The challenges of software development in Nigeria

Ineffective monitoring, support and patronage of locally developed software is stunting the prospects in that sector, in which experts say Nigeria has considerable comparative advantage and the local and international markets are vast and lucrative.

The experts further say that the biggest challenge of the industry is that while local expertise abounds, governments and corporates in Nigeria still purchase their software solutions abroad, despite over a decade of promising to fully implement the local content policy.

“If Nigerians, including government, begin to buy from Nigerian software providers, we would have an industry that would internally generate over $2 billion annually and that alone would spiral into other African countries, then to other countries all over the world, says Abiodun Atobatele,CEO, ATB Techsoft, an indigenous software development company.

“We have the National Office for Technology Acquisition and Promotion (NOTAP), whose role is to regulate importation of technical skills, such as software but is NOTAP aware of what is going on internally? Are they aware that most of these products that they are approving for companies to go and buy abroad are available in Nigeria?

“The regulators, including the National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA) need to look inwards themselves. They need to organise quarterly workshops and conferences where people and companies can come and showcase technology that has been developed internally and keep records, so that when companies go to the regulators to ask for permission to purchase specific solutions from America, NOTAP can tell them that 10 companies already have that software in Nigeria,” Atobatele told BusinessDay.

BusinessDay finds that Nigeria’s emerging software industry is still a long shot from being the ideal ecosystem for tech-driven entrepreneurship to perform optimally.

According to a report from the Institute of Software Practitioners of Nigeria (ISPON), software developed by local companies can serve the diverse needs of over 25,000 ministries, departments and agencies [MDAs] across the three tiers of government. However, less than 20 percent of software used by government agencies is locally developed and those that are in use are priced at ridiculously low rates, simply because they are not foreign.

Pius Okigbo, past President of ISPON told BusinessDay that “There is nothing Nigerian developers cannot write in software programmes but nobody is ready to trust us and pay us huge amounts of money so as to make us bigger players in Nigeria and this is a big tragedy.”

Okigbo added that, “We have developed some good solutions that foreign solutions cannot match. Foreign software became the humongous behemoths they have become because of huge patronage. They all have their humble beginnings”.

According to him, the foreign software companies achieved rapid growth with encouragement from their home governments. That was how the likes of SAP, Microsoft and Oracle have become local and global household names.

“Nigerian software companies need similar support from the government and the private sector players. I still maintain today that there is no foreign Human Resources (HR) software system that is better than the locally-developed HR package.”

In 2014, the Federal Government revealed that plans were being made to ensure that Nigeria, Africa’s largest economy by GDP, produces 250 indigenous and sustainable software companies by 2017. However, two years after the set target, stakeholders still complain of the widespread scepticism by organisations and government about the competence and talent of local software developers.

Paul Uzoechina, the Administrative Secretary at ISPON told BusinessDay that ISPON currently has over 100 registered corporate members of the association with a special category for software startups and individual members.

“To become a member, corporate organisations must have software as their primary source of income, be duly registered in Nigeria CAC, must be seen paying its taxes, must have practicing software developers on its management team and board and must be able to provide proof of software that it has developed. For individuals, as long as you can code and you make a living from coding, you can become a member,” Uzoechina said.

The most popular locally developed software, according to him are, Remita authored by Systemspecs Ltd, which is used to facilitate the Treasury Single Account (TSA) as mandated by the Federal Government to remit funds from the accounts of all MDAs to a central account, dController Enterprise System authored by BSSL Technologies, used by many government department and quasi government departments and is currently hosted in the cloud running in all states of the country, e-Government Operation Solution (eGOS) authored by Connect Technologies ltd,  a platform designed to integrate people, processes and Technology and extends the reach of Government, Orbit-R Banking System authored by Neptune Software Ltd,  a Core banking application for micro finance banks covering diverse operations and iX-Trac authored by Infosoft Nigeria Ltd, a Capital Market solution which has been in operation in the Nigerian Capital market for the past 19 years.

John Obaro, CEO Systemspecs , says,“a good number of youngsters are showing interest in software developing. We just need to encourage innovation and create an atmosphere for people to blossom and I believe we can play the world from software. We need to encourage as many people as possible to go on inventing apps for instance. Some may fail but we just need a few successes to do well first in Nigeria and then hit the global market.”

Obaro further observes that many local developers are making massive investments in international training, certifications and partnerships, in an attempt to put their solutions in pole position to compete with their counterparts in other parts of the world.

“We have Nigerians from the best schools around the world, so we have the skills, competence, creativity and the drive but we also have challenges with the enabling environment and challenges with business ethics but we need to realise that these are not unsolvable problems and we need to remain determined and continue to move forward.

“First, we need to optimise in the local market and then the external market too. A lot of Nigerians did not appreciate software development and so it was a popular declaration that people developing software were making money for doing nothing. Intellectual work is not as appreciated as physical work and that was why there was a controversy with Remita, the indigenous software developed for the single treasury account (TSA),” Obaro said.

Large scale buyers of foreign software include companies in most of Nigeria’s major industries, including banks and financial services, manufacturing, oil and gas, telecommunications, ministries and the ICT industry itself, which relies almost entirely on foreign operating systems.