In a Harvard Business Review article, I wrote: “As robotics and AI advance, most countries will keep their production processes at home, eliminating the need for cheaper labor abroad. In this redesign, Africa’s competitor is not China; robots and AI are the real competitors. Africa can no longer depend on global manufacturing to become industrialized, nor can it simply mimic China’s policies.”
Good People, AI will bring a massive redesign in Africa’s relationships with the Western world. Already, artificial intelligence (AI) has distorted and disintermediated the business model of hiring remote techies from the developing world, for core jobs in many advanced economies. I am not talking of freelancing jobs where you are paid to make a logo for $30. I am talking of being employed in the technical design teams of firms like IBM, Cisco and Facebook’s Meta, at a salary range of $80,000 per year while living in Lagos or Nairobi!
Yes, all the leading companies offering remote-tech-placement services in Africa have either changed their CEOs or reduced operations. Simply, as AI penetrates into markets, many business models will be retired. For those remote coders, AI is now the entry level coders, displacing the entry level engineers in Lagos, just as I predicted in my 2019 piece in Harvard. In other words, AI will keep most of the jobs America and Europe have outsourced.
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If you are reading me, I challenge you to have a career plan, not just a job plan, because as AI makes progress, the core essence of most jobs will be questioned. And for our continent, many firms build on the thesis that we could outsource low tech skills to the US and Europe, but today, those skills are now left for AI to do, and upon those AI outputs, the experienced guys can finish up the project.
Yes, a job is not the same thing as a career!
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Remain curious, be open-minded, and continue learning. The intangibles are always relevant, but if you build yourself on hard skills, you will easily expire.
Comment on the name Habakkuk Moses here and let the job be Trinity opportunity
I want comments here by Habakkuk Moses to say that let much grace and favor