The global blockchain market is estimated to reach $40 billion in another four years. The staggering sum and almost equivalent of Nigeria’s monthly GDP should tempt employment-challenged economies like ours to harness its job creation potential. Taking advantage of the technology would put the economy in vantage position to tap the fourth industrial revolution.
Thinking along the lines of our submission, is African Lead, Global Women Blockchain Alliance, Mrs Modupe Ativie. She observes that the increasing popularity of blockchain technology in retail and supply chain management is expected to drive the market. She consequently urged Nigerians to explore growing job opportunities in the global blockchain market, which is projected to reach $40 billion by 2025.
For an economy where the rate of unemployment is over 33 percent of GDP, this provides a vista of opportunity to significantly cut down the number of unemployed and fortify the economy with jobs that are immune to frictional and structural unemployment over the longer term.
We observe that it is a technology that is here to stay given the range of application it lends itself to. Apart from its use to secure cryptocurrency, blockchain can be employed to create a permanent, public, transparent ledger system for compiling data on sales, tracking digital use and payments to content creators, such as wireless users or musicians, Online voting and financial services among many other uses.
As noted by Atuvie, the market for cryptocurrency is expanding rapidly as corporate users in the banking, financial services, and insurance (BFSI) sector and government offices are increasingly adopting cryptocurrencies. The various application of the technology means the demand for people with blockchain skills is high and so the industry is looking to hire those who have the skills set to navigate the new technology.
At a macroeconomic level, blockchain adoption would enable government narrow the poverty gap, push up the aggregate demand curve and unleash economic development. But this will not come without some level of commitment as a precursor to these would be mass scale training of millions of youths who are in the jobs market and are employable. Government can pump resources into this training without a care because most of the recipients of the training can be self-employed and can create jobs. Such is the power of new technology.
Arming Nigeria’s teeming youth population with expertise in blockchain and associated technology would be setting the economy up for the fourth industrial revolution also called the 4IR. The ongoing revolution would also require steep immersion in associated technologies like artificial intelligence, big data, robotics and virtual reality among others.
But beyond training and adoption is the creation of an enabling environment for sustainable application of these technologies; creation of an enabling environment. We hereby urge the appropriate agencies of government to immediately go to work and help the country adopt technologies that would put the country at the forefront of the new industrial revolution.
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