Daniel le Roux, senior lecturer in the department of information science at Stellenbosch University, points out that limited work has been done to study the potential impact of AI and automation on economies in the developing world.  

Prompted to investigate the situation in SA, he used data collected by Statistics SA for its Quarterly Labour Force Survey and an automation index produced by academics at the University of Oxford.  From this, he was able to estimate that occupations performed by almost 35% of South African workers – roughly 4.5m people – are potentially automatable in the near future.  Roughly 14m South Africans work in around 380 different occupation types.  Sixty-four of these occupations, employing an estimated 3.6m workers, have a 90% or greater probability of being automatable in the near future.  These occupations include, for example, cashiers, tellers, secretaries and telephone salesmen.  The occupations of another 2.6m workers, of whom 900,000 are employed as farmhands and labourers, have an 80%-89% probability of being automatable.  Workers of all skills levels are at risk.  Accountants, auditors and dental technicians are all highly skilled and their jobs are extremely susceptible to automation.  But trends suggest that people in low and medium-skilled occupations are generally more at risk than those who require extensive education.  But Le Roux notes, the country appears ill-prepared for this looming reality and there is very limited high-level discourse about how SA plans to navigate this wave of technological advancement.

• Read this thought provoking article in full at The Conversation

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