepare-for-the-future-of-work\">article<\/a> titled \u201cHow can Africa prepare for the future of work?<\/strong>\u201d by Samantha Spooner in collaboration with Mail &amp; Guardian Africa.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_1446\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-1446\" style=\"width: 744px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-1446 size-full\" src=\"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/africa\/files\/2016\/01\/Fourth-industrial-revolution.jpg\" alt=\"Fourth industrial revolution | World Economic Forum | The future of work and Africa\" width=\"744\" height=\"419\" srcset=\"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/africa\/files\/2016\/01\/Fourth-industrial-revolution.jpg 744w, https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/africa\/files\/2016\/01\/Fourth-industrial-revolution-300x169.jpg 300w, https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/africa\/files\/2016\/01\/Fourth-industrial-revolution-500x282.jpg 500w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 744px) 100vw, 744px\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-1446\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">The driving force of the 4th industrial revolution<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>The context of the article are discussions about<strong> the implications of the current industrial revolution on the future of work<\/strong>. According to a <a href=\"http:\/\/www3.weforum.org\/docs\/WEF_Future_of_Jobs.pdf\" target=\"_blank\">report<\/a> by the WEF, this is how the future of work looks like:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Jobs at most risk<\/strong>: routine office and administrative functions.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Jobs that may be upgraded<\/strong>: manufacturing and production functions that may be enhanced through technology.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Jobs with the brightest future<\/strong>: those in computer and mathematical, and architecture and engineering related fields.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>According to Spooner, <strong>there are two ways to look at the impact on Africa<\/strong>:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>A threat: <strong>poverty<\/strong> will perpetuate and <strong>inequality<\/strong> increase as a consequence of the decreased demand for workers with less education and lower skills.<\/li>\n<li>An opportunity: if Africans move fast in <strong>redesigning education systems<\/strong> and <strong>adopting new technologies<\/strong>, they may embrace the new industrial revolution.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Time will tell whether the enormous change we\u2019re undergoing will end up being a threat or an opportunity. But in my opinion <strong>Africa has demonstrated its leap-frogging potential<\/strong>. The sad current lack of infrastructures may be used in its favor: lacking a heritage from the past, it\u2019s not exposed to the inertias of sunk investments. It\u2019s well known how Africans went from essentially no fixed phone lines to virtually <strong>everybody using a mobile phone.<\/strong> In turn, this has enabled an impressive <strong>development of mobile payment systems<\/strong> that has leap-frogged bank branches. <strong>The same may happen in power generation<\/strong> with solar power leap-frogging electrical grids.<\/p>\n<p>Let\u2019s not forget that <strong>it\u2019s not just a matter of technologies but also of management systems<\/strong>. I think that Africa has an opportunity here as well. With extreme capitalism under question, <strong>a system that integrates the interests of all stakeholders may be where the future lies<\/strong>. <strong>And I have seen African business leaders who have a lot to show to the rest of the world in this regard<\/strong>. If you want to know more about this, you may want to take a look at some of my earlier posts:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/africa\/2014\/09\/03\/thinking-long-term-in-africa\/\">Thinking long-tern in Africa<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/africa\/2014\/07\/16\/pygmalion-in-african-management\/\">Pygmalion in (African) management<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/africa\/2014\/07\/09\/cooperating-with-suppliers\/\">Cooperating with suppliers<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/africa\/2014\/02\/26\/africans-communal-mentality\/\">Africans\u2019 communal mentality<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>How do you see the<strong> future of work<\/strong>?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The World Economic Forum (WEF) held its annual meeting last week. The theme of this year was \u201cThe Fourth Industrial Revolution: what it means, how to respond.\u201d I didn\u2019t follow the event but I was curious to find out whether they had any Africa-related discussions. And yes, I found an article titled \u201cHow can Africa [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1654,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[99314],"tags":[100280,89737,8010,100258,100316,1147,1346,152],"class_list":["post-1443","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-social-and-institutional-context","tag-4th-industrial-revolution","tag-development","tag-inequality","tag-leapfrog","tag-mobile-payment","tag-poverty","tag-technology","tag-world-economic-forum","megacategoria-mc-africa"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1443","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1654"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1443"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1443\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1453,"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1443\/revisions\/1453"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1443"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1443"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1443"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}