Browsing: 4IR technology

The new administration under President William Ruto, is striving to set the economy in the right tempo having inherited a heavily indebted government.

Through debt restructuring among other key economic reforms, Ruto’s administration is committed to quell inflation and create a thriving economy for all Kenyans.

The recently published East Africa Economic Outlook report, indicates that Kenya is among the countries in the region that could face rising risks of debt distress, thus widening fiscal and current account deficits, largely due to structural weaknesses exacerbated by the pandemic and the Russia-Ukraine war.

According to the 2022 African Economic Outlook (AEO), by AfDB inflation is projected to edge up to 7 per cent, close to the upper end of the target band at 7.5 per cent, caused by greater energy and food inflation. The Kenya National Bureau of Statistics (KNBS), reported that the country’s inflation rate as of October 2022 stood at 9.6%, creeping up 0.4% from September’s all time high of 9.2%.

Albeit landlocked, Rwanda’s economy has been growing exponentially but was impeded in 2020, by the Covid-19 pandemic and further exacerbated by the Russian-Ukraine war, which has been ongoing since February 2022.

Currently, the country’s debt-to-GDP ratio is at 74.8 per cent.

Rwanda is among the countries in the Great Lakes region of East–Central Africa, sandwiched between Uganda, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Burundi, and Tanzania. The rate of economic progress registered hitherto, has led the international community to call Rwanda an ‘emerging Asian tiger.’

This economic rehabilitation and prosperity, has been especially spearheaded by the country’s long-standing president Paul Kagame, who in 2018 was named ‘African of the Year’ by Forbes Magazine. He has on several occasions since his ascension to power in 2000, expressed his desire to transform Rwanda into the ‘Singapore of Africa,’ a stable gateway of trade for the entire continent.

Within the service industry, 4IR creates a potential for new goods and processes enabled by technology. As demand develops in lockstep with income, possibilities exist as African countries resume economic growth. Because technology complements rather than replaces labour in many service industries where formal companies and employment dominate, the adoption of technology should develop new formal wage positions for young and educated job seekers.

Adoption of 4IR technology may also result in improvements in job quality (e.g., earnings, income security) in the large non-farm informal sector (63 per cent of total employment)—for example, by the use of online stores and channels to find customers and satisfy their needs safely and efficiently.