Of men and machines: The challenges of industrialisation

Probably you didn’t see the story. It was quite innocuous. But it was a very telling story in as far as our challenges with industrialisation are concerned. The story appeared in Daily Monitor of November 19, (Ministry to mining firm: Use hands, not machines, page 12).
According to the author, the ministry of Energy had suspended the mining of pozzolana using an excavator at Harugongo and Kichwamba sub-counties in Kabarole District. This was after local artisans accused the investor of rendering them jobless by replacing them with machines. As a result of using excavators, the contractor, Ms Royal Transit Company, had rendered about 500 locals redundant.
In order to resolve the conflict caused by the redundancy, the ministry of Energy official who adjudicated the dispute directed the contractor to employ casual labourers if they wanted to still supply pozzolana to Hima Cement factory.
The official argued that under the Mining Act, 2003, Section 54, Subsection 2, the location license of Royal Transit Company did not allow them to use capital of more than Shs10m! Therefore, the use of the excavator was a breach of the law!
Now here is the rub. According to the story, Hima Cement Factory Limited, the buyers of pozzolana, were reported to have a preference for the use of an excavator. The business minded entrepreneur who had seen the opportunity had grabbed it. In so doing, he had opened a can of worms.

This can of worms we should all take more seriously because, what happened in Kabarole is inevitably going to happen in all other walks of life.
Because we want to industrialise, we are going to have to automate very many of the things that we do manually. That means that we shall need fewer and fewer labourers doing menial jobs. It is anachronistic that the ministry of Energy official would have to hide behind the law to stop the march of progress.

The fact is that if we are going to move into the 21st Century, we have to be reskilling our people.
This is because today we live in the age of automation and artificial intelligence. Automation is about making a hardware or software that is capable of doing things automatically without little or no human intervention. And that is what the industrialisation we aspire to is all about. Artificial Intelligence (AI) on the other hand is the science of making intelligent machines with algorithms (software programmes) that can think through a problem and offer alternative solutions. AI is all about trying to make machines or software mimic, and eventually supersede human behaviour and intelligence.
In Europe and America, these things have already happened. It is rare that you will find a pump attendant, say in the UK. Self-checkout counters are the craze in shops selling fast-moving consumer goods like Tescos™. Today, machines (like cars) are assembled by other machines. So the jobs of pump attendant, cashier, and technician are as technically as dead as the dodo.

The way industrialisation is going, any task that is repetitive can be programmed and undertaken by a machine in a more efficient manner.

The jobs of today will not be the jobs of tomorrow.
The world of work is changing faster and more drastically than at any other time in recent history. According to research from the World Economic Forum, 35 per cent of the skills necessary to thrive in a job today will be different five years from now. How prepared are we for the future?

What skills or expertise should we be imparting for tomorrow’s labour force? It is generally agreed that the skills needed for tomorrow include soft skills – such as teamwork, knowledge of digital tools, an understanding of rules and regulations, responsibility and commitment.
This is why the plight of the artisanal miners in Kabarole should concern us. Despite the current levels of unemployment, the guy with the excavator will be back sooner than you can say abracadabra.