African governments are rapidly making digital plans to help their economies grow faster. The Ethiopian governement also designed the Digital Ethiopia 2025 national strategy to transform the country’s national economy through four major sectors: agriculture, tourism, manufacturing, and IT-enabled services.
One of the impacts of digital transformation is its effect on the labor market. In Ethiopia, Digital job matching platforms are changing the way individuals look for work and industries identify and recruit talent. Over the last few years, job matching platforms have became a major actors in the digital economy by providing digital marketplaces for job matching and labor market information. The Gig and freelance platforms are benefiting workers, businesses, and consumers by making work more adaptable to the needs of the moment for flexible work life. Digital content creation tools like YouTube and Tiktok are helping creators earn more income than the average full-time jobs.
Even though digitalization offers a lot of potential, there are still problems that stick around. The challenge for Ethiopia is limited access to technology, infrastructure problems and providing its youth with the knowledge and skills needed for the emerging world of work. The rise of digitalization may also become a major threat to certain low-skilled jobs, potentially leading to unemployment and underemployment among those who lack digital skills. There will be some kind of professions that are likely to be affected by decreasing demand. Some tasks that organizations pay workers to perform have the potential to be automated in the near future.
The road to achieving success through the digitization of the economy requires sustainable collaboration and concrete efforts from different sectors. Collaborations between the government, development organizations, private sector, and educational institutions that promote digital literacy, infrastructure development, and entrepreneurship are vital for the success of inclusive digital transformation.
The Ethiopian government should continue supporting job tech development and help people to reskill and adapt to technological changes. NGOs should focus on sustainable technological solutions that extend beyond their project timelines. Technology providers should collaborate and work together to create a favorable ecosystem for digital transformation. Policymakers must shape technological changes and promote ethical use of technology for broader groups of people and better meet the needs and interests of societies. And most importantly, people should have to embrace it and get ready for the technological changes that we will see over the next decade.
