{"id":259423,"date":"2018-07-22T15:53:31","date_gmt":"2018-07-22T13:53:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=259423"},"modified":"2018-07-20T14:53:50","modified_gmt":"2018-07-20T12:53:50","slug":"south-africa-is-severely-underprepared-for-automation-which-could-cost-millions-of-jobs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/technology\/259423\/south-africa-is-severely-underprepared-for-automation-which-could-cost-millions-of-jobs\/","title":{"rendered":"South Africa is severely underprepared for automation – which could cost millions of jobs"},"content":{"rendered":"

While much has been written about the incoming impact of AI and automation, limited work has been done on the potential impact of automation on economies in the developing world.<\/p>\n

This prompted Daniel le Roux, a senior lecturer at the department of Information Science at Stellenbosch University, to investigate the situation in South Africa.<\/p>\n

In an article for The Conversation<\/a><\/strong>, le Roux explained that he used data collected by Statistics South Africa for its Quarterly Labour Force Survey and an automation index produced by academics from the University of Oxford.<\/p>\n

“From this, I was able to estimate that occupations performed by almost 35% of South African workers\u00a0 – roughly 4.5 million people – are potentially automatable in the near future,” he said.<\/p>\n

“But the country appears ill-prepared for this reality. There is little discussion at policy level. Hardly any research has been done to investigate possible future scenarios.<\/p>\n

“There\u2019s also a great deal of uncertainty about how the uptake of automation technology may further drive inequality and preserve the asymmetry in the country\u2019s economy,” he said.<\/p>\n

Jobs<\/strong><\/p>\n

According to le Roux’s data,\u00a0roughly 14 million South Africans work in around 380 different occupation types.<\/p>\n

64 of these occupations, employing an estimated 3.6 million workers, have a 90% or greater probability of being automatable in the near future, he said.<\/p>\n

These occupations include, for example, cashiers, tellers, secretaries and telephone salesmen.<\/p>\n

He found that the occupations of another 2.6 million workers, of whom 900,000 are employed as farmhands and labourers, have an 80%-89% probability of being automatable.<\/p>\n

However he cautioned that workers of all skills levels are at risk, and that accountants, auditors and dental technicians aare extremely susceptible to automation.<\/p>\n

“But trends suggest that people in low and medium-skilled occupations are generally more at risk than those who require extensive education,” he said.<\/p>\n

“So it is not surprising that the country\u2019s previously disadvantaged population groups are more exposed to job losses due to automation than their white counterparts.<\/p>\n

“Half of all black South Africa workers are in occupations with an 80% or greater probability of automation; so are 47% of coloured workers. For white employees, however, the proportion is only around 30%.”<\/p>\n

No preparations made<\/strong><\/p>\n

Despite the risk involved, le Roux said it was unlikely that South African business-owners would not take advantage of this new technology as it becomes available to them.<\/p>\n

But there seems to be very limited high-level discourse about how South Africa plans to navigate this wave of technological advancement, he said.<\/p>\n

“For South Africa, with its large number of low-skilled workers, a dramatically improved education system is an obvious and critical concern,” he said.<\/p>\n

“Despite high unemployment, there remains a scarcity of skills in a wide variety of areas. This suggests a mismatch between supply and demand in the labour market.<\/p>\n

“It is also important to understand how technologies will displace work in future. This understanding can help to better inform young South Africans\u2019 career choices.”<\/p>\n

\n

Read:\u00a0Lifehacks for when a robot wants your job<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Daniel le Roux, a senior lecturer at the department of Information Science at Stellenbosch University, recently investigated the situation in South Africa.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":259443,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9878],"tags":[26],"class_list":["post-259423","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-technology","tag-headline"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/259423","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=259423"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/259423\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":259473,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/259423\/revisions\/259473"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/259443"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=259423"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=259423"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=259423"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}