As the price of crude oil continues to dwindle on the international market, experts have advised that oil-dependent nations of the world leverage technology as a driving tool for growth and advancement. Last year, the United States, appreciating the relevance of ICT, tripled investments in accelerators and incubator programs, while the United Kingdom made direct investment of 1.1 billion pounds in Cyber Security.
Meanwhile, Nigeria is still playing catch-up in this space. As of 2015, the contribution of ICT to Nigeria’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) inched close to 11 percent fuelled by the deregulation of the telecommunications industry. However, experts insist there is a lot of room for improvement. They believe Nigeria can potentially overtake South Africa as the continent’s largest ICT market with more investments. It is instructive, they argue, that Nigeria did not make the World Economic Forum’s (WEF) list of African countries that integrate ICT in their socio-economic development such as Mauritius, South Africa, Seychelles, Morocco, Rwanda and several others.
“I have always advocated for the growth of technology and exportation of Nigeria’s talent. It would be nice for us to grow our own tech space enough to attract a global audience,” says Sola Teniola, President, Association of Telecommunications Companies of Nigeria (ATCON). He adds that Nigeria has unexploited talent in the software technology space, and the way forward is more attention and investment in the industry.
John Obaro, Managing Director, SystemSpecs, has been making the same argument for years. He insists Nigeria can potentially influence the global software technology landscape and reap huge benefits if the government makes efforts to exploit the latent opportunities in ICT. On several occasions, he has advised that the government achieve this by investing in indigenous software and ceasing to embark on foreign trade missions without including Nigerian software entrepreneurs or products. In a recent interview, he decried the brain drain that has seen virile tech talents leaving the country’s shores to pitch their tents elsewhere for more encouragement and recognition.
Government seems to be making tracks in that direction. Recently, it showcased the country’s leading technology solution providers and start-ups at the Gulf Information Technology Exhibition (GITEX), reputed to be the third largest technology event on the planet. GITEX 2016 attracted over 150,000 participants from 144 countries, with over 42,000 exhibitors worldwide showcasing cutting-edge technological innovations.
Indigenous software provider SystemSpecs was one of the frontline tech companies that represented Nigeria at the event. The company is credited with inventing Remita, the payment gateway powering the Federal Government’s much-vaunted Treasury Single Account (TSA) policy. Before the software was introduced, Nigeria’s Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDA) operated over 17,000 poorly managed accounts across different banks, which bred a culture of misappropriation and starved the government of funds. However, the TSA has successfully helped collapse these multiple accounts into a single account managed by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN).
“Based on our success with the national TSA project, we have been receiving great interest from other African countries to replicate the same model. We have developed a robust financial technology platform that can compete anywhere in the world. We are therefore very comfortable taking Remita out of Nigeria and becoming one of the indigenous organisations that can help our country become a net foreign exchange earner from technology,” said Deremi Atanda, Executive Director, at GITEX 2016.
SystemSpecs also leveraged the event to announce the proposed launch of the mobile version of its Remita software before the end of 2016. The mobile application, it said, will enable millions of Nigerians make payments from their commercial or micro-finance bank accounts, debit or credit cards to thousands of merchants and billers in Nigeria.
With more government support of indigenous innovations, experts project the Nigerian ICT industry will become a viable economic mainstay before long. Thankfully, Mohammed Onawo the chairman, House of Representatives Committee on ICT was at GITEX alongside Adebayo Shittu, Minister of Communications and Isa Ali Ibrahim, National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA) Director General, who assured that “with what I have seen, it has encouraged me to take a lot of things back home. We need to encourage our IT firms and technology start-ups so that more Nigerian companies can do what Remita is doing for the economy.”
Jumoke Akiyode
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