Manufacturing firms are paying little attention to information technology changes, despite reports of its ability to cause massive disruptions, a new report shows.
According to the Kenya Association of Manufacturers quarter three manufacturing barometer released last week, only 7 per cent of industry manufacturers intend to increase their expenditure on information technology in the next six months.
The low investment in technology also comes at a time when the country has experienced different cases of cyber attacks that have led to a loss of at least Sh17.7 billion as at the end of 2016.
The association’s chief executive, Phyllis Wakiaga, attributed the low investments to the prevailing political environment which has become a barrier to business growth in at least 56 per cent of the firms. In addition, among the least sought employees will be those from technology and engineering departments at 11 per cent, compared to 39 per cent in the sales and marketing departments.
Despite the low investments in the IT sector, a recent report by the World Bank dubbed Trouble in the Making? The future of manufacturing-led development advances, indicated that advances in technology is a top factor affecting the growth of the industry in terms of production.
Some of the disruptions taking over the industry, as outlined in the report, include smart automation, advanced robotics and 3-D printing.
While at it, the manufacturers’ barometer also reported that only 8 per cent of the firms will set aside expenditure for internet commerce.
This is 49 per cent and 42 per cent below the industry manufactures expenditure allocation for advertising and introduction of a new product in the next six months.
This is unlike findings from the World Bank report, which indicate that the manufacturing sector must innovate fast in order to reap from the fast-growing digital evolution.
The firms, through a low-cost investment in the e-commerce sector, also indicated their inadequate efforts to diversify production, despite an increase of mobile and internet penetration in the country.
In a recent interview with the Star on digital disruption, Cisco’s director of commercial and partnership in Africa Tunji Akintokun said firms need to automate the edge of their network and embed machine learning and analytics in their system to spur growth and understand what their customers need or they will become irrelevant.
While these trends raise fears that manufacturing will no longer offer an accessible pathway for growth in addition to causing job losses, digital specialists have called on manufacturing firms to partner with tech startups with specialty in the manufacturing sector in order to raise their competitive advantage.