Fourth Industrial Revolution can transform society: experts

Dar es Salaam. The Fourth Industrial Revolution has been pointed out as a key phenomenon that might elevate Tanzania’s development by tackling health, social and economic challenges that hold back communities.

This was revealed during the third and last presentation of the Innovation Week moderated by Mboni Kibelloh, who is head of Computing and Information Technology Department at Kampala International University, alongside Prof Jim Ang, A senior lecturer in Multimedia and Digital Systems in the School of Computing, The University of Kent.

Panellists debating the topic included Deogratius Mzurikwao, a researcher in Artificial Intelligence at the University of Kent, followed by Henry Mwanyika, who is the regional director of PATH, Sameer Hirji, the executive director at Selcom Tanzania, and Sandra Chogo who is a senior auditor from the office of the Controller and Auditor General (CAG).

Other panellists were Apollo Temu, a business transformation executive and an entrepreneur and Deji Mabogunje who is the management consultant at McKinsey Company.

Speaking during the virtual meeting, Prof Ang detailed that digital advancement, like Virtual Reality (VR), can help tackle challenges in the health sector.

He explained how health-care systems can develop through sensing and immersive tech whilst enabling change in the conduction of therapy and treatment of diseases like dementia and eating disorders.

As Prof Ang addressed this, he showed how patients of dementia could be given a chance to create and get a picture of themselves in terms of change of mindset and body image that was nonexistent before VR usage.

“I envision a future where physical and virtual world are converging, where humans and machines are collaborating to solve some of the post pressing problems in humanity,” said Mr Ang.

The panellists reacted to the presentation by Prof Ang, arguing that technological advancements would result in the integration between health and technology.

“I think it’s amazing, I love the impact that VR technology actually has on the mind and the human conditions. This technology will highly improve the quality of life,” noted Mr Mabogunje.

Relating to the eye-catching technology which is believed to later become a game-changer in many sectors, Prof Hirji said a few years ago when he was a member of the board of Aga Khan services, this technology was nonexistent.

“Technology can be scary on the one hand - but manageable on the other because the more you leverage technology intrusion in people’s lives the more you leverage research on it as all of these results into change in the way we work and how we coexist with technology,” he said.

For his part, Mr Mzurikwao said research on technology should continue to ensure that it is swiftly accommodated in the local settings in societies.

“To ensure that this technology which will open doors to positive changes in multiple sectors is practised, we have to use it to solve existing problems. To start with, we have to recheck the capacity building in Tanzania because as of now we only have about two universities that offer data science studies. Another issue is the lack of supportive regulations around AI since right now there are few of them,” he explained.

He also insisted on data sharing whereas despite the presence of multiple telecoms in the country, the data was not well analysed in the country hence affecting the work of artificial intelligence practitioners in their work making them depended on foreign sources.