• Friday, March 29, 2024
businessday logo

BusinessDay

How we work is changing

lagos hustle

The driver I hailed one Wednesday morning (his second ride since he hit the road at 5:30am), works in a state polytechnic. This is not a side hustle; he needs the money for “family upkeep”. A 78-month squabble over salary arrears, after the state government approved promotions across board, is being contested in court. The union is on strike. “Every kobo that is due to us is being used to fight us,” he laments.

In the meantime he’s driving to make ends meet. The car is one of a fleet of 10 owned by a lady who rents them out for N30,000 weekly. If he’s lucky he earns N5,000. “My legs ache,” he says. “But I like to walk. Every Saturday morning I take a walk before I set out to work.”

Humans are the only beings who make a living from their basic needs: food, shelter, clothing, mobility, and interrelationship. The work of our hands has invented and performed life-saving medicines and procedures, cooked mouth-watering, finger-licking-bottom-pot delicacies; built infrastructure, designed clothing, engineered cars, written software and discovered new ways to teach and communicate.

The prelapsarian command to work, to till the earth and subdue it, is as new as when it was first uttered. Our basic needs haven’t changed but how we meet them, how we work, is changing.
Technologically-driven changes like automation are delivering economic efficiency, disrupting industries and causing social disharmony. Smartphones are said to be the new means of production. “Pressing phone”, that very Nigerian expression, aptly captures this reality. With a few presses on my phone I check the time and distance to my destination, hail a taxi, make a bank transfer, and give instant feedback. #ThisIsMyHustle trended last month when young Nigerian entrepreneurs posted pictures and talked about their work on social media. We may not work the way we used to but our hands keep working.

“God gave us 10 styluses. Let’s not invent another”, says Steve Jobs in his official biography about the touchscreen design of the first iPhone. Jobs’ fascination for calligraphy, the art of decorative handwriting, influenced the design of the first Mac. The iPhone and Mac have changed how we work.

Coders love Macs. Whether they’re engrossed writing or patiently debugging lines of code, they prefer to use their hands, not a mouse. With their hands coders build the tools of social networks; they are the architects of the operating system of the world we live in today.

Coders dislike inefficiency; they don’t hesitate to automate any process to optimise it. They want to optimise and scale how we communicate, produce goods and services, make payments, buy and sell online. Thus the rise of automation, robotics, and artificial intelligence (AI,) that enhances efficiency for millions of people.

When personal computers were invented there were fears typists would lose their jobs. Likewise in the 21st century, individuals, countries and companies worry about how automation will change how we work. Headlines, reports and conferences about the future of work and how machines will replace human beings are as regular as a Lagos go-slow.

Add to the advent of these new technologies the challenges of our times – illiteracy, unemployment and insecurity – and it’s easy to succumb to the inevitability of a dystopian future where machines run the world like in The Matrix.

Last week, at UNIV, an international annual forum held in Rome, university students from all over the world gathered to discuss the theme “Getting Down to Business: The Transformative Power of Work”. A similar event took place at the Pan-Atlantic University in Lagos with students from over eight Nigerian universities. “UNIV conferences broaden horizons, exchange ideas and reflect constructively on the most important issues for today’s youth and society,” says Ike Onuoma, a lawyer and convener of UNIV Nigeria.

It makes sense to get Nigeria’s youth involved in the discussion about the human capital required in the fast-changing world we live. It’s their future after all. And besides, as university students such events are what should occupy their time rather than drugs and parties.

On the contrary, in Europe, China and the US, , companies, entrepreneurs, NGOs, academics and researchers at think tanks and universities are thinking about the momentous transformation we are facing. What are the jobs of the future? What skills are needed? How far and fast can these skills be taught? How can the opportunities that these new means of production create be put in more hands so that one is left behind?

Imagining the world will end up like The Matrix is naive; our imagination, our ingenuity, our hands are the sources of the infinite possibilities of human work. But we must get down to business. We need to think, beyond the scope of AI, beyond the limits of a robotic arm, about things our hands can do. Fortune, they say, favours the prepared.

Like the driver, and the lady with her fleet of cars, resilience, problem-solving, diligence, creativity and service to others are some of the personal capacities the 21st century professional requires to convert needs into opportunities and vulnerabilities into strengths.

 

Temitayo Fagbule

Fagbule is Chairman, Editorial Board