via fredwilson.vc
Fred took the graphic from Continuations.com. Albert Wenger, who drafted this post, had this to say about the decline of emloyment in agriculture and manufacturing (in the USA)
What is behind the shrinking of agriculture and manufacturing? Innovation and globalization. Innovation has allowed us to be vastly more productive in agriculture and manufacturing (meaning fewer people can achieve the same output) and globalization has allowed us to import food and products from other parts of the world. Innovation is at work everywhere though and so if you assembled similar charts for say China or India you would find the percentage of the population working in agriculture there declining as well. I am not sure whether manufacturing is already declining there, but the announcement that Foxconn is planning to deploy 1 million robots suggests the eventually inevitable direction.
I don't think that innovation is beyond South Africa, of course it depends entirely on the government getting its act together with our education system - something they have systematically destroyed in the last 18 years. Not a big ask and it is a basic right.
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