The Looming tsunami of the new world of work

The Looming Tsunami of the New World of Work
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The Looming Tsunami of The
New World of Work
Strategic Imperatives for Work, the
Workplace and the Workforce in
Nigeria

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Olayiwola Oladapo November 2018
The Future Is Here and Now!
That the world of work as we have always known it is undergoing rapid metamorphosis is honestly
an understatement, as the boundaries and worldview of work as currently constituted are being
radically redefined at
rocket speed level daily by
many factors but more
importantly by the
unfolding Fourth Industrial
Revolution (4IR). It
appears that the ability of
organizations, nations and
societies to adapt and
leverage the 4IR will determine the currency of their global relevance and the degree of
sustainable development they can achieve.
The disruptive transformations that the fourth industrial revolution has brought into the
contemporary global space are blurring the existing traditional boundaries in all spheres of life,
enabling multifaceted convergence of multidisciplinary territories that were hitherto considered
conceptually divergent.
Bernard Marr writing for the Forbes magazine on the 4IR believed the exponential changes to the
way we live, work and relate to one another due to the adoption of cyber-physical systems, the
Internet of Things and the Internet of Systems will even challenge our ideas about what it
means to be human ( https://bit.ly/2Onz6PP ). Friends, that sounded like a phrase from a
Halloween movie script!

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The World Economic Forum described 4IR as the “the blurring of the lines between the
physical, digital, and biological spheres” ( https://bit.ly/1pBfye4 ). I dare say it will also
challenge and seismically redefine humanity’s fine lines of morality and the foundational
assumptions undergirding our social and religious norms. Nothing better describes the impending
gale of monumental life changing evolution that
mankind is about to witness, more than Joseph
Schumpeter’s creative destruction concept but
in addition to the disruptive nature of the
evolution of the 4IR, the pace and trajectory of
this evolution is frighteningly exponential rather
than linear. The evolutionary trends associated
with the Tsunami of the 4IR have colossal
ramifications for global systems of production,
management, labour markets, organizational
effectiveness, political economic structures and
governance outcomes.
The focus of this strategic leadership piece is to highlight a few emerging, ubiquitous trends whose
life defining and lifestyle redefining impacts on our society and nation have not been adequately
identified, discussed, analyzed and articulated. The objectives of this article are to heighten the
awareness around the impending 4IR and create a discussion agenda for stakeholder and
multidisciplinary conversations on how to prepare for and manage the consequences of the
‘creative destructive disruptions’ of the impending but certain 4IR “INNOVOLUTION” (My
coinage for the amalgamation of innovation and evolution).

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The Emerging Trends with Creative Destructive Impact
Artificial Intelligence (AI) for
obvious reasons has become one
of the most trending subjects
associated with the 4IR lately.
From the use of AI in unmanned
aerial vehicles popularly known as
drones to the application in robotics
in many automobile manufacturing
workshops, AI has become a
signature technology for the 4IR.
Humanity’s transition on the social
evolution continuum is at the phase where Humans are no longer the sole active reference factor
of the cosmopolitan ecosystem. We are now at the age where Humanoids and digital Humans
are now considered in the same breath as Humans in the cosmopolitan ecosystem. And very
soon Humans may be walking down the aisle with droids and it will not be a shock to conventional
sensibilities seeing humans adopting digital babies or people hiring droids as nannies to raise
their children or teach them in schools. Seeing droids perform the work of bank tellers or nurses
and doctors in hospitals or plane pilots are within our horizon of reality in the nearest future! In
fact, Dr David Levy, author of 'Love and Sex with Robots' believes the first marriage between
Humans and droids will happen before 2050! (https://dailym.ai/2DvhLDu ) Brace up for the
‘scarily Interesting” days that certainly lies ahead!
The New Digital Currency Revolution
Clearly competing with AI as the poster trend for the 4IR is the block chain technology driving the
cryptocurrency revolution that has sent disruptive jolts to the global and contemporary financial

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systems of regulation and operations. The relative popularity and adoption of cryptocurrencies
especially the Bitcoin, Litecoin, Monero and Ethereum as digital currencies and viable financial
investment and transaction instruments for millions of people across the globe has had
unprecedented unsettling impact on traditional global financial services regulations. Most financial
regulatory authorities across all jurisdictions are still in a policy quandary on what to do and how
to manage the disruptive influence of cryptocurrencies on their economic and financial systems.
Investopedia in June 2017 put the value of Bitcoin (the flagship cryptocurrency) in the world at
$41 billion and all cryptocurrencies value at close to $100 billion equivalent to the GDP of Morocco
- the 60th-largest economy in the world in 2017 (https://bit.ly/2I1xqfE). In October 2017, Bitcoins
according to Thomson Reuters was valued at approximately USD$70 billion. The Cambridge
University concluded in the same year that there are between 2.9 million and 5.8 million unique
users actively using a cryptocurrency wallet (https://tmsnrt.rs/2zpjG69 ).
Not only is the global transactional value of cryptocurrencies growing, the worldwide appeal and
patronage is also on the rise but expectedly the policy reactions to its acceptance as a legal tender
varies from one nation to another. Whilst some nations are at the front of the queue of adoption
of this disruptive but innovative financial instrument, others are playing laggards by outrightly
outlawing its adoption.
For instance, Japan and Nigeria’s reactions are at opposing end of the spectrum to adoption of
cryptocurrencies typifying the rippling regulatory chaos cryptocurrencies have created across
different national jurisdictions. Whilst Japan on April 1, 2017 recognized and legalized Bitcoin as
a legal tender, the Central Bank of Nigeria on January 19, 2017 “officially outlawed digital
currencies.”
The tales of two Central Banks and nations indeed! Slowly but certainly digital currencies have
now become standard feature of global financial discourse

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Source: Thomson Reuters -https://tmsnrt.rs/2EQdKG

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The Age of Digital States, Nations and Citizens Has Dawned on Us
In addition to AI, block chain
technologies and associated
cryptocurrency global
adoption trends, the
increasing digitization and
convergence of global
systems have unearthed
unimaginable potentials in
efficiency, global connectivity, collaborations, networking and productivity across different
nations. These trends whilst delivering these positive outcomes are also increasingly challenging
and redefining the previously considered immortal lines of national boundaries creating digital
states, nations and citizens that transcend sovereign boundaries. According to Statista the most
populated nation on earth is Facebook with an active user population of 2.23 billion people in
2018, that is if active population is regarded as the measuring yardstick. Closely trailing Facebook
is YouTube with 1.9 billion people and WhatsApp is in distant third position with 1.5 billion active
users. (https://bit.ly/2ddRJHi)
Contrast this with China’s mammoth population of 1.4 billion people which will effectively rank the
land of the Renminbi as the fourth largest nation on earth if these social media platforms were
treated as nations based on the population of members they currently have. To imagine that a
company sitting on a 1 million plus square-foot space headquarters office (with “citizens” who
abide by its digital constitution) dwarfs in population a country that occupies 9,600,000 square
kilometers is only possible in the world of Science Fiction! but that is the reality of how many
people Facebook and China have respectively!

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Whilst an argument could be made that individuals with multiple user accounts may have
positively skewed the total subscriber base of these social media networks, it still does not mask
the reality that we already are in the age of the Digital States, Nations and Citizens!
Lessons from Mobile Money Revolution in Kenya
The M-Pesa mobile money system in
Kenya has obliterated the fine lines of
distinction between
telecommunication and traditional
banking/financial services in driving
national financial service inclusion in
Kenya. In addition, it has
revolutionized the growth of the Kenyan economy pushing it to the frontiers of championing
African digital enabled economic renaissance. The M-Pesa system was launched by Vodafone's
Safaricom mobile operator in 2007 as a simple method of texting small payments between users.
According to CNN, M-Pesa in 2017 had 30 million users in 10 countries and a range of services
including international transfers, loans, and health provision. The system processed around 6
billion transactions in 2016 at a peak rate of 529 per second (https://cnn.it/2SEFENv) . Nigeria is
a market with a big return on investment prognosis for mobile banking and grassroot financial
inclusion. The current mobile money policies of the Central Bank of Nigeria only allow Banking
institutions and excludes Telcos from operating the mobile money operations license. It will
therefore not be a shock in the nearest future to see mergers of banking and telecommunications
organizations in Nigeria to take advantage of the humongous and captive bottom of the pyramid
Nigerian mobile money market if the central regulatory bank policy still remains exclusively
accessible to only banking institutions.

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Lessons from Electrical Car Revolution Coming to Kenya
Kenya is undoubtedly the hotbed of innovative technologies in Africa. The debut of Nopia Ride
in 2018 as Kenya’s first fleet of electric cars heralds the dawn of the future world of automobiles
not powered by fossil fuel on the shores of the continent. The innovative product was launched
by a Finnish firm EkoRent Africa, a company founded in 2014 in Helsinki, Finland. We may think
the disruptive technologies are far away from the shores of the continent but truth be told, they
are already at our backyards!
What about 3D printing, nanotechnology, cryopreservation and biotechnologies that are
redefining the quantum of possibilities available to humankind. I am particularly interested in the
disruptive prognosis both positive and otherwise that cryopreservation portends when in the future
many unmarried men and women years after their death can become parents. Can the dead give
birth? Cryopreservation surely says Yes, it is possible! What ethical, social, legal and religious
dilemmas will this create, having children born many years after the demise of their biological
parents? Having highlighted a few of the creative destructive disruptions that are starring us in
our faces across the globe and in Nigeria there is an imperative to try to anticipate what and how
they may impact Nigeria.

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The Impact on Jobs
A certain outcome of strategic concern of these disruptions will be the impact on jobs and people
doing the jobs. From job roles to job specifications and designs, everything we know about jobs
currently will change. We have people
managing people currently, but in the
near future people will be managing
people and robots. What kinds of skill
sets will be required by the workforce
of the 4IR where robots and people are
team members? What will the
workplace of the 4IR look like? How
many jobs will be lost to the 4IR? The
World Economic Forum in a 2017
report titled the “Future of Jobs and
Skills in Africa-Preparing the Region
for the Fourth Industrial Revolution-” gave a sneak preview of what to expect as they estimated
that 46% of Jobs in Nigeria were susceptible to being lost to automation. This was in
comparison to 41% in South Africa, 44% in Ethiopia and 52% in Kenya respectively
(https://bit.ly/2r0GZnm ).
In my very unsubstantiated view, the estimates for Nigeria may have been understated as virtually
many of the jobs in Nigeria, both in the private and public sectors, have the possibility of being
replaced by machines. The prognosis for significant job loss in the public sector is higher as many
of the job roles and incumbents are products of political patronage and opportunism. Take for
instance able bodied men manning gates, breadwinners detailed to physical toll gates, petrol
attendants dispensing petroleum products at the pumps etc. And what about the possibilities for

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automation of accounting and HR processes? With both processes, the existence of Enterprise
Resource Planning systems with self-service functional attributes already points at the possibility
for full automation of any human facilitated transactional activity. In my candid opinion
transactional accounting, operational HR and many clerical administrative functions are in danger
of being totally replaced by automation. Before you play the ostrich game of indifference to the
prospects of what you currently do disappearing under the clouds of the 4IR, remember that the
disruptive changes that the 4IR will bring is virtually unprecedented and your job may also be on
the chopping block of automation. Therefore, the prospects of the quantum of job loss to
automation and AI in Nigeria may honestly be frightening!
Impact on the Labour Markets and Organizations
That raises the other question of the attendant impacts on the labour markets and systems. By
labour market and systems, I am referring to all the ecosystem driving labour management and
administration including the labour unions who are already very skeptical and antagonistic to the
emergence of these trends. A sample reaction of how the status quo system will react to such
disruptions, is how it did to one of the more recent innovative technology driven, transformational
concept that the passenger transportation system experienced in the last few years through the

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emergence of cab hailing services that rode on the platform of technology. The immediate
reaction from existing traditional taxi systems was that of hostility and rejection across Africa but
like the traditional taxi operators and the rest of the society found out later on, the cab hailing
system created new jobs and brought efficiency and higher productivity to the automobile and
transport sector. Not only did it
offer more employment
opportunities it also solved
significant commuting
challenges across major African
cities, whilst also attracting a new
urban, sophisticated and
premium category of customers
to patronize taxis across the cities in the continent. The knee jerk reaction from traditionalists is
always to try to resist these changes but unfortunately for such traditionalists, technology
always wins. The widespread and frenetic pace of adoption of the GSM technology in Nigeria
showed how a technology with social economic benefit and value can gain viral acceptance even
with die hard traditionalists. When the GSM technology came into the Nigeria market in 2001,
there were about 700,000 fixed NITEL telephone lines in Nigeria. Fast track to 2018 September
and the total number of active GSM lines according to Nigeria Communications Commission
(NCC) is a whopping 161,685,747! while the total number of active fixed wired/wireless lines is
137,658 (https://www.ncc.gov.ng/stakeholder/statistics-reports/subscriber-data). Just 17 years
after the adoption of the GSM Technology, fixed landline telephones are almost an extinct system
of telecommunication.
Another example of technology winning the battle of wits with status quo system is how the
internet and e-mails redefined communication across the globe and in Nigeria. Whilst physical

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mails are still in vogue, the stranglehold
that Nigeria NIPOST (the government
agency in charge of postal
communications) had over written
postage stamp driven communication
process was broken by the internet and
e-mail communication that changed the
way and manner in which we
communicate online-real time.
Finally, the advent of the personal
computer became the death knell for the entire industry and enterprise that depended on the
typewriter as a resource. Not only did the PC validate the obsolescence of the typewriter it also
retired the use of the Tipp-Ex (white correcting fluid for “embellishing” mistakes and errors) and
rendered professional typists who operated the old typewriter unemployed. The advent of the PC
became the end of an era for not just the work tool of the typewriter, but the job role of the typist,
the job skills of typewriting, an entire industry that manufactures typewriters and accessories and
millions of people hired by this industry. Popular typewriter companies like Remington and Sons
and Olivetti Typewriter Company have now become distant footnote in the world of corporate
relevance. In fact, Godrej and Boyce the last typewriter company according to the UK Daily Mail
shut down its plant in Mumbai, in April of 2011 (https://dailym.ai/2Dipk0b) . Typists who for years
were the beautiful brides whose services were courted by millions of Nigerians suddenly became
a dinosaur workforce. Smart ones however quickly transitioned into the PC technology by
embracing and learning how to use the PC. Therefore, these trends portend both prospects
and perils in equal measure.

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Impact on Educational and Professional Development
Thirdly, how do all of these impact on our educational and even professional development
systems and processes? In 2014, Dr. Okonjo Iweala cited a National Bureau of Statistics data
that revealed that 1.8million Nigerian youths from our higher institutions enter the labour market
every year (https://bit.ly/2Cxnw38 ). The current curriculum that drives our educational system
has largely been designed to support the second industrial revolution. In essence our educational
system curriculum is stuck in the second industrial revolution when the wave of the 4IR is already
berthing on our shores!
Also, the professional development thrusts across different specialist frontiers in Nigeria are
largely modelled to meet the requirements of the second industrial revolution or at best the
rudimentary stages of the third industrial revolution. A massive lacuna therefore exists between
what the educational and professional institutions churn out and what the market place requires.
This has unwittingly introduced the subterranean element of unemployability as a critical factor of
the unemployment challenge in Nigeria. The gap becomes even more alarmingly irreconcilable
when the higher educational curriculum in Nigeria is juxtaposed with the requirements for the 4IR.
The question for all key stakeholders in the educational and professional development sectors is
how do we start to align our educational and professional development curriculum to produce the

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workforce that the 4IR requires? And also, to ensure that the human resource responsible for both
educational and professional development are also 4IR competent.
Strategic Thoughts to Ponder On
How will the 4IR impact our governance and legislative systems, structures and processes? With
the increasing adoption of technologies that facilitate virtual teleconferencing and meetings, will
there be a need to have legislators across the globe physically meet to deliberate on legislative
matters? What impact will it have on adoption of E-governance and the bloated cost of public
sector governance? How will the use of drones and other “AI driven” technologies impact on
election monitoring/reporting and crime fighting across the nations? How will the adoption of
mobile money using the telecommunications technology impact the regulatory environment that
will be forced to deal with the convergence of the telecommunications and financial services

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industry who currently have different regulators? How do the Central Banks across the world deal
with the unregulated but burgeoning crypto currency and block chain technology driven trends,
fast becoming the preferred investment options for millennials? How does the workplace deal with
the challenge of managing 3 generations of employees: Grandparent, parent and their children
who are mostly digital natives’ millennials?
How will the labour unions deal with inevitable outcome of job losses and membership reduction
as a result of adoption of AI technologies that will drive efficiency, productivity and performance?
How does the Nation and Human Resources community deal with reskilling of the current
workforce to make them fit for purpose for the work and workplace that 4IR will bring? Are our
Labour organizations abreast of these impending and inevitable change? What are the political
economic challenges that will delay or oppose the transition of the Nigerian economy from the
second industrial revolution to the Fourth Industrial Revolution?
Concluding Note
The list is a bottomless pit and what comes out clearly is the need for a stakeholder approach to
broaching a national, professional, institutional, corporate discussion on the coming Tsunami and
how Nigeria and its people can maximize the prospects, possibilities and profits of adoption of AI
and other 4IR technologies and trends whilst minimizing the losses and adverse social economic
impact. What is also certain is that the ability of nations, societies and professions to successfully
attain sustainable development is largely dependent on how they prepare and adapt to the
seismically disruptive and equally transformational Tsunami of change that is about to berth on
our shores.
As business and professional leaders what are we doing in our organizations and communes to
bring conscious awareness to the coming Tsunami of the disruptive and transformational impacts
of the 4IR? The Nigerian Government will definitely need to champion both policy and program

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interventions to create a multidisciplinary and public-private sector partnership on preparing for
the impending 4IR impacts on Nigeria.
Dr. Olayiwola Oladapo is the Director of Strategy, Advocacy and Stakeholder Relations at Chartered Institute of
Personnel Management (CIPM) of Nigeria, the umbrella body that regulates Human Resources Profession and practice
in Nigeria with over 12,000 members. oladapoolayiwola@cipmnigeria.org

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Let the Conversations Begin!!!!!!

The Looming tsunami of the new world of work

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