The Director General of the National Information Technology Development Agency Mallam Kashifu Inuwa Abdullahi, CCIE, declared that in every crisis there is a hidden opportunity, and the opportunity in this COVID-19 pandemic for Nigeria and African countries is the adaption to Smart Automation.
He made this known during his online presentation on Smart Automation Africa/West Africa hosted by Tradepass. The aim of the meeting is to focus on the benefits of automation for organizations in West Africa channeled towards growth and development.
He deliberated on the effects of Smart Automation which, he said, constitutes pre-era, era and post-era of COVID-19. According to the DG, this era consists of the fear, the hope, crisis, impact and the silver lining as well as the recovery and the Digital First strategy. He stated that; “smart automation expedites processes and minimizes human errors. It power’s industries to innovate and grow in size exponentially”.
Abdullahi categorized his presentation into three folds, namely Smart Automation in pre-COVID-19, (fairs and hubs), Smart Automation in COVID-19 (the crisis, impacts and the silver lining), and Smart Automation post COVID-19 (the recovery and the digital fast strategy).
The DG, speaking to his online audience said; “in February 2020 according to statistics, global Automation market size was more than 186 billion USD and predictions shows its increase to over 214.3 billion USD in 2021 with process Automation topping the market share with 71.2billion USD. This was followed by industrial software, factory automation, robotics, artificial intelligence, 3D printing and drum step technology”.
Quoting experts’ projections during the World Economic Forum, the technology expert said the emerging estimated professions resulting from automation could account for 6.1 million jobs globally from 2020 to 2022. JP Morgan believes automation can increase global GDP by over 1.3 trillion USD in the next 10 years from 2020.
The NITDA boss pointed out that in Nigeria today, smart automation is the most promising silver lining in this crisis, adding that the banking sector now is the most automated in terms of process automation with the attendant positive reports of huge revenues through electronic transactions which are done by customers from the comfort of their homes with Mobile devices.
According to him, this also applies to other African countries using smart innovations to increase their earnings and run their day to day activities smoothly.
He stressed that people should discard the fear of loosing their jobs to machines but rather implore the use of smart automation to transform economies and workforce for better development in the digital economy.
Noting that the world is now faced with health and economic crisis through covid-19 pandemic disrupting businesses, supply chains and creating loss of job, the technology expert, however, said that despite the disruption, the pandemic has opened opportunities for digital platforms and smart automation to take over in the post COVID-19 pandemic era.
“Yes there are challenges like inadequate funding, policies and enabling environments, over reliance on foreign goods and technologies faced by African countries, but with this covid-19 crisis, African countries should think within the box to produce what it desires”, he argued.
Abdullahi, however, advised African countries to come up with right policies, enabling environments and best practices with adequate funding to achieve optimum goals and growth during this crisis.
He expatiated: “From the activities of the COVID-19, it is clear that the world is going digital in it operations. This means things will not be the same as it was before the crisis. Hence, there is need for us in Africa to embrace technology. It is the next cash flow for every country and will serve as an avenue for growth and development.”
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