Impact of Emerging Technology on the Economy of Ethiopia

Emerging Technology and Economy – Ethiopia
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Emerging Technology and Economy – Ethiopia
Current Problem and Country
Agriculture has been the main economic activity in most Eastern Africa countries for decades. However, the countries in this region are experiencing numerous challenges impacting their agricultural products ranging from rampant drought, political instability, torrential rains, widespread poverty, and even terrorism. For example, Ethiopia, one of the countries in the East African region, has had poor harvests for quite a long time, forcing a population of over a million annually to rely on foreign aid (Befikadu, 2018). Poor harvests in the country have been associated with numerous factors, including poor quality equipment, flash floods, crop disease, and pests, including locusts that struck twice in 2020 (Ilukor & Gourlay, 2021). The children are the most impacted population members despite the problem cutting across all demographics and has led to widespread poverty, lower gross domestic product, and an overall poor economic performance on a regional and global scale. The impact has been severer in rural areas of the country where agriculture is the main economic activity.
Emerging Technology
Technology in agriculture is something that has not been embraced in the African continent compared to other continents. However, with the dire need to solve the growing concern of famine and lower yield harvests as is the case in Ethiopia, there is a need to incorporate emerging technologies of the 21st century into the agricultural sector, and more specifically in countries like Ethiopia where the cause of lower yields can be addressed with technological interventions. Precision agriculture is a term used to refer to a modern-day agricultural practice that seeks to utilize high-end technologies of the 21st century to increase yields while lowering the cost of production (Maes & Steppe, 2019). Emerging technologies applied in precision agriculture include drone technologies, remote sensing, the Internet of Things, Artificial Intelligence, high precision GPS systems, and lately, Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV) (Maes & Steppe, 2019). These technologies can be used for farm inspection, data collection, and analysis of all the agricultural aspects throughout the production season. Incorporating high-end technologies to attain precision agriculture will certainly come at a cost due to the high cost of acquiring robots, computer systems, and even drones. However, the benefit that the new technology has on the crop yield outweighs the costs. A wide range of technologies can be applied to achieve the concept of precision agriculture, but the focus should be on Remote sensing with UAVs.
6D's of Tech Disruption
According to Peter Diamandis, growth from a technological perspective moves exponentially through six different stages: digitalization, deception, disruption, dematerialization, demonetization, and democratization (Umar, 2018). Precision agriculture with the use of remote sensing and UAV will follow the six-stage processes proposed by Diamandis. With remote sensing technologies, data on every aspect of agriculture can be digitized to ease access, sharing, and di...