There is no denying the issue of unemployment in Zimbabwe. In fact, let’s not only limit it to Zimbabwe as this issue of unemployment has affected most countries in a world where manual labor is increasingly being replaced by machines. What can really solve the problems? Industrialisation! I believe that the moment industry improves in Zimbabwe, jobs will increase but the increase will be marginal due to techno disruptions. I believe technology is going to disrupt the labour market more than ever before. I will talk about the how but the most important thing will be for one to know which side they are standing. As the victim or the conduit for the new techno-movement.

Now a brief background of how the world has changed. Because of technology, the world has become a very small place and the world of employment even smaller. Educated and privileged individuals all over the globe are now competing for jobs that were once only available to those within a reasonable travel distance to their origin…

…meaning that a capable Zimbabwean company which is ten kilometers from the tendering company may be overlooked in favor of a low cost supplier overseas in China or India. I have seen companies outsourcing printing to China India and sometimes to neighboring South Africa and ship back the final product to Zimbabwe (of course at a cheaper aggregate cost). I have seen local firms opting to outsourcing from companies thousands of kilometers across the globe for various operational activities. I have seen individuals applying for jobs in South Africa, fly to and back for the interview in only two days.

Making the situation worse is the technological take-over of many traditional human posts such as bank tellers by automated teller machines. Whilst some occupations are beneficiaries of the march of technology, such as software engineers and app designers for smartphones and tablet computers, technology is eliminating far more jobs than it is creating. It is highly probable that as Zimbabwe rise from this economic downturn, industry will rise but not at the same rate with job creation. The obsolete equipment in many manufacturing concerns will be replaced by state of the art robotics and software technology which will obliterate thousands of jobs that ever existed. Most of the jobs that were frozen by the economic conditions will never return.

No longer will jobs be secured by a college degree. The demands of technology do not necessarily require one to have a college degree especially the middle class jobs for they are the ones mostly at risk. One can enroll for a free online course in programing and complete it a quarter of the time one could have taken to complete it at a formal institution. Firms will outsource data capturing jobs which they previously hired a degreed person to smart devices owners at a lower cost. Modern Economics is incredibly complicated and incorporating the politics of Zimbabwe, the debate may get out of hand. The truth is most middle class jobs that have been lost in the past ten years have been obliterated by the technological changes. This wasn’t visible because it happened in a very subtle way as not much activity was happening in the industry. People first lost jobs to the economy and whilst they were still unemployed, technology came and wiped their jobs away. They ended up losing their jobs twice – temporarily to the economy and permanently to technology. We are now being forced to come to terms with very real world problems of inequality.

In modern Zimbabwe, hard work doesn’t necessarily get you anywhere. Smart work and connections do. And by this I don’t mean that chasing after a college degree is the answer. There are countless college graduates hunting desperately for any job they can get their hands on as we speak. What I mean by smart work is being aware of the changes taking place in Zimbabwe and working around them in an intelligent manner to make an adequate income for you and your family. I have seen smart kids who spent hours to the end watching television series and follow after all World sports leagues. If you ask them why they do that they give you the proverbial answer, ‘My parents couldn’t afford to send me to college.’ In the present Zimbabwe, you need to be educated to succeed and that doesn’t mean expensive formal University education. Social proofing now has more weight that a first class degree from the top university in Zimbabwe. I would rather hirer a school dropout mobile app programmer whose apps have more than ten thousand downloads on Google play than a top of the class Computer science graduate. I hope Iam not losing you.

My point is technology has become part of our daily lives that my grandmother even sends me pictures of her goats and cattle on WhatsApp. She doesn’t have to ask anyone to help her write a letter. More so, I no longer need to give any bus driver a tip to send her money thanks to mobile money platforms. Look at the number of people who have been eliminated from the equation whether knowingly or unknowingly. Try to make a comparison between traditional banking and mobile money platforms. To be a bank teller, one has have a formal educational qualification, perhaps a degree yet to be a mobile money agent no such qualifications are necessary. One has to just understand the system.

Because this is not an interesting article as it touches on sensitive issues…I will sum it up hear. I recommend that people grasp technology and run with it. I challenge all unemployed graduates to take on programming from an online channel like coursera, YouTube, Udemy and Teamtreehouse just to mention a few. I challenge you to learn courses like android development or web designing. You will immediately create a job for yourself the moment you do that. You can create an app for a company in Kenya whilst you are in Zimbabwe and your success will no longer be limited by the country boundaries. Imagine an O Level App developed by a Mathematics teacher which allows students to learn difficult concepts on the go. Imagine if the teacher charges $5 dollars per student per term. He can even volunteer to teach at any school for free and make money from the app.

Technology has left us with countless options with too much width. Many view technology as the main driver of human progress but we have seen how it has also taken away jobs which we invested time and money in. In his book Rise of the Robots, Martin Ford describes the 25 years after World War II as the “golden age” of the American economy. Productivity, employment, and wages were increasing in synchrony. As with many trends, economists assumed they would continue indefinitely. It was the glorious free market at work. Then it all came crashing down at the turn of the century. This time, it really is different. The shift happened when machines transformed from mere tools to actual workers and since then they have been doing a great job.

There is no denying the issue of unemployment in Zimbabwe. In fact, let’s not only limit it to Zimbabwe as this issue of unemployment has affected most countries in a world where manual labor is increasingly being replaced by machines. What can really solve the problems? Industrialisation! I believe that the moment industry improves in Zimbabwe, jobs will increase but the increase will be marginal due to techno disruptions. I believe technology is going to disrupt the labour market more than ever before. I will talk about the how but the most important thing will be for one to know which side they are standing. As the victim or the conduit for the new techno-movement.

Now a brief background of how the world has changed. Because of technology, the world has become a very small place and the world of employment even smaller. Educated and privileged individuals all over the globe are now competing for jobs that were once only available to those within a reasonable travel distance to their origin…

…meaning that a capable Zimbabwean company which is ten kilometers from the tendering company may be overlooked in favor of a low cost supplier overseas in China or India. I have seen companies outsourcing printing to China India and sometimes to neighboring South Africa and ship back the final product to Zimbabwe (of course at a cheaper aggregate cost). I have seen local firms opting to outsourcing from companies thousands of kilometers across the globe for various operational activities. I have seen individuals applying for jobs in South Africa, fly to and back for the interview in only two days.

Making the situation worse is the technological take-over of many traditional human posts such as bank tellers by automated teller machines. Whilst some occupations are beneficiaries of the march of technology, such as software engineers and app designers for smartphones and tablet computers, technology is eliminating far more jobs than it is creating. It is highly probable that as Zimbabwe rise from this economic downturn, industry will rise but not at the same rate with job creation. The obsolete equipment in many manufacturing concerns will be replaced by state of the art robotics and software technology which will obliterate thousands of jobs that ever existed. Most of the jobs that were frozen by the economic conditions will never return.

No longer will jobs be secured by a college degree. The demands of technology do not necessarily require one to have a college degree especially the middle class jobs for they are the ones mostly at risk. One can enroll for a free online course in programing and complete it a quarter of the time one could have taken to complete it at a formal institution. Firms will outsource data capturing jobs which they previously hired a degreed person to smart devices owners at a lower cost. Modern Economics is incredibly complicated and incorporating the politics of Zimbabwe, the debate may get out of hand. The truth is most middle class jobs that have been lost in the past ten years have been obliterated by the technological changes. This wasn’t visible because it happened in a very subtle way as not much activity was happening in the industry. People first lost jobs to the economy and whilst they were still unemployed, technology came and wiped their jobs away. They ended up losing their jobs twice – temporarily to the economy and permanently to technology. We are now being forced to come to terms with very real world problems of inequality.

In modern Zimbabwe, hard work doesn’t necessarily get you anywhere. Smart work and connections do. And by this I don’t mean that chasing after a college degree is the answer. There are countless college graduates hunting desperately for any job they can get their hands on as we speak. What I mean by smart work is being aware of the changes taking place in Zimbabwe and working around them in an intelligent manner to make an adequate income for you and your family. I have seen smart kids who spent hours to the end watching television series and follow after all World sports leagues. If you ask them why they do that they give you the proverbial answer, ‘My parents couldn’t afford to send me to college.’ In the present Zimbabwe, you need to be educated to succeed and that doesn’t mean expensive formal University education. Social proofing now has more weight that a first class degree from the top university in Zimbabwe. I would rather hirer a school dropout mobile app programmer whose apps have more than ten thousand downloads on Google play than a top of the class Computer science graduate. I hope Iam not losing you.

My point is technology has become part of our daily lives that my grandmother even sends me pictures of her goats and cattle on WhatsApp. She doesn’t have to ask anyone to help her write a letter. More so, I no longer need to give any bus driver a tip to send her money thanks to mobile money platforms. Look at the number of people who have been eliminated from the equation whether knowingly or unknowingly. Try to make a comparison between traditional banking and mobile money platforms. To be a bank teller, one has have a formal educational qualification, perhaps a degree yet to be a mobile money agent no such qualifications are necessary. One has to just understand the system.

Because this is not an interesting article as it touches on sensitive issues…I will sum it up hear. I recommend that people grasp technology and run with it. I challenge all unemployed graduates to take on programming from an online channel like coursera, YouTube, Udemy and Teamtreehouse just to mention a few. I challenge you to learn courses like android development or web designing. You will immediately create a job for yourself the moment you do that. You can create an app for a company in Kenya whilst you are in Zimbabwe and your success will no longer be limited by the country boundaries. Imagine an O Level App developed by a Mathematics teacher which allows students to learn difficult concepts on the go. Imagine if the teacher charges $5 dollars per student per term. He can even volunteer to teach at any school for free and make money from the app.

Technology has left us with countless options with too much width. Many view technology as the main driver of human progress but we have seen how it has also taken away jobs which we invested time and money in. In his book Rise of the Robots, Martin Ford describes the 25 years after World War II as the “golden age” of the American economy. Productivity, employment, and wages were increasing in synchrony. As with many trends, economists assumed they would continue indefinitely. It was the glorious free market at work. Then it all came crashing down at the turn of the century. This time, it really is different. The shift happened when machines transformed from mere tools to actual workers and since then they have been doing a great job. At the end of it all, the issue of unemployment in Zimbabwe is not an old woman’s fable but a real scare for anyone who hasn’t been too keen in embracing technology.

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