The African Digital Workforce
“Innovation needs to be part of your culture. Consumers are transforming faster than we are, and if we dont catch up, we’re in trouble.”
Ian Schafer
When I was young my father asked me, in hind sight what must be one of the most useless questions adults ask children – “What are you going to be when you grow up? (now my father was one of those no nonsense type of father who passionately believed in the power of stjambok to “straighten out crookedness in a boy” so when a question is asked, it must be answered straight or) and so my well-considered answer “lawyer”, in sounded impressive, but to my utmost shock my father said “no! not my child, lawyers are lies and I will not have a lie in my house” Now at that time I didn’t really know what lawyers actually did, but I knew I didn’t want to be a doctor or a teacher, so the next best thing those days – lawyer.
Ever heard this one?
“what do you call a thousand lawyers tied together at the bottom of the sea?”
“A good start”
Oops!
Well I was never going to be a lawyer after that, and yes we have no lawyers in my family, a shame really given how much they charge.
The issue really is, should he have bothered, now that the job market has changed drastically from his time. I asked a young person recently what she wanted to do when she grows up and the reply a fashion blogger. I can just imagine the look on his face if I said that. Yet today, fashion blogging is big. Now I am working as a change consultant, if I said that to him, he would really have taken me off school on the account of madness. In turns out, GoodStarter that in the future we won’t recognize some to the jobs that will be on offer, most of them have not even been invented yet.
Chloe Della Costa in her column 10 New Jobs People Will Have by the Year 2030, writes “In a speech at The American Enterprise Institute, Bill Gates predicted that within just 20 years, many current jobs will be replaced by software automation. Gates emphasized the danger for low-skilled positions in particular, but added “labour demand for lots of skill sets will be substantially lower.”
Where does that leave us?
Well GoodStarter, check out this out AOL Jobs where they partnered with the agency to determine the high-paying positions we have to look forward to in the future. We will take only the top 5 you can start considering going forward, that either don’t exist yet or will soon see great expansion, compiled by AOL Jobs and Sparks & Honey.
https://www.google.com/search?q=Chloe+Della+Costa+in+her+column+10+New+Jobs+People+Will+Have+by+the+Year+2030&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&client=firefox-b&gfe_rd=cr&ei=eV2OV7f5HeGo8we01avQDA
“What are you gonna be when you grow up?”
- Bot lobbiest
A bot lobbiest will create fake social media accounts to aid in promoting a client’s business and marketing efforts.
Advertising spend is moving away from TV to the Web, people spend more time on-line then they do watching TV, so as advertising will follow people. GoodStarter if you are interested in advertising, here is an opportunity to start with, I don’t know many bot lobbiests, do you?
- Future currency speculator
The growing virtual currency market will certainly need experts, one of which will be the future currency speculator.
Speculation is the purchase of a good with the hope that it will become more valuable at a future date. Here are currencies already available, it will be awesome to see GoodStarters beginning to play this market. Which of these currencies is going up or down in value?
Name |
Market Cap |
Price |
Bitcoin |
4,754,296,898 |
349.81 |
Litecoin |
121,860,749 |
3.53 |
Dogecoin |
20,112,825 |
0.00 |
Peercoin |
14,882,010 |
0.68 |
Darkcoin |
11,066,538 |
2.24 |
Primecoin |
961,543 |
0.12 |
3.Productivity counselors
These counselors will give advice on everything from wellness to time management, in order to enable workers to prove their value to employers.
These days to have a personal trainer or life coach is an “in thing”, so in the future where workers might not be belonging to any particular company or organisation, workers will probably be working for many different companies and providing different services, it would make sense to be surrounded by counsellors for various services or pieces of work you provide.
- Crowdfunding specialist
With the popularity of crowdfunding websites like Kickstarter and IndieGoGo, there’s a growing need for expert advisers to help fundraisers promote their causes.
Have you ever gone to the bank to ask for a start-up business loan? If you have then you will know how it can be daunting. First just getting the banker to understand your concept, and then as if they know all the markets, they tell you it will betoo risky or it won’t work. Hello crowdfunding, the market decides if the product is worth getting to the market, if the market likes it, they will fund it and probably be the first to use it. The entrepreneur doesn’t have to pay the money back, just the promised rewards. So why go to any bank with your business idea?
5.Dis organizer/corporate disruptor
A corporate disruptor will be called upon to shake things up at businesses whose systems and processes have gone stale.
Recently I attended presentation by Sense 2 Solve on Digital Disruption and I observed an interesting conversation between an IT Manager and a Millennial.
- The millennial asks, “when I buy an item for over R5000, why is my insurance company not insuring it at the point of payment, if I pay with my card you should have all the information you need if you are linked to retailer tills and when I get home you send me a message to confirm if I want the item included in my household insurance?”
- IT Manager: “That’s a great idea but it will mean a robust interface”
- Millennial: “I don’t care”
- IT Manager: “besides it will take too much data”
- Millennial: “I don’t care”
This went on for a while, the point is, in the future clients will want to be serviced how they want. And if an IT manager can fail to understand the needs of the future, how much more other managers. Someone will be needed to disrupt legacy processes and “we have always done it like this” mentality of most managers. Could that be you GoodStarter?
Our republic’s economy is still largely driven by mining, with the recent strikes in the sector, much speculation has been branded about replacing miners with robots, they work harder, none stop and they don’t toyi toyi.
This future speculation of course has been to frighten government and unions to curb their demands on wages, better working conditions, etc. So GoodStarter, I thought that this would be a great idea, since I don’t think anyone would necessary choose to work in such conditions given a better choice, so robots would be a swell idea. Provided of course that they are manufactured, programmed and serviced here. All government will need to do is increase mining taxes to look after displaced workers. The threats of robots replacing people are usually from people who in their minds an African will always be disadvantaged. To them Africans will be perpetual labourers and if labourity is taken away from them then it will be all doom and gloom. Really?
You can come to imagine
GoodStarter, depending on your age, if you merely 30 years ago had made this presentation for funding your start-up.
The concept is simple really it is that of a telephone, only you will be able to put in your pocket, it will have a camera, diary, the list of your contacts, music and play videos, a map and you will be to connect to the internet.
Imagine how many people would have looked at you crazy let alone fund you for such a fantasy product. Yet now…..
So what do you thing will be the biggest job in 2030 besides these and how can we start preparing our children to take advantage of it?
Do you have a great idea or perhaps know somebody with a great idea that needs funding to be implemented? Let’s take it to the on-line crowd, visit at www.GoodStarter.co.za to start good as a game changer where you are by submitting and contributing to projects. Let start some digital disruption. Let’s start good you and I!
Let’s start some digital disruption.
Let’s start good you and I!
Mr. Thamsanqa Mngoma is the Founder and CE of The Good Start Agency (Pty) LTD, home of the crowdfunding website, WWW.GoodStarter.co.za. Thami (for short) is formerly a Change Management Consultant and a Digital Disruption enthusiast and Motivational Content creator and provider. One of his main passions is servant leadership, a topic for his motivational talks. He is inspired by all things people beneficial and believes in individual self-empowerment towards self-efficacy with being of service to others as the most viable option for African economic progress. Mngoma’s 25 year people focused career span includes the “whose who” of the South African financial services carriers, Liberty Life, Standard Bank, Old Mutual’s Short Term Insurer Mutual & Federal. His career history also includes consulting work for business’s such as The Hay Group (now P3 Consulting); Achieve Global, Waymark IT and MF Info Tech among others.