With the ever increasing and complexity of business processes, advancements in infrastructure, demand for better service delivery and various mind bubbling challenges in society, technology has taken up the role as a catalyst to improve any use case . As a consumer I believe that technology should help us ease our work, communicate better and connect with our surroundings better. However, the rising trends are capable of doing more than this by changing the way we live and interact with each other. Some of the trending technology in 2018 include:

IoT to BIoT (Internet of Things to Block chain Internet of Things):

Internet of things is a concept that has developed in recent years because of the developing underlying infrastructure which has allowed companies develop mobile devices which allow users to command these devices to do as they wish. However, this is not enough as the consumer needs more, hence the integration of the famous block chain technologies known for creating the crypto currency bitcoin, to the already existing IoT to create a web of connections for many devices to have data decentralized which has advantages such as improved security of data. New applications have risen due to the integration of IoT with BIoT because such as smart cities for example where connected traffic lights manage rush hour.

The rise of the BOT

The increase in demand for better customer care and relation management, many platforms have built these famous software robots to aid in this regard. In 2018 bots have gotten more functionality from the original pre-determined responses to having a component of Artificial intelligence which now make them act as financial investment advisors and given the necessary data, they can act as predictive models to remind of certain things.

With all these technologies coming up, Africa however is still playing catch up, and this has so many contributing factors, amongst them is under developed infrastructure on which some of these technologies will thrive. Infrastructure in this case, is the well-defined processes and structures that govern particular establishments in a community these include transport, governance, education, health, industry and so many others.

Africa badly needs technology to foster development in these establishment because we have seen it work in the first developing countries like USA. The importance of a well-defined infrastructure is too aid clear and unambiguous course of actions to solve the prevailing challenges and with this, innovations can be guided accordingly to fit and better the use case. Innovations in few a companies in Africa have managed to own any Stoll and this has been possible because these companies have built their business model on top of already existing infrastructures and the only thing they add is the technology to make it easy for the consumer to interact with these infrastructures.

The way forward for Africa is to push and embrace the existing developmental infrastructure and build upon them to create sockets that can be plugged in by the this rising surge of improved and advanced technologies to foster the development of Africa as a continent and also smooth adaptation of these technologies by the African consumer.

In conclusion, the rate of disruption is high and off course there will be hindrances such cyber security, government regulations and consumers’ ability to adapt to change. But all in all, the world is changing which begs the question, are we ready?