Digitalization is a wonderful thing. It shifted our reality from what we know or familiar with to a new reality.
The world and majorly the advanced countries moved very fast to cope with the scope of digitalization.
They prepare themselves by being flexible and being open to new ideas, inventions and realities. This has helped them to adjust to new development almost immediately.
Their readiness can't be compared to what is obtainable within the African continent.
As a people, we still operate under the status quo. We find it very hard to move with trends. Whether that was a good decision in the first place i don't know.
In Europe, there are records for almost everything. Things recorded are computerized and made possible for them to access anywhere and anytime provided they have the details and authorization to access them.
If a new baby is born, there is a record for it. If anyone enters their countries, it is both captured on CCTV and documented in their computerised database.
If anyone leaves or go out from their countries, they have same CCTV to capture it and document it properly.
Virtually, almost nothing goes out or comes in without their knowledge. That is the situation of a flexible and digital ready economy.
In Africa, it is the opposite. If a new baby is born, it is the responsibility of the parent to manually register the baby. Such registration is done with paper and stored somewhere. If anyone leaves the country, such record would only be provided if the person is duly checked before leaving but in most cases anyone can leave without government being aware of it.
We have porous borders which are also interlinked with other African countries.
We don't have record of every citizen. Nigeria, for instance does not have such record. You can only be recorded if you get appointment by the government, hold important political post or caught on illegal deal. If not, you are just unknown.
This is a good example of poor record and lack of being flexible and open to digital life.
It became clear that we are primitive because almost 80% of our workforce depend solely on physical documentation and manpower.
Many companies could not survive the lockdown because they failed to anticipate a time like this or see the need to be digital and make the work easy for their employees.
So during the lockdown, many companies just went dead. They could not function because they need to be in their offices to work.
Why do we rely so much on waking up by 5:30am to resume office by 8am and close by 5/6pm daily? It didn't occur to Nigerians and employers that these work can be digitalised to ease the stress on people and reduce traffic as we see it on Lagos roads weekly.
They feel yes this is the status quo and things must be done this way until pandemic struck and their world crumbles before them.
Perhaps, this will be an eye opener for us to see the need to digitalize every aspect of our lives. It makes sense and makes life easy when you do what you normally do in the office at home or do what you often do around 8-10am in the office at home and start going to work by 11am or 12pm.
If employers in the developed world had not embraced digitalization, how would they inspect many things with drones or check cargoes and the rest with drones and technology?
We need to break free from this primitive way of thinking that things need to be written in papers only.
Many things, if not all, can indeed be documented and computerised for authorize usage and be accessed anytime and anywhere.
Let's break free from this primitive shackle of thinking. It's not doing us any good.
Thanks for your time