Ayomikun Idowu
Developing countries may face less AI-driven automation than richer economies, but that does not mean they are protected. The bigger risk is that AI transforms global competition faster than workers and firms can turn the technology into productivity gains.
The promise of technological leapfrogging has shaped development thinking for years: countries that missed earlier stages of industrial development could use digital technologies to jump ahead. There is truth in that promise, but also a dangerous simplification. Technology can help developing economies bypass particular constraints, but it cannot substitute for functioning institutions, infrastructure, skills and productive capability.
Nigerians are often described as entrepreneurial, resilient and hardworking. Yet enormous individual effort continues to produce far less national prosperity than it should. The deeper challenge is not a shortage of productive people, but the failure to build institutions, infrastructure and systems that allow their productivity to translate into sustained economic transformation.
Nigeria’s labour market is changing faster than the categories used to describe it. Platform work, remote jobs and digital freelancing are creating new forms of employment and income that often disappear inside broad labels such as self-employment and informality.
Across much of Africa and the developing world, informal work is often treated as a temporary defect that economic development will eventually eliminate. But informality is not simply what remains when formal institutions are absent. It is often how people build businesses, find work and organise economic life when existing institutions do not adequately serve them. The challenge is not simply to make informal activity formal. It is to build institutions that make becoming formal worthwhile.
Many Nigerian sources of livelihood become digital long before they become formal. In my research with digital workers and small businesses in Nigeria, I met people who ran much of their economic lives from their phones. They advertised on Instagram. They negotiated with customers on WhatsApp. They received bank transfers, arranged deliveries through apps and […]
Technology research in Africa has often asked whether theories developed elsewhere can explain African realities. Perhaps the more interesting question is whether African ideas can help us understand technology differently. Concepts such as Ubuntu and Omoluwabi offer more than cultural context. They provide ways of thinking about knowledge, relationships, responsibility, trust and human agency that could enrich how we understand digital transformation, artificial intelligence and the future of work, in Africa and beyond.
The debate about Africa’s digital future often begins with technology: broadband, artificial intelligence, fintech, digital identity, cloud infrastructure and startups. But technology is rarely the real constraint. The deeper challenge is whether institutions, firms and governments have the capability to turn technological adoption into sustained improvements in productivity, public services and economic opportunity.
Resilience is often celebrated as one of the great strengths of people and businesses in developing economies. But there is a point at which resilience stops being an advantage and becomes a tax. When firms must constantly improvise around weak infrastructure, unreliable institutions and unpredictable systems, enormous amounts of human and financial capital are spent simply keeping things functioning. Development should reduce the amount of resilience people need for ordinary life.
A DIGIT Research article examining whether digital resale clothing platforms can provide stable incomes for young people in the UK.