Ugandans born today will be 80 in 2100: What will they eat?

What is Uganda doing to prepare for tomorrow? As 2018 closed, South Africa’s President Cyril Ramaphosa named a Presidential Commission on the Fourth Industrial Revolution.

More quietly, earlier last year, Kenya’s President Uhuru Kenyatta, called for the formation of a task force on how the country can work magic with blockchain and Internet of Things (IoT) technologies. Its ICT ministry immediately formed one.

The Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR), as the many clever Ugandan men and women who follow these things will tell you refers to how things will work when IoT, fifth-generation wireless technologies (5G), 3D printing, and all sorts of autonomous vehicles come together.

Recently, there was a documentary on DSTv, which illustrated rather dramatically, how 4IR. It showed 3D printing that uses metal, and illustrated what will happen to computer making.

Today, your average computer has parts from anything up to 40 countries, which have to be flown to the factory, or ferried by ship, employing hundreds of people along the way.

Soon, you will have 3D print all the parts you need in the corner of your factory, and make hundreds, if not thousands, of people, in several dozen countries, redundant.

Fellow used to think that African countries would not be touched by 4IR for a long time, until the World Economic Forum warned that we could be hit hardest, because too many of our citizens work in the industries that are most vulnerable – particularly agriculture.

In less than five years, it will be possible – and much cheaper – for Madhivani Tea or Sugar, to unleash hundreds of robots to harvest the crops overnight, and get it done with, rather than employ thousands of people.

And for good measure, you can deploy the robots to work on Sunday, without being accused.

In Kenya, last year Safaricom started testing 5G. Because 5G is several times faster compared to what we have, it means devices are talking to each other real time.

You can put a bunch of self-driving cars on the road going at more than 100kph a few inches apart, and if they had to come abruptly to a stop they wouldn’t run into each other.

But in our case, at a more practical level, you will be able to deploy driverless tractor and operate it on your farm in Bushenyi from Kampala as you do other important things as well.

So the question is, where are Uganda’s preparations for the future that is already with us? The “gossip tax” has already reduced internet use considerably.

But it might not be too late. If there is one number that should focus Ugandan minds, it is 213 million. By 2100 – another 80 years away – Uganda will have the world’s 10th largest population (and also one of its most lucrative markets if we can get the economy working) with a population of 213 million people in this relatively tiny land.

We will be living to the age of 100 years then, the way we live to be 60 today.

The children who will be born by Ugandan mothers who are pregnant today, will be turning 80 in 2100, and they will be relatively young by world standards, as other people will be living to 120 and 150.

Children who are 10 today will be 90. So 2100 should already be our business as a country. 4IR and IoT is tomorrow’s work, and we need to have already planned for it. We haven’t.

One easy thing we can do is take advantage of our location. If you look at a map of Africa, Uganda has one thing that only it enjoys.

Seated between the vast DR Congo, Kenya and Tanzania, it is the only country that divides, and therefore also links, three big coastal nations on opposite sides of the continent with port cities on two oceans.

If you take Tanzania with Dar es Salaam, Kenya with Mombasa, and DRC with Matadi, Uganda is actually the link to the Indian and the South African Ocean in West Africa.

And there is something else. Today, Kampala is not even in the list of the 100 biggest cities in the world. By 2100, it will be the 16th largest.

And further west, Kinshasa will be the world’s second largest city, in a DRC with 379 million people, the fifth largest in the world. To the southeast, Dar es Salaam will be the world’s third largest city in a Tanzania with 303 million people, the world’s eighth largest.

Right now, Uganda has a huge trade surplus with the region, owing largely to our advantage in agriculture. If I were president, I would demand that ministries give me a plan on biotechnology, autonomous bulk transportation systems, and the education of a work force that is leading in these sectors – all realisable in a framework of less than five years.

Mr Onyango-Obbo is publisher of Africapedia.com
and explainer Roguechiefs.com. Twitter@cobbo3