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Top Game Changers for IT Organisations, Users From 2014
Gartner its top predictions, recently, for IT organisations and IT users for 2014 and beyond combined several disruptive topics including Digital Industrial Revolution, Digital Business, Smart Machines and the Internet of Things, the analyst strongly believes these are to serve as more game changers beyond just the IT function.
Gartner Symposium/ITxpo is the world’s most important gathering of CIOs and senior IT executives. This event delivers independent and objective content with the authority and weight of the world’s leading IT research and advisory organization, and provides access to the latest solutions from key technology providers.
“Gartner’s 2013 CEO survey suggests CEOs feel that business uncertainties are declining and yet, CIOs awake each day into a world of technology uncertainty and change,” says Daryl Plummer, managing vice president and analyst, Gartner.
“The savvy CIO will get his or her CEO to recognise the change being brought about by disruptive shifts is coming at an accelerated pace and at a global level of impact.”
Presenting their findings during Gartner Symposium/ITxpo, Gartner’s top 10 predictions are broken out into four categories as follows:
Digital Industrial Revolution
IT is no longer just about the IT function. Instead, IT has become the catalyst for the next phase of innovation in personal and competitive business ecosystems.
One place where this is evident is in the beginnings of a Digital Industrial Revolution that threatens to reshape how physical goods are created using 3D printing.
By 2018, 3D printing will result in the loss of at least $100 billion per year in intellectual property globally.
At least one major western manufacturer will claim to have had intellectual property (IP) stolen for a mainstream product by thieves using 3D printers who will likely reside in those same western markets rather than in Asia by 2015.
The plummeting costs of 3D printers, scanners and 3D modeling technology, combined with improving capabilities, makes the technology for IP theft more accessible to would-be criminals. Importantly, 3D printers do not have to produce a finished good in order to enable IP theft.
The ability to make a wax mold from a scanned object, for instance, can enable the thief to produce large quantities of items that exactly replicate the original.
By 2016, 3D printing of tissues and organs (bioprinting) will cause a global debate about regulating the technology or banning it for both human and nonhuman use.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration or comparable agency in a developed nation that is charged with evaluating all medical proposals will introduce guidelines that prohibit the bioprinting of life-saving 3D printed organs and tissues without its prior approval by end of 2015.
Bioprinting is the medical application of 3D printers to produce living tissue and organs. The day when 3D bioprinted human organs are readily available is drawing closer.
The emergence of 3D bioprinting facilities with the ability to print human organs can leave people wondering what the effect of it will be on society.
Beyond these questions, however, there is the reality of what 3D bioprinting means in helping people who need organs that are otherwise not readily available.
Digital Business
Digital business refers to business created using digital assets and/or capabilities, involving digital products, services and/or customer experiences, and/or conducted through digital channels and communities.
Gartner’s digital business predictions focus on the effect digital business will have on labor reductions, on consumer goods revenue, and on use of personal data.
While these do not cover the sum total of digital business, they do highlight critical areas of medium to long-term impact.
By 2017, more than half of consumer goods manufacturers will receive 75 percent of their consumer innovation and R&D capabilities from crowdsourced solutions.
Consumer goods companies that employ crowdsourced solutions in marketing campaigns or new product development will enjoy a 1 percent revenue boost over noncrowdsourced competitors by 2015.
Engineers, scientists, IT professionals and marketers at consumer goods companies are engaging crowds much more aggressively and with increasing frequency using digital channels to reach a larger and more anonymous pool of intellect and opinion.
Gartner sees a massive shift toward applications of crowdsourcing, enabled by technology, such as: advertising, online communities, scientific problem solving, internal new product ideas, and consumer-created products.
By 2020, the labor reduction effect of digitization will cause social unrest and a quest for new economic models in several mature economies.
A larger scale version of an “Occupy Wall Street”-type movement will begin by the end of 2014, indicating that social unrest will start to foster political debate.
Digitization is reducing labor content of services and products in an unprecedented way, thus fundamentally changing the way remuneration is allocated across labor and capital.
Long term, this makes it impossible for increasingly large groups to participate in the traditional economic system — even at lower prices — leading them to look for alternatives such as a bartering-based (sub)society, urging a return to protectionism or resurrecting initiatives like Occupy Wall Street, but on a much larger scale.
Mature economies will suffer most as they don’t have the population growth to increase autonomous demand nor powerful enough labor unions or political parties to (re-)allocate gains in what continues to be a global economy.
By 2017, 80 percent of consumers will collect, track and barter their personal data for cost savings, convenience and customization.
The number of Kickstarter-based auctions of personal data will increase by triple-digit percentages by the end of 2014.
The escalation of consumer awareness of data collection practices has set the stage for offering consumers more control over the disposition of personal data — collected both online and offline. As increasing demand and scarcity drives up the value of such data, incentives grow to entice consumers to share it voluntarily.
Meanwhile, consumer interest in self-tracking also suggests that consumers are investing more time and energy in collecting data about themselves.
They increasingly view such data as a key asset for life improvement, which is potentially consistent with the idea of trading it for value under the right circumstances.
By 2020, enterprises and governments will fail to protect 75 percent of sensitive data, and declassify and grant broad/public access to it.
By 2015, at least one more Snowden or WikiLeaks moment will occur, indicating an upward trend in corporations and governments’ acceptance that they cannot protect all sensitive information.
The amount of data stored and used by enterprises and governments is growing exponentially, such that any attempt to protect it all is unrealistic. Instead of facing an unfathomable task of protecting all data, enterprises and governments will focus on protecting only a small part of it, but protecting it well. Wider society will also gain from this approach, enabling it to establish better control over government and business, preventing abuses of power and engendering greater trust.
Smart Machines
The emergence of smart machines adds opportunity and fear as “cognizant and cognitive systems” and can enhance processes and decision making, but could also remove the need for humans in the process and decision effort.
CIOs will see this as a means of delivering greater efficiency, but will have to balance between the active human workforce and the cold efficiency of machines that can learn.
By 2024, at least 10 percent of activities potentially injurious to human life will require mandatory use of a nonoverideable “smart system.”
Economically priced cars with “automated assist” technology added as standard equipment will increase by through 2014 as an indicator of adoption.
The increasing deployment of “smart systems” capable of automatically responding to external events is increasing all the time, but there remains a deep-seated resistance to eliminating the option for human intervention.
The capability, reliability and availability of appropriate technology are not the issue. The willingness of the general population to accept initial widespread deployment and increasing removal of manual override options is the issue.
By 2020, a majority of knowledge worker career paths will be disrupted by smart machines in both positive and negative ways.
Virtual personal assistant usage in business grows more quickly in 2017 and 2018 than iPad usage did in 2010 and 2011/
Gartner forecasts that smart machines will upend a majority of knowledge workers’ career paths by 2020.
Smart machines exploit machine learning and deep-learning algorithms. They behave autonomously, adapting to their environment.
They learn from results, create their own rules and seek or request additional data to test hypotheses.
They are able to detect novel situations, often far more quickly and accurately than people. IT professionals need to recognize that smart machines can create substantial competitive advantages, as well as entirely new businesses.
By 2017, 10 percent of computers will be learning rather than processing.
In 2014, the number of speech recognition applications running on deep neural network algorithms will double.
Deep learning methods, based on deep neural networks, are currently being applied in speech recognition systems as well as some object recognition applications.
Quality of life improves when society is able to derive useful information from the copious amounts of unstructured data collecting in the Internet.
The most important implication of a learning computer is that it expands much less energy to recognize more complex patterns.
Internet of Things
The Internet of Things cements the connection between machines, people and business interactions in the modern era.
With the advent of massively connected devices, businesses, governments and people now have access to more information about themselves and their surroundings than they can actually act on.
Gartner’s prediction focuses on the opportunity to build applications and services that can use that information to create new engagement models for customers, employees and partners, and to foster a new set of business and marketing models that make the word “engagement” a truly valuable asset.
By 2020, consumer data collected from wearable devices will drive 5 percent of sales from the Global 1000.
The number of smartphone apps requesting to share consumer data will increase twofold by 2015, indicating a rise in the number of marketers or proprietors who seek access to customer profile data.
Wearable computing, or wearables, is quickly moving into mainstream society, led by the growing, multibillion dollar health and fitness markets.
Within five years, consumer wearables will become more sophisticated, capturing what the user sees, hears or even feels through biorhythmic responses.
The technical hurdles that have stalled the adoption of wearables (battery life, augmented reality, chip evolution and bandwidth) are quickly eroding; opening doors to creative minds determined to exploit this technology for commercial gain as evidenced by sizable investments in wearable technology from Samsung, Google, Apple and Microsoft.
“While some of these disruptive topics might seem as if they do not have a direct impact on the IT function, we must embrace the notion that IT is now a part of everything,” said Mr. Plummer. “As the structure of businesses and industries change, the IT systems that support them will change and so will the skills, processes and controls needed to keep them functioning. The day when 3D-printed computer architecture exists is upon us, and the days when the digital business, smart machines or the Internet of Things change what computers are may not be far off.”
Culled from: www.gartner.com
The Lagos State Government, through the Ministry of Agriculture and Food Systems, has launched TELE-VET, Nigeria’s first Tele-Veterinary Call Centre, marking a groundbreaking milestone set to transform access to expert animal healthcare using mobile technology.
Speaking at the event held at the Lagos State Ministry of Agriculture and Food Systems, Animal Hospital, Oko-Oba, Agege, the state’s Commissioner for Agriculture and Food Systems, Ms. Abisola Olusanya, described TELE-VET as a transformative initiative that strengthens animal health systems, improves food safety, and accelerates agricultural innovation across the state and beyond.
She stated that technology continues to redefine global food systems, and Lagos, under the leadership of Governor Babajide Olusola Sanwo-Olu, remains committed to deploying digital solutions that enhance efficiency, empower farmers, and safeguard public health. The Commissioner explained that TELE-VET addresses long-standing challenges faced by farmers and pet owners, especially limited access to timely and professional veterinary care.
Ms. Olusanya highlighted that TELE-VET builds on the existing mobile platforms, M-Agric and M-Health, available on MTN and Glo networks, which provide daily expert tips, mentorship, and animal-care guidance. By dialing *20791#, users can subscribe for ₦100/day, ₦300/week, or ₦500/month, gaining instant access to a variety of services, while all active subscribers can access the Call Centre free of charge.
She added that the Call Centre will deliver emergency support, first-aid guidance, disease-prevention information, and livestock and pet care assistance, noting that the platform helps farmers reduce costs, save time, and access expert care without traveling long distances. She emphasized that TELE-VET will also enhance surveillance and early detection of zoonotic diseases, aligning with the One World, One Health framework that integrates human, animal, and environmental health.
The Commissioner further mentioned that TELE-VET sets the stage for future innovations, including livestock and pet health insurance, e-commerce for veterinary products, improved mobility for safe animal transport, and enhanced financing opportunities for farmers, positioning Lagos as a national leader in technology-driven agricultural transformation.
Earlier, the Permanent Secretary, Ministry of Agriculture and Food Systems, Mr. Emmanuel Audu, commended the initiative as a groundbreaking intervention that will significantly improve service delivery within the State’s veterinary ecosystem. He stressed that TELE-VET responds to the evolving needs of farmers and pet owners who require swift and professional support to enhance productivity and ensure animal well-being.
Mr. Audu noted that the Ministry has invested extensively in strengthening the infrastructure, technical systems, and human resources needed to operate a world-class veterinary call centre. He stated that the service is a strategic investment in Lagos State’s food security architecture, enabling efficient livestock health management and timely response to potential disease outbreaks.
The Permanent Secretary explained that the Call Centre will minimize animal losses, improve farm management practices, and provide timely advisory services to farmers, aligning with the Ministry’s mandate to promote sustainable agricultural practices across all 57 LGAs and LCDAs. He praised the collaboration among veterinary professionals, ICT partners, and technical teams that made the initiative possible.
Mr. Audu reaffirmed the Ministry’s commitment to continuously upgrading the TELE-VET platform to accommodate innovations that improve efficiency and expand service offerings. He encouraged residents to adopt the platform fully, noting that its success depends on widespread participation.
In his remarks, the Director of Veterinary Services, Dr. Rasheed Macaulay, stated that the launch of TELE-VET marks a new era in veterinary care delivery in Lagos State. He explained that the platform provides a practical solution to challenges such as limited manpower, delayed emergency response, and difficulties reaching farmers in remote areas by connecting residents directly to certified experts.
Dr. Macaulay added that TELE-VET will strengthen disease surveillance and reporting across the State, aiding early detection of animal diseases and preventing zoonotic infections. With real-time consultations, improved documentation, and faster escalation processes, the platform will support frontline veterinarians and promote safer, healthier food systems for all Lagos residents.
Manufacturers and small businesses are set to benefit from a new era of seamless cross-border payments, thanks to the launch of the Pan-African Payment and Settlement System- PAPSS Cowry, a game-changing payment platform.
This cutting-edge platform, backed by Afreximbank, the AU and AfCFTA, and recently launched in Lagos, promises to increase efficiency, reduce costs and boost trade across the continent as it connects 160 banks across 19 countries and positions Africa for a bigger share of its $329 cross-border market.
The platform delivers 120-second local currency settlement, removing USD bottlenecks, cutting FX friction and strengthening the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) driven trade flows.
Mike Ogbalu, CEO of PAPSS, in his keynote address at the platform launch themed ‘Building an Interoperable and Sovereign Africa Payment Ecosystem for Trade and Economic Growth,’ explained that AfCFTA has provided a single market for the continent’s 1.9 billion people that needs a seamless cross-border payment platform to trade.
“We have created it as an ecosystem that will pack all of us together in a way that we are able to empower each other rather than compete,” he said.
“Create a centralised value that everybody can leverage without affecting the individual value proposition of all the entities that leverage this way,” he added.
He stated that the Pan-Africa payment rail has connected 19 countries and plans to expand to 40, adding that 160 leading commercial banks across the continent are connected to the platform.
“We are also now enabling fintech companies across the continent to be able to originate payments in one market and terminate them in another market,” he explained.
“PAPSS is that financial market infrastructure that allows for the processing of cross-border payments in local currencies and is able to do that in no more than 120 seconds,” he added.
He appreciated central banks across the continent for their support, saying that a governance infrastructure has been created to make sure the payment system continues to operate in the right way. He stressed that sovereign payments are critical for the continent’s survival.
Haytham EI Maayerigi, executive vice president – global trade bank, Afreximbank, stressed that African businesses still face real barriers, whose border payments remain slow, expensive, and impossible sometimes, with $5 billion lost yearly to third-currency routing.
He explained that the situation has made it difficult for small businesses to find trusted partners, affordable finance and adequate market information, noting that with AfCFTA advancing, it must be easy for firms to trade with each other.
He said Afrexim, which is a promoter of PAPSS, works daily to remove these obstacles. “Together with AfCTA and the African Union, we are building the institutional foundation of a truly integrated market, supporting a lot of the initiatives.”
“Through advisory, guarantees, certification and project preparation, we mobilise the capital that builds factories, logistic hubs, processing plants, energy systems, the backbone of African industrialisation.”
He stressed that capital alone will not deliver integration and that the African continental trade also needs a digital spine, a system that connects markets, trust, information, logistics, finance and payments.
Experts say Africa requires a better business environment to unleash its potential and drive intra-African trade. The experts noted that the PAPSS Cowry platform will help improve the ease of doing business across the continent.
Wamkele Mene, secretary general, AfCFTA Secretariat, described the platform as a key enabler of AfCFTA, giving its practical effect on the continent’s vision of a fully integrated African market.
“It operationalises financial sovereignty by enabling the seamless flow of funds needed to sustain the world’s largest free trade area, and by reducing the friction that has historically held back intra-Africa trade,” Mene said.
He noted that the continent has 42 currencies, which alone creates structural barriers, saying that when two African traders rely on a third-country currency to trade, the cost of doing business rises sharply.
“Our continent loses an estimated $5billion annually in currency conversion.” PAPSS addresses this bottleneck directly by enabling instant settlement in local currencies and reducing reliance on expensive corresponding banking corridors.”
Africans are better educated today than they have been at any other time, with many African nations making strides towards ensuring access to quality education and lifelong learning for their citizens.
Afrilearn
UNESCO’s report on Transforming Learning and Skills Development notes that delivering education well is not only a fundamental human right, it is also a critical ingredient of building solid foundations for the future, empowering people not just to develop the skills they will need for the workplace, but also ensuring that they can unlock their potential as members of society.
UNICEF estimates that there are 450 million school-age children in Africa in 2025, and this population is predicted to swell to over 600 million by 2050. However, although 75 million more African children are enrolled in school today compared to 2015, the number of out-of-school children has increased by 13.2 million to over 100 million during the same period. For Africa to actively participate in the global digital economy, it’s a continent-wide imperative to unlock not just access to education, but access to the resources that will help children thrive in education.
Harnessing technology to provide educational resources
Millions of children across the continent are eager but struggling to learn or are dropping out due to the high cost of quality education, outdated materials, and overburdened teachers. Schools also struggle with reliable web access – the Global Education Monitoring Report found that Africa has the lowest school connectivity globally, with most schools lacking even basic electricity, making reliable internet rare. Mobile penetration in Africa is far higher, yet many learning platforms are built for the web.
In 2020, frustrated by their own experiences, and tired of witnessing how young Africans were held back by a lack of access to quality education, a group of entrepreneurs started Afrilearn International Limited. Their goal was simple, but ambitious: to democratise access to quality education across Africa using a mobile-first solution.
The company started with ClassNotes.ng, which quickly became the #1 education platform in Nigeria, empowering students with curriculum-based class notes. By July 2022, Afrilearn had reached 1 million learners across Nigeria and Africa, a major step in delivering quality education to undeserved communities.
Now, this AI-powered K-12 learning platform is on a mission to make world-class education freely available to all African children by making learning fun, using gamified experiences to engage school learners with their studies.
The Afrilearn App for Students provides a comprehensive library of study materials and homework help. Learners can master a subject using the class notes, video lessons, quiz materials and games on the app, earning coins, and winning rewards along the way, while parents can track their children’s progress through learning reports. Afrilearn also provides adaptive practice for local and international exams through Exambly.com, which provides free exam practice for entrance, admission and matriculation exams across Africa.
Supporting educators is part of the process
To support educators, Afrilearn has built and refined its new AI-powered School Management Software, which is a smart platform for learning, administration, and managing school fees, reports and results.
The company collaborates with Schoolinka, a leading African teacher-training organisation, to co-create and distribute professional development resources, onboard teachers onto Afrilearn, and support schools with continuous training. This has significantly improved teacher adoption and classroom impact across the schools Afrilearn serves.
A constant evolution
The School Management Software offering was developed as part of the first cohort of the Microsoft and NVIDIA African GenAI Accelerator Programme. The collaboration allowed Afrilearn to leverage Azure AI and cloud infrastructure to enhance automation, learning personalisation and school analytics on the platform.
The company created a rebuilt, AI-powered SMS programme during the Accelerator Programme, and plans to introduce upgrades including adaptive learning profiles, predictive analytics and automated fee management for schools, and offline-first learning flows. Teachers will soon benefit from enhanced AI tools for lesson preparation and assessments.
With Microsoft’s support, Afrilearn uses GitHub for its engineering workflow, enabling the company to release updates faster and with fewer errors. Visual Studio Code is the team’s preferred integrated development environment, as its integration with Axure extensions, debugging tools and GitHub repository reduce friction across engineering tasks. Collectively, these tools, alongside Azure, have improved delivery speed, strengthened reliability and enabled the team to build a more stable, scalable AI education platform. And for a distributed team working in multiple countries, Microsoft’s collaboration tools, Teams and Sharepoint, have proven invaluable for daily contact and communication.
Broadening access to education across Africa
To date, Afrilearn has reached more than 4 million learners and more than 800 schools across more than 10 countries. More than 80% of users report achieving improved learning outcomes within a week of consistent usage, while the AI-powered personalisation improves learners’ grades by up to 52 percent within eight weeks of consistent study. Schools implementing the Afrilearn management software have saved more than 10 administrative hours per week and have boosted their fee collection by 35 to 40 percent.
The Afrilearn team has big ambitions to scale into additional countries across Africa, deepening partnerships with UNICEF and the African Union to scale their impact. In addition to Nigeria, Afrilearn serves learners in Ghana, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Gambia and the wider diaspora.
“At Afrilearn, we’re the ecosystem closing the gap between Africa’s potential and its future, where no child is left behind because of where they live or how much their parents earn. We’re especially excited about our upcoming product upgrades that make personalised learning even more accessible to children at home and in school,” says Isaac Oladipupo, CEO at Afrilearn. “Our goal is to reach 10 million learners across 12 African countries in the next 36 months. We believe that every child deserves a quality education that positions them for future success.”
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