- Microsoft has released a whitepaper looking at the Future of Work in Africa.
- It focuses on the transformative role that the company believes generative AI (genAI) will have for the continent.
- The company also believes that Africa’s young population is primed to take advantage of the potential that genAI holds.
Given the rapid pace in which it has evolved in recent years, there is still some hesitation when it comes to generative AI and what it means for those currently employed or about to look for a job. Microsoft is of a different opinion, however, having this week released its whitepaper on the Future of Work in Africa.
The company specifically looked at large language models (LLMs) and generative AI (genAI) within the African context, coupling it with the fact that our continent has the youngest population of any other on the planet.
While that might seem daunting to some, Microsoft believes it is an opportunity for Africa to influence the future of work.
“Nearly one billion people in Africa are currently under the age of 35 with the continent projected to be home to almost half of the world’s youth population by the turn of the century, in effect making up half of the potential global workforce of the future. Currently, up to 12 million young Africans enter the labour market annually, but according to a report from the International Labour Organisation, more than 20% are neither in employment, education nor training,” the company shared in a release with Hypertext.
“We see a significant role for generative AI to not only transform work environments, but also foster opportunities for the youth to create jobs, innovate and help drive economic growth and stability across the continent,” noted Ravi Bhat, chief technology and solutions officer at Microsoft Africa.
The whitepaper detailed the fact that many expect genAI to drastically change knowledge-based worker jobs, especially in terms of the type of work done, the skills required, and the outputs that are produced.
Citing research from McKinsey, Microsoft said that GenAI could enable labour productivity growth of up to 0.6 percent annually through 2040, which is dependent on the rate of technology adoption and the redeployment of worker time into other activities.
Here the company believes that making access to genAI tools and platforms within Africa for the future of work is key.
“Generative AI has significant potential to advance human capabilities. As more people across Africa get access to GenAI tools through their internet-enabled devices and more affordable data, the barriers to access are being reduced and opportunities for skilling can increase,” posited Jacki O’Neill, director at Microsoft Research Africa.
“But it is not only information workers that stand to benefit from GenAI,” she continued.
On this front, Microsoft noted that equipping the youth with the skills needed for an AI-disrupted labour market will prove crucial, especially if the positive impact the technology is predicted to have in sectors like agriculture, healthcare, and services is to be realised on the African continent.
“It is therefore important to build skills across the spectrum, from how to deploy and use GenAI tools effectively at work, to how to build appropriate and innovative applications and technologies on top of these models, to the post-graduate skills of research and innovation in machine learning, natural language processing, human-computer interaction, cybersecurity, and systems to name a few,” the company explained.
“Investing in this range of skills gives Africans the best opportunity to create dignified, appropriate jobs, to adapt AI sensitively to indigenous knowledge, to create new value chains, and better AI systems which might reflect for example human-centred and community values. Such systems would add value globally and could counter typical tech-centric models of automation and deskilling,” added O’Neill.
While the whitepaper paints a rather optimistic picture for the future of work, for any of what is mentioned in it to be realised, several stakeholders will need to come to the party. This may be the toughest task in bringing many of the promises of genAI to fruition.
“Technology alone cannot solve the challenges that our youthful continent faces. We need to create policies and practices to ensure that GenAI, and AI in general, is deployed responsibly with AI-related labour being valued and dignified. It requires the macro-economic, labour, and regulatory markets to adapt and be capable of supporting positive change,” concluded Bhat.
It will therefore be interesting to see the role Microsoft aims to play in all this, and whether it can indeed be a driver for genAI’s transformative potential locally and across the rest of the continent.
You can check out the whitepaper, and download it (PDF), for yourself here.
