Digital Jobs
(continue of the blog "Enterpreneur Story")
The term “Digital jobs” refers to the application of Information Technologies (IT) to an activity or process. Digital jobs are considered the fastest growing type of work in the world today. A digital job can be distinguished from other jobs such as agriculture or manufacturing because the product created by the worker is “Knowledge” and “Information” as opposed to physical things. Digital works are suitable for developing countries to promote more jobs creation because they do not require large capital or big assets. It can be done in any place, including at home with computers that connect to the Internet.
Last week, one of my students share with me this story: “In my country (Kenya) many women work at home as seamstress when their husband work in agriculture area. All they need is a sewing machine and they are ready for business. Each morning, a distributor comes and provides them with cloths and materials; they would sew them into clothes. In the evening the distributor comes back to picks these clothes and pays them based on the number of clothes that they made. This business has existed for a long time in rural agriculture areas and small villages but now it begins to change. Instead of sewing, many women work on digital jobs as the pay is much better. They work with personal computer instead of sewing machine and test software for IT Company. Some do so well and get promoted to programmer but they still work at home connect to the company via the Internet. With sewing works, they have to depend on the distributor who provides them with materials and pays them for their labor. The distributor often get 20% mark up or more on the product but with digital jobs, there is no need for distributor so they get paid fully for their works. With Digital jobs and the ability to transport products all over the world open up many opportunities for people but no place is more important than to people who live in remote agriculture villages, like in Africa.”
“Of course they must be trained, and Kenyan government provides special trainings to these people to do testing and coding. The training last about three to six months, even it is very basic such as black box testing, simple Java programming but it has transformed many rural villages and helps solve poverty problems. For example, on the average a seamstress makes $2 dollars a day but a tester makes $8 dollars or more. With digital jobs, many families are doing much better. By working at home, the women can take care of their children and household works when their husbands are farming the land. It does not disrupt family lives as they do not have to move to cities to find jobs like in other countries. Farmers do not like to leave their land so by bringing digital works to them via the Internet; we preserve our way of life in Africa, and avoid many urban problems as they often happened in China or India.”
“Today, information technology (IT) is applied in every area, from finance, business healthcare, agriculture, education, to manufacturing, retail, government works etc. The more they use IT, the more software is needed and more testing will also be needed. In the past twenty years, most coding and testing were outsourced to India and China but recently their prices are going up so customers are looking for another alternative and Africa is becoming the next destination of software outsourcing. Last year was the beginning of a major shift in outsourcing direction where many large companies moved their IT works to African countries instead of India or China. The top destination is Ghana, a small country with significant progress and in just few years, Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) is growing so fast and reached over 23% of the country's GDP with 20,000 new jobs opening each year. Kenya is known as the country with more mobile phones than anywhere in Africa and the IT industry; especially with mobile apps development is growing quickly with over 80,000 workers. Currently Kenya is the center for trade and finance with the largest IT infrastructure in Africa. We have the best broadband connection and highest mobile penetration in Africa. Many digital jobs are in mobile and tablets application development where workers use smartphones and tablets instead of personal computer.”
He concluded: “It all begins with a small investment in computer trainings for people who live in the rural villages but it changes everything. It help solves the poverty problems by bringing better paid jobs to them. It also helps educate many people in agriculture areas by giving them the information that they need to do their works. Farmers receive all information about crops, weather, market prices, methods, techniques and forecasting so they can make the right decisions for their lives. (See my previous blog about an Enterpreneur Story) Today small countries in Africa can compete with India and China in software coding, testing, mobile apps development because they have many skilled workers who can work at much lower costs.”
Sources
- Blogs of Prof. John Vu, Carnegie Mellon University
