Credit: Telecom website
Dr. Shanapinda highlighted how transformation of digital assets, and how it can be made to be valuable and useful for the ordinary people of Namibia. He briefly gave an overview regarding how to use digital technologies in all business and organizational activities, operations, processes, and models to provide full leverage that changes the current environment, and further create opportunities to mix digital technologies and their impact across society in a strategic way, with the present and future in mind.
Challenges
During his discussion, Dr Shanapinda defined the term digitization, referring to the technical conversion of digital assets and turning them into a business process which can create an impact on our economy. He said that according to the National Statistics Agency (2018), numbers showed that our country has about 401,970 employees; and about 46,752 people employed in the sectors of culture, fishing and forestry. Major earners are in the farming sectors at about 46.1% despite only 1% of Namibia’s land being arable. Moreover, our country has 876,908 people who are between the ages of 15 and 34, and 265,770 people in the country are unemployed. This indicated that the ratio of unemployment to employment is quite high primarily due to the lack of information sharing and accessibility of information.
Purpose of Digital Transformation
Dr. Shanapinda elaborated that digital transformation is all about strategic planning, and interconnection of suitable systems and services to deliver a valuable service. These changes in technologies are not only about improvement in access to information or increase the speed of the download, but these changes create an impact on the economic growth and development of society. Through these kinds of developments and changes in technological assets, the country could improve sustainability and create an opportunity for organizations and business sectors to improve and enhance communication channels. The effects created by digitalisation are often yielded in the form of digital transformation, which helps businesses and organizations achieve their goals such as business saving, increased productivity, and increased revenue.
(Credit: MICT,2019)
Advantages
Dr. Shanapinda gave a detailed overview of a wide range of advantages of digital transformation, and how it could help citizens, business entities, organizations, and government within the country, and could advance the competitive nature of Namibia. Dr. Shanapinda mentioned that the major benefit of digitization is the automation of systems, that would help promote transparency, and reduced human interaction that could ultimately curb the element of corruption.
Digital transformation has other potentials: to enable the betterment and efficiently support decision-making; improve the working efficiency of employees which may lead to increased productivity; an environment developed for more innovation and development throughout the country; and improve communication paths that will be made more reliable and easier; the vast access to information will be made more trustworthy and accurate; the improved workings of the banking systems; reduced numbers in the unemployment statistics; transformed consumer behaviour; more investments built in the country; and lastly, there will be guidelines provided to the business entity to spread business globally.
Impact on Employment
The agenda of Dr Shanapinda in his presentation was to highlight how digital transformation can be made more fruitful for the ordinary people of Namibia. And of the prominent issues we have in Namibia is the staggering number of youth unemployment and climate change. He said the change in nature in terms of climate made it more difficult for us to find an equilibrium path; therefore, it is needed to establish an environment to address all issues of youth employment. He pointed out that mixed skills job losses are expected due to digitization; therefore, it is needed to invest funds that focus on skills development and job creation.
Competitive Advantage for Namibia
Dr. Stanley said that Mining is one of the highest contributors to our country’s GDP. The sector uses quite a large amount of water, which is already in limited amounts in the country. ICT solutions could create opportunities to try and solve all-like drought challenges. He noted that the current groundwater management systems of the country are not working efficiently, primarily because the database of the system is not cloud-based technology or across all aquifers, and planning is not based on strategies that reduce the wastage of water.
He said effective wireless management networks that analyze data on a real-time basis, for example, hyper-connectivity technologies, could make it more affordable to reduce the wastage of water and improve the water management system in terms of reporting usage, how much is left; and overall usage patterns can be used to manage water reserves.
As the guest speaker and brand ambassador, Dr Shanapinda gave his last notes as a recommendation, highlighting that Namibia is a need and necessity is the mother of invention, therefore as citizens and stakeholders we need to simulate real-world business practice as part of studies, entrepreneurial simulated training; promote industry-focused practices instead of academic steering that will be economically beneficial; everything must be encrypted to prevent attacks; denial services types of scenarios that interfere with the interference user-face must be planned as all types of data are at risk; secure the underground water we rely on; massive job losses: expect the unexpected; and discussions must continue: laws; funding; enrolling and graduating; indicators for university research.
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