Wednesday, July 15, 2015

The Imperative of Maximising Nigeria’s Creative Bandwidth in Software Development

Let us paint a picture of misplaced priorities and misdirected energies. Of high sounding rhetoric dripping with the promise of positive change but devoid of empathy, sympathy or honest conviction and borne of shallow eloquence. Of a nation teetering on the brink of truly lamentable insignificance despite a heritage of opulence. Now, conjure up a convenient representation of these phrases in your mind because that is our collective reality - the state of our nation.  

“…extra-ordinary achievement is less about talent than it is about opportunity…” Malcolm Gladwell.

The foregoing quote is from the book “Outliers - The Story of Success”. And if you disagree with this summarisation, I encourage you to read it for yourself; just as you should, anyway. This challenge is issued in the same spirit as the phrase itself - with the intention to provoke deeper thought on the way we approach the never ending journey of national success. In the interest of fostering a much better narrative for our commonwealth, honest introspection and stock taking are hardly moot activities to undertake. The notion that the proliferation and growth of small and medium scale enterprises is essential to the growth of any economy is self evident as more people would be efficiently utilising available resources to produce value and reduce waste which means less unemployment and more self-reliance. But to achieve this, certain general factors must prevail. To unleash creativity, innovation and ultimately productivity, three critical ingredients are required. These are the trifecta of autonomy, complexity and a direct relationship between effort and reward. Autonomy, to allow for individualistic aspirations and ambitions to flourish, complexity to provide the adequate challenge for takers, and a direct effort-reward relationship to incentivise and provide fulfilment.

Consider for a moment, the instance that a prominent Nigerian called for the Government of Nigeria to commit itself to using locally developed software within the next three years in areas such as Human Resource Management, Accounting, Payroll, Public records, Enterprise Resource Planning and Payment Systems, etc. The immediate knee-jerk response I have seen and expect is an immediate dismissal on grounds that the technical skills required to execute such large projects do not exist within Nigeria in the necessary amounts to achieve this phantasmagoria. I am further convinced that this outcry will, to a greater degree, stem from cognate professionals, who are well versed in the weighty issues to be tackled in achieving the feat. “It is not profitable”, “It is too risky”, “There isn’t enough skill locally” are phrases I have heard or read in response to most incarnations of the aforementioned suggestion to the point that I wonder about the possibility of a conspiracy. But we should concern ourselves with the problem only long enough to understand it enough to know what the solutions must be. To be fair however, this pessimistic frame of mind has thrived because of the absence of a suitable environment that promotes economic demand for locally crafted technology. Because supply, in quantity and quality usually rises to meet demand. Most sadly, Nigerians with the inconvenience of happening upon truly noteworthy innovations do not stand a chance at seeing their ideas materialise if they stay within their native borders.

But let it be understood that any problems in the space of Nigeria’s technology industry in general and software industry in particular, must be wrestled and tackled to the ground. The promise of industrial and technological emancipation and its attendant economic benefits must find a place in our sustained state of mind begging focus on solutions in order to orchestrate or take advantage of circumstances that facilitate desired outcomes. The notion of the aforementioned government mandate on such a scale and the benefits it portends have existed in the blind spot of our Nation’s consciousness for too long. And like every trained and experienced automobile driver knows, undetected objects in one’s blind spot can be the cause of sudden mishap at any turn. To achieve technological self sufficiency, we must return to the drawing board and collectively revise our understanding and execution of the concept of the industrialisation of Nigeria. It must be remembered that we remain in exclusive possession of the talents, idiosyncrasies and opportunities to correct the issues that bedevil our country. But what are these issues? Why software? And what exactly do we stand to gain?

For the honest observer, the face of Nigeria’s future does not promptly cut an encouraging figure. Sovereign debt is on the rise as Government finances continue to dwindle. Unemployment figures remain discouraging as states are unable to pay worker’s salaries and must go cap in hand to the center. The downward pressure on the naira remains unrelenting as the apex bank struggles with the balancing act of general price levels, money supply and interest rates. If real change is not actualised soon, socioeconomic calamity on an unprecedented scale threatens. For the first time since inception, the central bank has closed both the retail and wholesale foreign exchange windows to save the naira. This begs the question, “what is different about the economy now?”
Who would have thought that so soon after a profitable regime of oil prices, things would suddenly become as bad as to warrant the downgrade of Nigeria’s credit rating by International Rating Agencies. It would certainly not be remiss to submit that some sort of turbulence threatens and we must take steps to steady ourselves.

Like a hapless kid on the playground whose playmates have all gone away with their toys and time, Nigeria now sits in the sands of economic doldrums left with the opportunity, or imperative if you will to make its own destiny. What will serve as the underpinning for its self crafted and self administered solutions? Advice from its more mature and more self sufficient playmates? Or the exertion of its powers of self determination in a judicious and alacritous manner? The words of the foremost reggae musician come to mind - “None but ourselves can free our mind”.
As the shale oil revolution propels the United States to greater energy self reliance and others like Jordan to greater developments in renewable energy, what are Nigeria’s plans to reverse the onslaught of a speedily devaluing currency and imploding economy? Both instances mentioned of successful national initiatives serve as examples of governments who not only postured but worked assiduously to positively alter the course of national life in efforts that were well beyond the ambit of any private concern.
Truth be told, Nigeria has several surviving plans and initiatives that insinuate promise but lack a critical ingredient i.e. the provision of adequate opportunity for the sufficient number of participants in technology at all levels to reach the critical mass required to truly tilt the balance in our favour from being a consumer-addict to producer-giver.  The question sticks out like a sore thumb - Why does Nigeria - the most populous black nation on earth - remain a net consumer economy expending billions of dollars of what was once a steadier stream of oil revenue to import technology? I’ll tell you why.

It is not the fact that its large number of citizens need technology to improve their efficiency in the course of professional and occupational pursuits or that of the booming entertainment industry that requires state of the art technology for the addition of finesse to thespian endeavour. 

It is that we are self serving and intellectually lazy. An unfortunate mien that, as far as the rest of the world is concerned, is the ethos of our land. Sadly this has been allowed to fester amid a pungent heap of hedonistic and reprobate manoeuvrings at every level of society that persist as our status quo. It is safe to say that within these borders, the rule and not the exception has been that no socioeconomic initiative, no matter how noble or urgent can see the light of day if its protagonists do not understand the language of ‘settling’ meaning Nigeria’s version of the concept of stakeholder management. And so, we continue to stifle creativity, competition, growth and joy.

It is also because generally speaking, there is  a huge chasm of unfulfilled promises and unrequited loyalties by the government such that the nation’s sense of responsibility to each other has been largely eroded by the myopic will to acquire for survival. The huge potential of Nigeria’s human resources lies greatly and unforgivably untapped as all fall victim of the resource curse and place higher premium on what comes out of the ground than who put it there. If there is any doubt as to this imbalance of priorities, consider that the educational sector of Nigeria remains terribly insufficient in providing skilled manpower. Meanwhile funds continue to be ‘packaged’ and disseminated in inordinate amounts on all sorts of ill conceived, disconnected and counter-active projects without focus and proper prioritisation. Like an unfortunately recalcitrant mother whose illiteracy, obstinacy and ignorance provide the deadly mix that favours administering nothing but analgesics to a child with malaria, the risk grows with each laboured breath of sudden, irrevocable but preventable end of life.

It is time to be reminded that the most technologically advanced countries of the world all achieved superlative feats  of creativity and innovation by self determination with sovereign mandate and leadership serving as the necessary fulcrum and impetus. Real progress is only to be made when a demand is placed on the people to achieve great feats. Such is the nature of good leadership. The idea of government and industry committing to a plan of using indigenously developed software is such a demand.

Why Software? Because in Nigeria, it’s virgin territory with much yet to offer and we spend too much on its importation. Because it does not come shipped in freight containers and get cleared at the ports may not make that immediately obvious. We use a lot of it - from banking software, electronic funds transfer platforms to Enterprise Resource Planning applications for large corporates and government establishments. We are an emerging market with the promise of continuous growth and lots of unused potential.  A lot of that growth will be driven by technology and software is a critical part of that. Additionally, it is less prohibitive than hardware. The case is to be made for the forging of electronic components for the construction of hardware in Nigeria but for that we need to reverse the huge embarrassment of our lack of industrialisation. Textile industries even in cotton producing states are closed and the Ajaokuta steel rolling mill project remains moribund. It would be nice to be able to produce technology from locally extracted materials but that is a story for another time.

Due to the foregoing is the huge burden on Nigeria’s foreign exchange. Dependance on other climes for most of our software we continue to spend forex to acquire and support imported software. There are other factors - other areas where we can  also become self reliant and reduce the pressure on our reserves, but we will stick with software in this discussion. The expectation is that other sectors of the economy will find adequate representation in the clamour for self reliance.According to Global Consulting Firm, PWC, the most populous black nation on earth is not mentioned among the world’s top 100 software earners. In recent history, Countries like China, Brazil and South Korea have developed an extensive software sector relying largely on fulfilling the demand in their domestic market and then handling external demand. The quantum of existent and potential SMEs should be incentive enough for large scale software development for the local  SME market.


What do we stand to gain? We can create jobs on an unprecedented scale and improve the general wellbeing of our people by making Nigeria a veritable knowledge economy. A quick glance through the stocks listings in the dailies will show that we do not create enough value internally to withstand the continued lack of revenue from oil. Foreign software firms who have enjoyed patronage by the country could be invited to set up local development campuses to foster the knowledge and skills to promote cost effective production.

Developing software internally will reduce foreign exchange depletion and improve indigenous skills in technology. The higher local content component will promote a more technology savvy populace which means more effectiveness of the labour force. Generally speaking ICT by its nature provides support to strategic objectives and deepening of the industry will provide support to lofty national visions such as Vision 2020:20 and the MDGs. This implies a revived educational sector due to demand for high quality skills and eventually more cost effective technology solutions and products. 

To get a clearer picture of the challenge being put out, consider this list of government mandated technological projects that changed the course of history. 

To start with a bang, The Manhattan Project, a research and development project that produced the first nuclear weapons during World War II was led by the United States with the support of the United Kingdom and Canada. A project that began modestly in 1939, it grew to employ more than 130,000 people and cost nearly $26 billion in today’s US dollars. It was led by a team of Military and private sector scientists and engineers under the direction of Major General Leslie Groves of the US Army Corp of Engineers  while physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer was the director of the Los Alamos National Laboratory that designed the actual bombs. It was a multidisciplinary effort that produced several allied scientific discoveries that find many industrial applications today. To quote Major General Groves’ words as he bade farewell to the men and women who had worked on the project, 
”Five years ago, the idea of Atomic Power was only a dream. You have made that dream a reality. You have seized upon the most nebulous of ideas and translated them into actualities. You have built cities where none were known before. You have constructed industrial plants of a magnitude and to a precision heretofore deemed impossible. You built the weapon which ended the War and thereby saved countless American lives. With regard to peacetime applications, you have raised the curtain on vistas of a new world”
While I am not fond of the destruction unleashed by the results of the project, its success changed the face of history, helped secure America’s sovereignty and involved the actualisation in Grove’s words of lofty, nebulous dreams in just five (5) years.

Next and more recently, the internet which is now so ubiquitous in its application is a culmination of  work commissioned by the US Department of Defense in the 1960s. In the words of Oliver Burkeman, a writer for the Guardian Newspapers of the UK in an article published in 2009, attempting to express the magnitude of the internet’s impact on modern life is an undertaking that quickly exposes the limits of the english language.
Huge advances made in aeronautics have stemmed from space programmes launched by the Soviet and America governments from as early as the 1950s. In a riveting performance by Benedict Cumberbatch in the 2014 film “The Imitation Game” we are reminded of the man Alan Turing, consider to be the father of theoretical computer science and artificial intelligence who was highly influential in the development of modern computing techniques and provided a formalisation of the concepts of algorithms and computation with the eponymously named Turing machine which is the model for the general purpose computer we use today. Hs lofty achievements were not the product of his sheer genius alone but also due to essential ingredient of opportunity provided by the English government for his theories and skills to be honed. As shown in the film, his work in creating a computational machine to break the code of the enigma device used by the Germans to encrypt sensitive information helped to end the second world war.

The point I am driving at, dear reader is that the Nigerian government needs to pick up on the air of urgency that is wafting from and among the hearts of its people and create adequate opportunities for potential talent in the populace to exercise and develop creative and professional abilities in software. The required approach is not to simply throw money or men at the problem but to constructively develop a plan to maximise the ability of Nigerians to create and innovate.

What can be done now?
The journey of a thousand miles start with a single step and it is said that success is not a destination, but a continuous never ending journey. Steps need to be taken to reverse the trend of fruitless national exertions especially in the light of the countries dwindling resources and take steps that provide the maximum positive impact and value.

We complain about brain drain and our best people migrating to other climes but yet fail to provide safety for their autonomy, freedom to allow them solve complex problems or sufficient assurance that reward will vary proportionately with their effort. The right environment will attract and nurture the right people.

The quaternary sector of the economy which is the knowledge based part of it must receive appropriate attention by closing the gap between the output of the education sector and industry. Our schools apart from being grossly inadequate to meet demand provide little preparation in terms of practical skills to graduands. This is alarming considering that five to ten years from now, they will need to be working in jobs whose descriptions have yet to be written with some skills no one has today. Such is the continuously changing vista of information technology. Research and development is virtually non existent in industry and academia but needs to be properly funded and pursued.

The Ministries of ICT, Science and technology and Trade and Investment should work together to institutionalise a software development/management unit that is charged with the task of planning for Nigeria’s use of locally developed software for mission critical and essential services of government. At the very least, said unit will develop and maintain a blueprint for the creation of a software and technology framework for the agencies of government that emphasises security, efficiency, collaboration coordination and optimisation of processes to manage the government’s cost of technology. Technology should not be procured for government from foreign parties unless it can be proven that the resources do not exist to create such technology locally within reasonable boundaries of time and cost. 

As a matter of national emergency, interest should be taken in the revival of the nations extractive industry such particularly the steel rolling mills of Ajaodkuta and Delta. Their importance in serving as a springboard for Nigeria’s industrial renaissance cannot be overestimated. The multi-billion dollar Ajaokuta steel rolling mill, commonly referred to as the ‘bedrock of Nigeria’s industrialization’ would definitely have been more economically productive if the land upon which it is built was used to grow cassava. The steel plant itself is built on 800 hectares of land within a larger expanse of 24000 hectares. Whatever, the reasons for its lying moribund for decades as a first class national embarrassment, successive governments have failed to execute a plan that will achieve optimal production till date.

In summary, the challenge here presented is for government to commit to significantly cutting its costs by actualising a plan to using locally developed software and technology within a sensible timeframe. On the chance that your mind still clutches desperately to any vestiges of doubt as to the dire need and imperative for the need to take this one, recall the ongoing struggle with insurgency which to a large extent stems from a lack of proper engagement of the country’s youth. It is quite plausible to consider that the alternative outcome for some felled enemy combatant that succumbed to the destructive strategies of radicalisation could have been much better had they been properly exposed and guided to meaningful opportunities. And where they do not take up weapons, the under utilised and disenfranchised find occupation in less than noble pursuits. For this reason and in addition to the natural course of things we are then a nation whose population continues to increase geometrically and the net effect of ignoring this challenge to greater responsibility should only be imagined.
Sadly, but instructively, within the rank and file of the nation’s peoples are those who will most likely never achieve anything of significance despite immense God given talent. Significance for them is an eventuality currently precluded by their continuous battle to maintain subsistence. They are watching, waiting and hoping.

In closing, recall the eminent software entrepreneur and philanthropist Bill Gates who needs little introduction.  He was born on the 28th of October 1955. This date is important because it is the same year that Steve Jobs who founded Apple Computers was born on February 24th and not more than one year apart from Bill Joy (November 8 1954), Vinod Khosla (January 28, 1955), Scott McNealy ( November 13, 1954) and Andy Bechtolsheim(September 30, 1955) - the four of which founded Sun Microsystems - the creators of the Java Programming Language and Network File System. Today, their average age is about 60. They became giants of the technology industry because as children, they witnessed the birth of the Personal Computing revolution in the 1950s and 1960s and their eager, absorbent minds were the incubator for the many ideas that they brought to life.

What opportunities are we exposing the young people of today to? The possibilities are instructive.

4 comments:

  1. Beautifully and intelligently put together. This trend on relying on importation for our needs including software must be reversed for Nigeria to achieve its full potential. Again wonderful piece. Keep it up.

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  2. Thanks henry for the comments and taking the time to read. There is a lot we can do for ourselves without relying on importation. Current economic realities make the case for this clearly. Cheers.

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  3. I have always been one to say "forget government, and assume they will never setup the required environment, the players in the industry themselves must make moves". But your last argument about the 50s and the impact it had on the famous founders of today tilts me I am your direction a bit. In my own opinion though, what can work is to do in technology what is going on in entertainment. Glamorise the current players, empower the upcoming to follow in their steps and kids will get going by themselves. If by some stroke of magic, Nigeria can train 1 million software developers and infuse them with an entrepreneurial mindset, the spark we seek will happen naturally. Atink

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  4. Thanks for reading Ope, I also think a critical part for government to play is to actually use locally developed software. The president has already directed that military weapons be made locally to avoid the embarrassment we had with South Africa recently. And you and I know wars aren't really won in trenches anymore They are won online. The reason government would be training a million devs would be to have them build it a system.
    Thanks man.

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