Tapping into ICT opportunities

Before Akorion, an Agricultural technology company, was introduced in Buwunga Sub-county, Manafwa District in Eastern Uganda, Halid Mutebi says he and other farmers decried unfair trade deals with middlemen for their produce.
Akorion introduced a smarter way in which farmers would save money. They would work with village agents whose job is to profile farmers. Mutebi is an agent and his role is to capture the location of a farmer’s garden using the Global Positioning System, their names, crops grown, agronomic practices such as spacing of crops, weather forecasts, market prices, and financial services such as savings, transactions and credit and crop insurance.

Cutting out middlemen
“The introduction of Information Communication Technology [ICT] has helped farmers save money they would otherwise lose to middlemen who are not straight,” Mutebi adds.
Using smart phones, farmers can find out about prevailing market prices in Jinja, Mbale and Busia and know where to sell their produce.
Joshua Okello Andela, a technical success manager, says ICT contributes by creating new opportunities both in older, well-established sectors such as agriculture or education, and for more niche and often innovative ones such as data science. “Moreover, some of the innovative ones are modifications or extensions to older ones. For example, mobile money agents who are decentralised cashiers/accountants,” he observes.
He also adds: “The irony, however, is that as ICT advances and becomes part of the fabric of every industry, it will make many jobs obsolete through automation and predictive modelling.”
And whereas some jobs will be created, those with a job whose main metrics are speed or quantity could lose theirs. “Cashiers at a bank could lose their jobs since counting money and accounting will eventually be solved by ICT which like all technology, is premised on better ways of doing things. For businesses, that would mean efficiency,” Okello explains.
ICTs provide avenues for job opportunities, which reduce unemployment. “For example, the development of technology such as mobile applications has created new opportunities developers trainers and maintainers of the technology.
ICT has increased access to work opportunities beyond Uganda for jobs ranging from writing, to customer service, to software development among others,” Cedric Anil Muhebwa, Programme Analyst for social change innovations at United Nations Population Fund- Uganda, explains.
He adds that ICTs have also enabled establishment of micro work platforms, which break down large business processes into smaller discrete tasks such as data entry and verification, copy writing, or graphic design and distribute them to workers across geographic in the job market is labour switching in terms of skills, knowledge and approach to delivery of goods and services.
Muhebwa concludes that it is only a myth that ICT has killed jobs, and adds that the reality is that it enables the market to switch, improve, add and diversify individual skills to fit with the changing environment.
A World Bank study observes that ICT created new jobs and making labour markets more innovative, inclusive, and global. ICT is providing new avenues for job creation that could help tackle global unemployment.
“For instance, the development of the mobile phone applications industry has created new opportunities for small- and medium-sized enterprises. A firm that provides a digital application to the Apple app store, for example, gains access to more than 500 million app store account holders,” the report states in part.
It adds that ICTs connect people to jobs. Online employment marketplaces are helping an estimated 12 million people worldwide find work by connecting them with employers globally.
“ICTs are influencing employment both as an industry that creates jobs and as a tool that empowers workers to access new forms of work, in new and more flexible ways,” said Chris Vein, World Bank Chief Innovation Officer for Global ICT Development.