Reevaluating the term “developed” in relation to countries — The Future of Africa.
Are African countries truly underdeveloped? By whose standard do we define this? With the current state of the world is Africa still Underdeveloped? What can we do right now, where we’re at and who maps out how we go about it from here on out?
Now assume that Artificial Intelligence is just one of the many things changing rapidly. We’re experiencing record breaking technological advancement. People are able to create things faster than ever before. What this means is any one, literally anyone can create a software tool by simply typing out a prompt and describing exactly what they want and it’ll be a “thing’ in a few minutes. Maybe not a perfect version but a first draft that is almost as good as what a team of 25 would do in the past, hypothetically speaking. These are hypothetical figures but they aren’t that far from the truth and everything you know about layoffs. Why would that many people be laid off so fast in a really short period of time?
With tool that are significantly shortening the time frame between idea and creation, readily and commercially available for anyone, more people are going to create things faster. Business models are changing or have already changed. Educational systems will evolve to meet this change eventually. Newer job roles are going to emerge. New business ventures are going to spring up and technologically speaking things are also changing too. A lot more personalized experiences may be a thing. Either way there’s pro’s and cons of this for everyone.
Similar to all the different eras of industrialization and revolutions, countries have to catch up or be left behind. Africa had been destabilized before and I mean by colonialism. Considering the changes on the global scene right now, there is a “perfect opportunity” to rewrite Africa’s story. We stay abreast of global development but in a way that best fits our geographical locations, cultural nuance’s and diversity. Alternatively, think of this as the perfect avenue for Africa to be a World power.
Whatever feelings you had about colonialism derailing Africa’s progress or that Africa was developed before colonialism is pointless forever after now. Most African countries are probably young, say 65 independent years old like Nigeria.
Word on the street is that AI isn’t the only new thing we’re contending with. There are news of “a new world order”. Systems are changing across all industries, like you’ve read about in the Industrialization era. We’re quite literally in the middle of one right now — Massive layoffs because of the new tool/Machine; Maybe a recession; The collapse of existing global power; A looming world war— these are sign of a significant change. One that can be, categorically speaking, described as a “New world order”.
Most African nations are at the the cusp of being underdeveloped for far longer than it needs to be. The real question now is our reason for this, being classified as “underdeveloped” mainly corruption? or it’s a mix of terrible leadership, ill prepared leaders or systems that we inherited or created that obviously don’t work or just global politics fueled by the ripple effect of colonialism?
Now’s a perfect time to do everything we possibility can to change our global standing. To change Nigeria. To change West Africa. To stop corrupt leaders. To change how we do everything that matters to us. To build a developed Africa. To define what “developed” should be for us, AFRICANS.
I digressed.
Let me try to put a list of some of the things changing so you get a good grasp of the situation
- Digitalization of things: Before now we had files and physical copies. At some point we moved to having mostly digital copies and files. Now there are talks, policies of applying this digitalization of our data and means of Identification including things like your passport
- Companies will probably earn more in profits, save a lot in cost of running a business. They sort of benefit from this alot. It’s a justifiable reason to pay lesser. Most people are either terrified or shaken up in a stressful way. So yes, you guessed it — the rich get richer and the balanced, average, family is shaken up by this. However brief it, there’s a huge anxiety that happened there.
- Some terrible global leaders can take advantage of the situation. In fact currently there are talks about what to do with all the data they’ve used to build AI — if you didn’t already know how AI works, a machine is trained with a lot of information until it gets a really good understanding of it. This “information” are called data sets. That’s what AI is in layman terms. Some AI tools can build deep fakes of practically anything right now.
and so much more.
The key thing I hope to bring to your awareness is that we can change how Africa is presented globally, develop our countries and improve the standard of living for us by ourselves but We have to draft a new blue print, one that works for Africa, written and drafted by African for African and Every single on of us makes significant effort to enforce these things.
Karenane E. Iyakoregha
Africa can be “developed” in it’s own standing and look nothing like what developed is for United states of America or Europe or even Scandinavian nations. The world will come to accept Africans definition of developed for Africa. All we have to do is define this “development”.
This is what I hope to pioneer for Africa. Should I find other deeply insightful individuals who are also passionate about painting a picture of Africa, that is rich in color — in all of our diversity — in their minds eye, to work with, then we can define and create the blueprint for Africa’s Development, document our beginning and see where it takes us.