Since his first inauguration in April 2018, His Excellency the President of the Republic of Botswana Dr. MEK Masisi, including his inauguration speech 2 weeks ago, has consistently cited that a key strategic imperative for the future of Botswana is facing up to the challenges and harnessing the opportunities that will arise from the 4th Industrial Revolution and transforming the economy to a knowledge based one. This will most surely be one of the key points he will touch on during his State of the Nation Address on Monday 18th November 2019.

This therefore is an opportune time to ask:

But what is this 4IR and digital transformation and what does it mean for you and me and Motswana ko gae?

The term “4th Industrial Revolution” (sometimes referred to as 4IR or Industry 4.0) was coined by Professor Klaus Schwab, who is the founder and Chairman of the World Economic Forum who first used it in an article in 2015. The invention of the steam engine in the 1700s was considered the first industrial revolution as it allowed for mechanization and enabled increased urbanization, harnessing of electricity was considered the 2nd in 1800s allowed for mass production, the third was in the 1950s with the invention of computing and digital technologies. All of these changed the way people worked and greatly affected the lives of humans across the globe. The 4IR is simply the integration and connection of all our processes, systems and technology using advancements such as artificial intelligence, Internet of Things (IoT), blockchain, virtual reality, 3D printing and many others.

And just like in all previous revolutions, 4IR will significantly disrupt our status quo and business as usual at Government, company and individual level. The world is changing and Botswana has to take leaps and strides to keep up.

What kind of disruptions should we expect and what are we seeing in other countries?

4IR calls for a digital transformation i.e. re-imagining the use of digital technologies to create new — or modify existing — business processes, culture, and customer experiences to meet changing business and market requirements. So as businesses, it would enable companies to manage their costs better, be able to improve decision making using analytics in real time, improve processes, measurement of performance and compliance, automate these processes and in turn give a greater customer experience due to faster turnaround times, reduced repetitive actions and lowered pricing due to inefficiencies. We will see a move towards digital services where traditional brick and mortar businesses like bank branches become obsolete. In the end, the customer experience will be enhanced significantly and any company that does not keep up with the disruptions will be rendered ineffective and likely put out of business.

This disruption will cut across industries. No industry will be spared.

Imagine retail shopping in this world. Imagine Sefalana or Choppies knowing where you live, knowing what your monthly purchases tend to be, having a delivery day set where your bank account gets debited automatically and the groceries delivered to your house without any of your intervention. Imagine this service being extended to meraka and being able to deliver to badisa with minimal interference from you.

In medicine, we can leverage the power of wearable technologies, cloud technologies and high performance computing to improve health care delivery and the production and delivery of drugs – precision medicine and personalised healthcare. Artificial Intelligence is already used for the detection conditions like cancer and diabetic retinopathy -from just leveraging the power of digital technologies in analysing images. A task they perform better than humans. Data analytics will ensure the Government is able to forecast and predict demand of services and drugs and hence move resources around in real time to give better delivery, reduce queuing times, give better diagnoses, ensure drug availability and track family histories etc.

In Agriculture we can leverage the power of devices to understand the best conditions for maximum yield and create controlled environments to achieve that. We already have autonomous (self driving) tractors in some farms in the country, increasing the production capacity of farmers. We can use AI, IoT, Cloud technologies for the detection of animal and plant disease and remotely recommend remedies to farmers.

Instead of having police officers addressing inefficient traffic lights during peak hours, we can combine sensors and Artificial Intelligence for Smart Traffic Management, predicting and responding in real time to optimize the flow of traffic. Maybe, then we can redeploy police officers to address manyora challenges in our neighbourhoods, creating safer and secure communities.

We can relieve our land boards of the headaches of Land Registry by leveraging the power of blockchain technologies. Many of us, unfortunately, think of cryptocurrencies when we hear of blockchains, but they offer much more than that. Blockchain technologies can help us with the management of digital contracts and assets in a smart and secure way. Conflicts over land ownership and lack of transparency in land transfers can be eliminated. Where conflict arises, blockchain technology will provide digital audit trails.

In financial services, insurance companies and banks will be offering personalized pricing of their products based on an individual behaviour. We will no longer be expected to pay 5% across the board for vehicle insurance when only a small group are getting in accidents. The less risky individuals would be able to pay less and the riskier individuals would be made to pay what reflects their behaviour. If a car is in a car accident, depending on measured impact it would send out a distress signal to Emergency Services thereby improving response times and saving lives. The filling of forms every time you need to get a loan, open a bank account, make a transfer would all be greatly reduced as the bank would be able to recognize you and even remove the need to physically go to a bank. Branches would be obsolete.

No industries would be spared.

What would this mean to the average Motswana?

Firstly as demonstrated above, you would get better service delivery. Reduced queues in banks and government offices, better targeted services, reduction of repetitive tasks which will free you up to do more creative tasks but also reduce your costs dramatically. But just like in other revolutions you would have changing job roles. This means jobs in the next 5 years could look dramatically different to what they look like now. Some job roles will disappear. Any job which is currently repetitive or about recollection of facts would disappear. Teaching, nursing, engineering, the army, financial services: you name it, job roles will change. Positions such as data entry clerks, accounting and bookkeeping, admin services, assembly and factory workers, client information, auditors, stock keeping and record keeping, postal services, financial analysts, cashiers, mechanics, telemarketers, bank tellers, car, van and delivery drivers, sales agents and brokers, lawyers and street vendors will all become obsolete.

Now this doesn’t mean jobs will reduce in number; it means the roles and skills required will have to be adapted. Just the same way that 30 years ago most jobs weren’t using computers, email, Whatsapp or Facebook, people had to adapt and know that basic computing skills were essential. As people we will be required to re-tool ourselves for future roles and develop skills such as analytical, critical thinking, problem solving, design, leadership, creative, emotional intelligence and reasoning. Job roles such as AI and machine learning specialists, big data specialists, digital transformation specialists, user experience designers, service and solution designers, training and development specialists, people and culture specialists, e-commerce and social media specialists, innovation professionals etc will come to the fore and need us to fill them.

Therefore an essential challenge which as a country we need to address urgently is creating the right skills for this new age. Our education system has to change fundamentally from being teacher centred to being learner centred; moving away from testing and encouraging regurgitation of facts taught in class and developing new skills such as working in teams, problem solving and analysis.

An increased focus on Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) development for our students is also imperative. Having the average Motswana student meet and interact consistently with a computer at tertiary schools will also have to change. We will need primary education across the country introducing IT courses.

A large challenge to organizations will be to map what skills they will need in the future as they transform and re-tool their existing workforce to operate in their desired state in the future.

So how is Botswana shaping itself up to respond to this future?

The need for economic diversification and risks of our nations over-reliance on minerals was recognised at the start of the 21st century by past administrations. We now have BIUST, BITRI and BIH following in response to increase our potential for knowledge economic diversification. The evolution from a mineral dominated economy to a knowledge-diversified economy is a task the current administration has also inherited. It has become a national focus as the country seeks to increase its global competitiveness through innovation, research and technology.

We have seen the formation of a National Transformation Task Force whose focus is to map a way forward for the overall transformation of the Botswana economy. A large component of their work will have to focus on the challenges and opportunities presented by 4IR and lead us on a path of digital transformation.

A 4IR symposium was held in September 2019 focused on creating a 4IR Readiness Plan by different stakeholders in the country. This symposium was meant to create plans around awareness raising, capacity building and to choose priority areas the country would focus on. A result of the symposium was the adoption of Education, Finance, Agriculture and Health as the focus areas and working groups were established with a mandate to come up with strategies relating to their areas in 12 months.

In the upcoming SONA, we hope to hear the President commit to the following in response to challenges ahead of us:

• Leveraging Digital Transformation for public service excellence – prioritise Service Excellence and e-Gov to increase the country’s global competitiveness.
• Prioritising and investment in data-driven policy making.
• Prioritising and investment in efficient resource utilisation and utilisation – more for less.
• Use of data for transparent governance and fighting corruption.
• Inclusive Innovation Support – Ecosystem Co-creation, Grassroots Innovation Support, consumption of local services and products.
• Prioritising 4IR workforce readiness – Investment in grassroots STEAM education.
• Create an enabling environment for entrepreneurs to create jobs.
• Call for proactive private sector participation – private sector benefits from the country’s economy.
• Agile Government – shed the ‘good policy but poor implementation’ tag.
• Only through a committed leadership from the top which appreciates the difficulty and inevitability of the challenge ahead will we be able respond appropriately as government, industry and the citizenry.

As parting shots it is important to emphasize a few things. One, digital transformation is more than just technology. It incorporates strategy, process, people as well as technology as an enabler. A total change process is needed for us to create customer centric solutions for our people. We also need to go back and get the basics right like our education system. The revolution will be led by people.

Lastly, the world is moving whether we like it or not. A failure to respond will perpetuate the problem of having our economy in the hands of outsiders: multinationals will come and impose their standards to us and disrupt and kill off any local businesses that don’t respond to the challenges.