The Chief Executive Officer of MTN Ghana, Selorm Adadevoh has rejected claims that technology is kicking people out of their jobs and businesses.

There are concerns that robots are taking over people's jobs, machines will replace humans, Artificial Intelligence will outpace people and there will be no jobs for the poor. Chaos! Famine! Technology is casting a shadow over the future.

But according to Mr. Adadevoh, all jobs lost in outpaced fields due to technological development are recovered by a large margin in new areas.

He believes the emergence of technology only seeks to complement and modernize existing jobs.

“Yes, for traditional roles today they are changing; I talked about 15 roles that someone showed me recently that didn’t exist when I was in University 15, 20 years ago,” he said.

Mr. Adadevoh added, “So what’s important is that we retool to make sure that we are ready to take advantage of the changes in the evolution that will define what is ahead of us; as long as we do that, we’ll have the relevant for the future and we would have more job opportunities for the future as well.”  

He spoke to JoyBusiness on the sidelines of the Chartered Institute of Marketing Ghana (CIMG) Evening with a Personality.

Sharing some statistics at the event, the MTN boss has described as “opportunity” the World Economic Forum’s analysis that the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR) is expected to create over three million more jobs in Africa by 2025.

For the health sector marred with some challenges, he said with the right technology, a patient did not need to undertake a number of diagnoses, which attracted high fees before treatment.

Mr. Adadevoh justified the need for technology as a country to be able to develop locally relevant products that solve real Ghanaian problems. “Technology is not for the sake of technology,” he added.

The National President of the CIMG, Dr. Daniel Kasser-Tee stressed on the need to embrace technology in all endeavours to promote the economy. He also admonished Ghanaians to patronize made-in-Ghana products and services.

The CIMG Evening with Selorm Adadevoh was on the topic, “the Evolution of Telecoms: the Digital Convergence and what it means for the future.”

The event brought together various marketing professionals and players in the telecommunication space to deliberate on the importance of leveraging technology as a marketing tool for industrial growth.