It is a well known fact that COVID-19 has cost a lot of people their jobs and means of livelihood. It is a season that many never prepared for. However, its inevitable arrival has got a lot of people change the course of handling things with digital economy.
According to National Bureau of Statistics, NBS, the ravaging pandemic that came into Nigeria in March, 2020 brought the total unemployment rate to 21.7% at the end of the Q2’20.
On the contrary, firms change their mode of operation from physical to virtual, employees began to adopt the work from home mode. Workers who have digital skills sustained their jobs as the new normal thrive; online education, logistics and delivery channels, remote meetings, remote work, remote banking, and many more.
In a recent report, titled Leveraging Digital Economy to Drive Growth, Job Creation and Sustainable Development, Tope Fasua identified some important ways to make business thrive and how to earn a sustainable livelihood during Post COVID-19 era.
According to him, leveraging on digital economy to solve problems is the only way to earn a means of livelihood during this season.
How to Leverage on Digital Economy to Drive Growth
1) Job Creation: Digitization has revealed to human that their is a clear difference between being employed and having something doing. In an era driven by digitization, those who can succeed this season, are they who could creatively create jobs by leveraging on digitization.
Here is a list of areas you can venture into with the knowledge of digital skills:
- Communication Technology
- Construction Technology
- Product Technology
- Medical Technology
- Architecture Technology
- Business Technology
- Educational Technology
- Information Technology
- Space Technology
- Artificial Intelligence
- Robotics Technology
- Superintelligence
- Agriculture Technology
- Assistive Technology
- Operation Technology
- Entertainment Technology
2) Knowledge Acquisition: The top major theme of the digital economy is knowledge, according to Fasua, it is “important to keep acquiring new, digital skills” and use the knowledge in the right channel.
3) Innovation: Simply put, innovation is creating new approach to resolving existing issues. Recall that before the arrival of COVID-19, physical meetings and trade were the normal way of doing things. Its arrival brought about the new normal; virtual meetings with Zoom, Google Meet etc., e-commerce, e-business thrive as a number of Fintech firms became more recognised.
“If we consider innovation around different areas of technology and apply our youth bulge, digitization can create millions of jobs for the youths,” Fasua said.
4) Little Things Matter: An interesting fact about digital economy is that little changes in your environment matters a lot, thriving during this season involves creating easy ways to do things with technology. Start from the basic such as the environment, security, education, health, etc.
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Featured Image @Toppr
