Africa must take advantage of ICT to increase trade
Dr Lloyd Amoah, a lecturer at the University of Ghana, says Ghana and Africa must promptly respond to the rapidly changing world if the country and the continent were to survive.
He said the world was rapidly changing as marked by various developments, including the emergence of technology such as 3-D printing, shifting focus to outer space for the mining of energy and other minerals, the reality of robots and faster computing technology.
“A country or people or continent that wants to survive must respond to these, and not just on a superficial level but on a deep level,” he said.
Dr Amoah said this at the launch of NubianBiz.com, an online business platform aimed at facilitating intra-African trade. He stressed the need for two levels of response: mentally and physically.
He explained that there was the need for Africa to change her way of thinking.
Mr Jules Nartey-Tokoli, the Chief Executive Officer of NubianBiz, noted that African classrooms were lagging behind in training students with required skills to meet the exigencies of the present world.
He bemoaned Africa’s over reliance on their former colonial masters for the development of the continent adding that Africans must develop the ability to process the abundant information into knowledge and apply it to solve her problems.
“We need to unlearn the past and relearn with the future in mind,” he said, adding the NubianBiz would remove the barriers to development and empower citizens to progress.
He said the platform will focus on collaboration and not competition to succeed in its mission.
Mr Hector Wulff, the Executive Director at the Centre for Customer Service Excellence, said there was the need for the use of technology to enhance customer service as the key to the success of businesses.
“Digital technology makes it easier to engage a larger number of people than otherwise possible. Businesses cannot be sustained without engaging customers digitally,” he said.
Mr Wulff said customer feedback was also essential to all businesses and digital technology was the most effective way to collect feedback from customers.
Ms Mavis Nee-Okpey, the Director of Administration at NubianBiz, said non-tariff barriers had served as roadblocks to intra-African trade adding that access to ICT would help to remove some of those non-tariff barriers.
“Intra-African trade will see significant improvement if we use modern ICT to our advantage,” she said, adding that the time was right to support NubianBiz’s quest to unite the African market using ICT.
Source: GNA