Good People, if you are paying attention, you ought to have noticed that some of the leading technology companies are now firing workers at scale. From Spotify to Amazon to your local banks, companies are automating tasks and jobs are being disintermediated.

In Nigeria, technology has delivered great rains as when you look at banking data, the number of workers has dropped even as profit and assets have increased, for years now! Simply, technology has improved and cushioned productivity, and not many humans are needed in the payrolls.

There are implications: in this decade, many will lose their jobs. And also, many will get great jobs. Since the industrial revolution, that has been a constant: technology brings new ordinances in markets, causing career displacements, even though, over time, it is a net positive, as new jobs – typically better – will be created.

My message: do not just sit down and think it will not happen to you. You need a plan and part of that plan will be how to make whatever you do to be retrofitted with tech. If you do that, they cannot fire you because you will replace yourself, and that means you keep your job. 

What can AI do in your field? In Tekedia Institute, we have put a great program to help people navigate this redesign. If you have not started, it may be something to explore.

Tekedia Artificial Intelligence (AI) in Business Masterclass focuses on how AI (artificial intelligence) will redesign the world of business, and re-architect economies even as it transforms markets, communities, and organizations.  Participants will gain the knowledge capabilities, and confidence, required to support the integration of AI systems into their organizations, and advance their professional careers.  Coordinated by Tekedia Institute Lead Faculty, Prof Ndubuisi Ekekwe (doctoral degrees in electrical/computer engineering with specialization in robotics & neuromorphic engineering, and Banking & Finance), the multidisciplinary program runs for 8 weeks.

Very bad decisions by our policymakers in Nigeria. In  secondary school, they push you to specialize after the 3rd year. So, from SSI (4th year), you move into Arts, Science, Technology, etc lines. Possibly, if you decide to do Further Mathematics, you may not be lucky to do Economics because WAEC has restricted you to 9 subjects.

 (Even as a kid in the village, I found that very sub-optimal, and took 15 subjects in secondary school, and decided to write external WAEC (i.e. GCE) while in secondary school. That decision enabled me to study Economics and the typical Art courses even as I continued in secondary school for Physics, Chemistry, Geography, Further Mathematics, etc).

What Nigeria does in WAEC is not the best in my opinion. We’re restricting our young people too early. Contrast this with the United States where in secondary school, every kid studies the same thing. Yes, irrespective of your call for engineering, economics, music, etc, GED (WAEC equivalent)  has about 4 subjects for all. Those 4 subjects – mathematical reasoning, reasoning through language arts, social studies, and science –  cover more than 30 subjects we have in WAEC.  Notice that they do not teach Mathematics, they teach mathematical reasoning, and that means pushing you into what that mathematics can help you solve.

With WAEC severely over-specialized, the universities and polytechnics have picked the memo.  In the university now, Nigeria gets 4-5 departments from a typical former EEE department. They have broken my FUTO undergraduate degree – Electrical and Electronics Engineering with option in Electronics and Computer Engineering – into five degrees. 

This is unfortunate because there’s no need for this nonsense other than finding paths for more admission quotas and school fees. The polytechnic education could have made these new areas options under HND computer science, so, you still study HND Computer Science and can specialize in your final year in AI. And the certficate will read: HND Computer Science with option in Artificial Intelligence.

Notice that increasingly some of these students when they go for further education abroad, they would be required to take many prerequisites. For example, if you did BSC AI and want to do MSC in Electrical and Electronics Engineering, you will have to take many prerequisites before they will allow you to begin the main program.

I call our leaders to rethink these policies.