Business and Life in the Digital World
The great scientific and technological developments of the 21st century have revolutionized the ways business is done and simplified our lives reducing global networks to finger tips under the digits of zero and one. The change is so phenomenal that the traditional physical limits and communication barriers becomes less significant as transactions, marketing, contracts, meetings, communications etc are done in an accurate and superb speed a human mind can hardly register.
Today a Maasai nomad from northern parts of Tanzania can simply press a button on his blackberry phone and speak to a friend in Dubai as he would do so to a colleague in Arusha, Dar es salaam, UK or Accra Ghana. Speaking of the internet alone, thousands of businesses are generated everyday as the new on-line markets of global scale including the popular E-bay and Alibaba showrooms connects people of all cultures to buy and sale from a click of the mouse on a laptop or desktop computer. The Japanese automotive industry in particular is said to have grown to unprecedented rates ever recorded in history with the increase in connectivity and the use of internet especially in Africa; the largest consumer of Japanese used cars.
All told, the digital world has touched almost every single life on earth making businesses hassle free, information accessible and lifestyles fascinating. Classic evidence can easily be traced in the developed television satellite technology which enables football fans in Mafia Islands Tanzania to enjoy a fancy football by the soccer genius “Ronaldo” in a tune of a second all the way from the Old Trafford Stadium in Manchester England, or as fate would have it, from Madrid, Spain.
At workplaces in almost all sectors of the economy from academia to finance the use of software have largely minimized human engagement in minute to minute follow ups leading to reduced costs, increasing efficiency and productivity. ICT for example have revolutionized education in a way that a student in the Global Development Learning Centre, IFM, Dar es Salaam can attend and actively take part in discussion sessions in a lecture delivered by a professor from the University of Chicago, USA similar to fellow students attending the same lecture all the way from Ethiopia, Ecuador, South Africa and Australia.
Further to that workers in highly sophisticated industries especially in the service economy can work from home provided that are connected to co-workers at the office or/and the customers they are supposed to serve as the use of intranets and extranets becomes paramount across businesses and careers.
This is what the world’s number 1 billionaire and world’s most respected IT guru the Microsoft Boss Bill Gates call “the digital nerve system”. According to him the success of many businesses in the 21st will not depend on the expanded market but again connectivity and an effective use of IT (the digital nerve system) that makes employees conversant of the internal production processes and enable them to deliver at speed and get the customers informed of up to the minute detail of the service or product status/ development.
The International IT and communication Summit 2010 will therefore be a catalyst for a continued growth and use of IT and communication services for increased profits in businesses whilst reflecting and offer solutions to control healthy, infrastructural, educational and other challenges posed by such a growth.
Please take a look at the Operational Framework
