Oftentimes, I wonder if we really understand the growth or wreck disruptive technologies can cause any organisation or nation.
Watching the news during the Christmas period and seeing the Group Managing Director of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation moving from one fuel station to the other, monitoring the distribution or in some cases, ensuring the arrest of those who were allegedly diverting the product, gave me some concerns that I captured in a social media post thus:
In this era of Tech – Artificial Intelligence, Internet of Things, Machine Learning, the GMD of NNPC who should be the head of a strategic national institution is busy policing fuel stations for selling above pump price and we say we are serious? Nigeria, wake up because oil is going, going…. Elon Musk and co. are committed to bringing this to pass. #wakeupcall #getserious
Do not get me wrong. The GMD of NNPC must have had a good motive but from my viewpoint, deploying the right technologies could simply deal with the issue of product diversion once and for all.
An Internet of Things setup, for instance, could have helped him and his team to remotely monitor the movement of fuel trucks, quantity of product lifted and supplied at any particular point in time. This is the type of “next steps” I will expect from a man who heads a strategic national institution like that.
Taking things forward and without coming across as a prophet of doom, any oil, driven economy today that is not diversifying hurriedly is playing with fire and I hope Nigeria is really preparing for a future with oil.
Norway, United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia are fossil fuel-rich, forward-looking economies that have decided to look beyond oil and started investing massively in their people and technology. This is a clarion call for Nigeria to follow suit.
These disruptive technologies that I will be sharing today have the capacity to make or mar our economy, depending on the choices we make, starting today. Disruption is going to be a continuous and ever-evolving phenomenon, as far as technology is concerned. Almost all industries will feel the heat, going forward.
Here are some of the technologies that are going to disrupt and reshape some of the sectors.
Artificial Intelligence
Artificial Intelligence remains one of the disruptive technologies that are having significant impact on almost every industry. About 59 per cent of organisations are still in their initial stages of gathering information to build their AI strategies. The possibilities associated with it are — Finish Reading on the Punch
