Nigeria is missing out of the $125 billion big data analytics market and can be part of it by developing emerging market models that are exportable.
Nigeria is currently facing foreign exchange crunch and experts believe that proper data management can earn the country foreign exchange while growing a new crop of young data experts.
“Nigeria has what it takes to raise a new generation of world-class data scientists, who can tap into the $125 billion big data analytics market. Facts from the IDC already indicate a need for almost 200,000 people with deep analytical skills in the US by 2018, and a requirement of five times that number for positions with added data management and interpretation capabilities.
“If we act fast, Nigeria can be at the centre of this, thus maximising foreign exchange earnings and resulting in substantial job creation,” Bayo Adekanmbi, a C-Level executive at MTN Nigeria, who recently launched a book entitled, ‘The Future is Shared,’ said.
According to Adekanmbi, Nigeria should emulate India that has understood how to monetise its own data and develop emerging market models that can be exported for foreign exchange earnings.
“I am passionate about this, because it will be a secondary slavery if we miss this next wave of business revolution and lose out on the opportunity to build the local capacity that is required for the evolving global shifts,” he said.
He said data science and big data had huge the market size, and only 2 percent of it could bring over N1 trillion in return to Nigeria.
Many sectors in Nigeria do not have credible data needed for planning. In agriculture, many farmers in rural areas still base their judgments on myths, like their counterparts in Kenya who wait for butterflies to come in order to detect rains, according to Uyi Stewart, a US-based Nigerian leading data scientist and IBM chief data scientist. This is foreclosing investment in many sectors in the Nigerian economy.
“Our travel, hospitality, and even educational institutions will be indirect beneficiaries of this huge growth. It will naturally attract serious investment in other sectors, because the intellectual capital required to power emerging opportunities in power, manufacturing, digital innovations and many other sectors will find maximum expression in Nigeria,” Adekanmbi said in an interview.
He said the circular economy celebrates repair, reuse and remanufacture as its pillars, which are essential to achieving sustainable resource use, adding that Nigeria cannot continue to consume and produce arbitrarily, when mechanisms exist to recycle, reallocate and reconfigure previously used products to serve more people, at a lower cost, with minimal impact on the environment.
“I am sure you know how many international companies have set up their offices in Bangalore, India, because of the fact that it has become a concentrated domain for IT,” he said.
He argued that Nigeria can only maximise the sharing economy business model and other emerging digital disruptions if it is able to build world-class local capacity in data science.
“Of course, there are offshore solutions that are ready-made but they will fail to understand the context that uniquely defines Nigerians. No online sentiment miner can interpret our nuances with precision by using algorithms built for developed markets. We have to build our own, one that is true to our reality. For example, we are going to see a huge revolution in out-of-bank lending due to the growth of FinTech peer-to-peer social lending opportunities, which rely on an aggregation of customers’ social reputation built on social footprints like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Instagram,” he further said.
