“Whether you like it or not, technology, especially Artificial Intelligence (AI) is affecting every sector you are leading. If the political leadership remains behind in technology, Ethiopia will remain behind. Without technologically conscious leadership, realizing the policies and strategies of government are impossible this time,” Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed (PhD) said. PM underlined that technological products are becoming more sophisticated and they are affecting every sector across the world.
Hence, for him, development and security of countries is becoming dependent on technology. Understanding the new technological developments, he recommends leaders to consider the impact of technology in the sector they are leading.
The rapidly growing technological advancement needs transformative leadership, both in political and organizational leadership. The industry is growing unpredictable and to exploit its benefits and manage its impacts, conscious leadership is mandatory. Technology, especially AI, is changing everything as such there is a call for leaders to act beyond the traditional way of leadership.
Scholars in the leadership discipline indicated that leadership plays irreplaceable role in transforming organizations, socio-political economy and over all development of a country. Beukman, T. (2005) stated that leadership plays a vital role for any success in life of individuals as well as teams in organizations. Transformational leadership plays indispensable role in transforming the performance of organizations and in transforming overall development of a country.
Leadership can create a difference and bring a change or transformation in many ways. To achieve transformation, the leadership in the current world has to know and understand at least the trends of technology. Technology touches every sector and every business activities. Directly and indirectly, every sector and organization has linkages with technology and the latest technological developments are strongly connected with the day-to-day activities of the people and organizations.
Considering the current trends of technology, leaders of organizations and political leaders from the kebele to the federal level are expected to develop the knowledge and impacts of technology in today’s world. The leadership has to remain conscious in promoting technology, developing technological infrastructure, administering technology properly and sensitizing the society about the importance and impacts of technology.
This time, government policies and strategies are dependent on the effective use of technology. The traditional role of technology is being phasing-out following the invention of Artificial Intelligence (AI). Understanding the technology, its benefits and threats should be part of the leadership’s job at this time. Exploiting the technological blessings, managing its impacts, securing the infrastructure and providing services using the latest technologies are part of the leadership’s role.
During a recent training for senior government leadership entitled “a transition from Debt to reward,” aiming at transforming the previous and current challenges in to a reward, Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed (PhD) told the political leadership to give due attention to technology. “Without technological know-how, you will never effectively lead the institutions and offices you are administering,” he stated.
“As we are striving to transform our economy to build prosperous country, it is impossible without applying the technologies of the time and implementing the technologies needs aware leadership,” Prime Minister Abiy stated calling the leadership to play the leading role in understanding, using and developing technological products. According to the Premier, technology is both a blessing and a threat for the existence and survival of human beings and countries. Especially the invention of Artificial Intelligence (AI) is totally transforming the impact of technology on human beings and activities of countries.
“Human beings were the dominant actors and their innovations were under their control, but now things are changing. AI has the power to compute and even control human beings,” PM Abiy stated adding “now, human beings are being impacted by their innovations.”
“The most important and dangerous innovations of humankind is artificial intelligence,” Prime Minister Abiy underlined adding the actual power that AI has is beyond imagination. AI has the ability and capability of analyzing, understanding and solving problem like machine, which makes the machine to compute with human beings’ mental caliber without fatigue.
In 2022, AI created over 3.1 trillion USD business value and by 2025 it is expected to create over five trillion business values, Abiy stated. “By 2030, AI is projected to create over 15 trillion USD business value. If the political leaders of countries do not give due attention for this technology, they remain out of this huge business that have a tremendous impact on countries’ GDP. Political leaders should remain aware about the development and impacts of technology especially AI. From this perspective, everyone in the leadership has to remain active. As a leader, even with limited capacity and share, one has to participate in areas where indispensable resource is available.”
According to Prime Minister Abiy as the government is striving to accelerate the development of Ethiopia and to build a prosperous country, using the new technology in every sector plays a significant role in accelerating the efforts. “Using AI, sector transformation is becoming easy,” he pointed out. AI is crucial technology to transform the finance, health, education, agriculture, industry and in service delivery and “if we are committed to transform our sectors, we have to be conscious to apply the new technology,” he underlines. Technology makes easy enhancing service delivery for both private and public institutions and for proper allocation and management of resources.
“The leadership has to be mindful. You have to be ready to be a leader of the society in technology. You have to lead, educate and influence the society on the use and expansion of technology,” Prime Minister Abiy told his leadership. “By using technology and expanding it, we can transform the debt to reward (the loss to a boon)”.
As to him, leaders have to understand the technological tools that can facilitate activities, increases knowledge, provide necessary information with accurate data and display decision making process. “If leaders understand the impact, they will act.”
“By the way AI is not a luxury for Ethiopia and other developing countries. Currently, as we remain behind in technology and our focus seems to be on fulfilling the daily food of our people, people are saying it is luxury. But in reality, AI is becoming a must to apply even to fulfill the basic needs of our people,” PM Abiy noted. For him, though it seems odd for the people, if the leadership remains conscious and apply the technology, users will follow the trend. “If we introduce technology, don’t worry, there are users and the general mass will follow.”
“When we launched Mobile Banking, many people labeled it as luxury as they expected there was no user at that time. Imagine, today there are 36 million mobile banking subscribers and over 1.4 trillion birr is transacting through mobile banking,” PM Abiy stated. As to him, this shows that, if technology is introduced, the society will adapt it easily. The only necessary thing, as to him, is the leadership should remain active to introduce new methods and technologies.
According to Prime Minister Abiy, the next trends of AI are more complicated and sophisticated. Unless we remain friendly with the current AI developments, we totally remain behind in the future innovations of the technology which are already on the table to be applied. Humanoid robot, generative AI, quantum computing and deep fake are the next trends of AI technology which remains serious challenges for each sector.
“AI touches all sectors. Leaders lead people, AI influences people. Leader set plans, AI influenced the plan. Leaders collect and manage resources, AI influence resources. This implies that it is a must for leaders to become friendly with AI,” he stated. For the Premier, if the current leadership remains passive in introducing and properly applying the current technological advancements, it will have tremendous impact on the coming generation.
PM Abiy recommends building a National Public Virtual Digital Infrastructure to go parallel with technological advancements. To exploit the benefits and manage the impacts, PM Abiy advices the leadership to play a leading role in the technology sector.
BY DARGIE KAHSAY
THE ETHIOPIAN HERALD FRIDAY 10 NOVEMBER 2023
