Sure, technology, if adapted to our African civilization, will certainly accelerate sustainable development and change lifestyles. Currently, I work 200 meters from my house in Nairobi and my 2 employees all live within 500 meters from the office. This saves us 5 hours each in commuting, enables extension of working hours to meet deadlines and, very importantly, our children come in and out of the office and we are fully aware of what is happening in our homes.
On the threat of automation-driven unemployment, even of the unskilled, my observations, current and future, are more hopeful.

I remember Kenyan Pres. Moi on the early 90’s, who, fearing that word processors would cause unemployment among typists, went about banning them. The move was overtaken by events and, in retrospect, I have yet to hear of a secretary or typist retrenched on that account… instead, they all upgraded into office assistants, documentation specialists and so on. That jolt kicked others further up, acquiring business administration degrees on and off-line. The more laid-back ones simply oozed into the information age along with everyone else. Secretarial colleges transformed into computer colleges, mainly MS Office and auxiliaries such as Sage and AutoCAD. Even my Mum, a retired primary school teacher who turns 80 next year, sends texts messages to her children on 3 continents.

Though the mechanisms of the typists-office assistant metamorphosis are not clear, it seems that the erosion of low-tech jobs would be more than compensated by news created by online activities such as transactions and communications which have the ability to avail the rarer skills to a wider consumer base.
On Bomakazi, a self-replicating agro-based shelter program on the design table for the past 2 years, despite limiting the bottom wage to US $ 15 daily, 16 m self-servicing mortgage homesteads and 47 m sustainable, upgradeable jobs will still be created in Kenya in 40 years. It gets to the point where job creation is higher than available labor and, with spill-over into the rest of Africa, labor import options dim.
Therefore, the low-tech jobs become a burden on society and automation is required to, say, pick ripe tomatoes of groom organic milk goats in a domestic setting.

The scenario is still unfolding, so let’s shepherd it and see what happens in Africa.

And world leaders also need to keep some island of refuge in case of total destruction or disaffection of most the lands in the Western World.
While doing it not leaving the rest of the World so far behind in terms of infrastructure, but thinking about a clean green infrastructure and industrialization that will give our children a place where they also can take refuge in their time of trouble.