As the world increasingly moves toward unipolar systems, with its merits and demerits, operators in Nigeria’s telecom and technology sector have been encouraged to prioritize business sustainability and rely more on local resources for their operations.
The experts who gathered in Lagos recently at the instance of Telcomms and Technology Sustainability Working Group, TTSWG are concerned about the need for long-term business sustainability as they encouraged operators to reduce dependence on external factors and strengthen local capacities to ensure resilience in an increasingly uncertain global landscape.
With world powers dictating global economic and geopolitical trends, this will likely come with risks when there is heavy dependence on external factors for technologies, for funding and for supply chains.
The forum held in Lagos was designed to ignite organizations in the telecoms and technology space to start thinking about sustainability and how they can be more sustainable as organizations by promoting local growth and local technology, support the growth of digital skills, the growth of indigenous innovation in capturing all the multiple business opportunity gaps for telecoms and technology space in Nigeria.
This therefore calls for Nigerian telecom and tech operators to rethink their strategies and adopt home grown solutions, says Bankole Oloruntoba, CEO of Nigeria Climate Innovation Center at the TTSWG programme.
Bankole said this is where business model review comes in as everything has a business model.
“The moment we are able to understand the business model of how we can approach local partners or other domestic investors, then we have a Nigerian business model that is working for us. There is no hard and fast rule of how local investors can partner. It’s all based on the interest of local investors”, Bankole said.
Bankole said that what operators within the technology eco-system need to do is that seeing that there’s a shift in direct foreign investments, “they need to start looking at which sort of business model can help local investors thrive faster and what sort of availability of market is there to be able to achieve the $3 trillion market”.
He further said that sustainability should not be viewed as another NGO jargon but as a corporate and commercial strategy.
He challenged managers of technology organisations not to think of sustainability as a limiting factor, but as another complementary tool to how they can grow their overall strategy and their company expansion.
“ It is not about you ending what you are doing, but it’s about you looking at another model to be able to improve on what you’re doing and at the same time reduce your overhead costs. And also be most importantly responsible for every single thing that affects the growth of your business, which involves environment, social, and governance, which involves accountability”.
Iyin Aboyeji, founding partner of the Fund for Africa’s Future who spoke at the programme redefined sustainability for technology and telecoms players from the perspective of the need for them to be independent as opposed to dependent on external suppliers given the current global trends.
Aboyeji fears the negative consequences of energy, talent and technology dependency on foreign players in event that Western policy goes against Nigeria.
Looking at the international community, he said it is really important for organisations in the technology space to start taking their future into our own hands, as there would likely be a few policies that one way or the other would definitely affect the industry.
To mitigate effects, Aboyeji suggested localizing more of technology stack, the software, the hardware, the energy source, to see how much of that can be produced locally where we can have some general controls. So that “we are not caught in- between two great powers” He also emphasised importance of building talent locally.
In her discussion, Omobolanle Victor- Laniyan CEO, Kratos Sustainability Consults Ltd said sustainability is broader in concept. She said sustainability is about providing innovative solutions to supporting efforts at addressing social and economic and environmental challenges. She also underscored the importance of collaboration in achieving sustainability.
She said integrating sustainability into technology, telecoms, or any other sector is no longer optional.
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