‘We want to foster policy dialogue in the Nigerian digital economy’

Margaret Olele, CEO of the American Business Council in this interview with BusinessDay’s Frank Eleanya, speaks about the upcoming Digital Economy Conference and its potential to drive a policy dialogue in Nigeria’s digital economy push. She also looks at the relationship between the United States of America and Nigeria in terms of investments in digital technology and the opportunities that lie ahead for both countries.

What is the objective of the Digital Economy Conference?

Technology has changed our lives in a very spectacular way especially with the adoption of things like artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning, cloud computing, and e-commerce. More importantly with the novel coronavirus, there is an acceleration of this transformation, and the need to further harness the digital economy as the driver of growth and innovation cannot be overemphasised.

When you look at innovation and the impact of the digital economy; in education, communication, and productivity during this pandemic, you will understand that this is really a timely conversation. Against this backdrop, the American Business Council and the US African Business Centre, and the US Chamber of Commerce is sharing this digital transformation series to serve as a platform to engage with the public sector, the private sector, individuals, and academia. I will like to note that this is not the first time we are having this conversation. This will be the third in the series of Digital Transformation Conference. The first one we had in South Africa, the second in Kenya, and the third in Nigeria. Each of these countries represents the sub-regional bloc in the conversation that we are looking at.

Overall, the objective of the conference is to foster policy dialogue in the Nigerian digital economy across three distinct policy areas including, enabling skills and workforce development; drive Nigeria’s digital transformation; to enable trade conversation, drive investment, and having an effective cybersecurity policy and strengthen Nigeria’s digital ecosystem.

In summary, how would Nigeria leverage its time now and grow in digital transformation and improve her own economy? To do that you need to drive policy conversations that can improve trade, the necessary skills that will be required to drive it, and also have a sense of how we protect cyberspace in Nigeria.

What is your definition of the digital economy?

When you talk about the digital economy it refers to a broad range of economic activities that you use ICT-based information, knowledge, and skill in the factors of production. When you talk about issues around the internet, cloud computing, big data, fintech, and other new technologies that help collate, store, analyse and share information digitally and can also help transform interactions, then you are technically running into that space. Overall, when we talk about the digitalisation of the economy we are just looking at how using technology creates efficiencies. We also know it affects the individual aspect of society and the way they interact and bring about broad sociological changes. It is those economic activities that we carry out using technology as a way of oiling the growth of different sectors of our existence.

How do you see Nigeria’s digital development so far?

Countries with infrastructure that supports internet connectivity and advanced digital platforms that tend to leverage information and communication technology to help businesses stay afloat often do a lot better in their growth.

There is a vibrant ecosystem of digital entrepreneurship in cities like Lagos, Abuja, among others in Nigeria that are supported by dynamic incubators and venture capital companies and digital startups and a lot of the diaspora opportunities. I will also mention that US tech companies are really supporting to catalyze the growth in this area.

As the biggest economy in Africa which also has one of the largest populations of young people in the world, Nigeria is well-positioned to develop a strong and rich economy that will have a transformational impact on the country.

In terms of policy framing, we have the national digital framework and strategy to position the Nigerian economy, in order to take advantage of the many opportunities that the digital space will provide and in line with the vision of the presidency to diversify the growth of the economy beyond oil and gas. There has been a lot of interest in the digital space. The point is there are a lot of policy conversations like the Nigeria Recovery and Growth Plan 2017 and 2020 that recognise the need for a digital-led strategy to make the Nigerian economy more competitive in the 21st century.

In 2015, the NCC proposed a transition of the economy into a digital economy with digital infrastructure and more specifically broadband as the key driver of economic growth. There is also Nigeria’s International Connectivity which is reasonably well developed and they are building different platforms such as the central portal for government services. I would say that there are efforts being made. When we had our US Impact Survey done in conjunction with the US government, PwC and KPMG it showed that the multinationals have a local digital content target and this reflected in the area of the product, people, and supply chain which has been the anchor point of West African expansion.

You see the private sector showing keen interest, you see the government putting together and framing policies, and you find the youths with a bubbling mind and very aggressive intellectually to be able to capture this. How well are they doing? I will say that Nigeria is capturing only a fraction of its digital economic potential. I think we need to make strategic investments to develop the overall dynamic transformative digital economy. This is what the World Bank assessment said.

We still believe there is room for improvement. We believe that we are almost at the dawn of getting into the space that we need to be but we are not there yet. It is like you see the promised land but it is a mirage. You have to put quite a lot of things in place to get there.

What are the lessons you think Nigeria can learn and localise from the US’s very vibrant ecosystem?

One of the things I can say is, every country is a sovereign state which means that you are not under compulsion to do a cut and paste. So what is happening in this country doesn’t have to happen in another country. One of the things you can do is leverage the learning from countries that have been successful in being able to use technology to their advantage. One of the areas that one has to look at is in terms of how to ensure that you have an enabling environment in terms of policy and regulation to drive foreign direct investment into Nigeria. How do you encourage education that would focus on issues of what we now call STEAM not STEM to encourage growth around understanding and knowledge? How do you prepare hubs and incubation centres that can have this kind of mindset that has made these countries grow? How do you encourage SMEs in a way and manner that is in the US in that the bulk of jobs tie a lot to SMEs?

You have to see it from the point of view of policy, building capacity, ensuring that the public-private partnerships happen a lot and not leave a lot of things in the hands of the government. There is so much more they can do. These are the learnings that we can tap into from the US to help grow our space and be adventurous in expanding the conversation around digital technology into other sectors. How are we able to ensure that we expand the base in terms of bringing a lot more people within the country have access to technology which is something that you see in the US and other countries we have seen a burgeoning trajectory in the fintech space. We need to understand that the makeup of the digital economy in the US shifted over a period of time where we saw the digital economy grow 9.9 percent over a 20 year period. What happened was that there was a shift in hardware component which fell from 20 percent to about 7 percent where we see a lot of issues around e-commerce and digital media going growing significantly from 5 percent to 15 percent again understanding that it is having a mindset of moving from that which is a very solid structure to software like e-commerce which doesn’t require hardware.

Let’s look at the conference and some of the speakers that you have assembled. What are the challenges that you look forward to being addressed in the course of the conference?

Yes, the conference will feature high-level ministers like the Minister of Communication, DG of NITDA, NOTAP, NCC, different high-level stakeholders, and from the US top officials are going to be there, as well as public and private sector people.

I usually don’t like talking about the challenges but only looking more at the half-full as opposed to having an empty perspective. So instead of the challenges, we can see them as opportunities in growing our skills and workforce so that we can develop the digital economy. We can then periscope into the policies and all that we have and saying if they are the best fit, to kind of rehash, reframe or remodify in a way to incentify trade and investment opportunities. We are hoping that at the end of the day we are able to create opportunities for conversations like moving Nigeria from being seen as a cyber swamp to a place it becomes a cyber opportunity with experts coming out of the space that can build up cyberspace. It is also an opportunity to strengthen our ecosystem. Some of the speakers from outside the country would share the opportunities from their countries that we can leverage.

Tell us about the Digital Entrepreneurship Competition

As part of the 2020 Digital Economy Conference, we will be having this entrepreneurship competition to award innovators for developing solutions to systematic problems and challenges through their digital products and services. This is especially as they have been able to develop such solutions to create a positive impact on Nigerian citizens during the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. Overall we are looking at providing an award of $25,000 allocated in cash and in-kind and which will be distributed among the top three winners.

This is the first time that this competition is happening at the digital conference. The first two conferences that we had did not have it.

Who is eligible to participate and what are the criteria for selection?
You have to be a startup or innovator whose 51 percent of Nigerian ownership must be incorporated or registered with the CAC. Government agencies or public administrations and non-profits are not eligible. You have to one physical location in Nigeria not older than five years and not part of a franchise brand under licensing and distribution with any company outside Nigeria and obviously not engaging in any illegal activity, and not listed under the US Department of Treasury sanction list. There is also a website they can go to register. It is already live.

After the winner is declared do you have plans to monitor their progress?

The journey towards selecting a winner will at some have ten finalists before we further reduce them to three. The reason we are working with the organisations that seem to have a certain level of structure no matter how small is that we believe that they are responsible to manage their own. However, we plan to have a lot of US companies lined up to support in terms of capacity building and training. We have some of them that would be training these startups for up to six months. Around that period there is an opportunity to monitor how well they are doing. I see a situation where, as we do this on an annual basis we would have almost like an academy of like minds that can help support and grow others. We do have mentorship opportunities and capacity building for them with organisations like IBM, HP, Microsoft, Oracle, etc which will run for a period of six months to about one year enough for us to track and monitor how they are doing.

Do you see this conference deepening the relationship between the US and Nigeria?

It looks like it has become really trendy for Nigerian startups to be acquired. Someone has asked why don’t we allow these companies to grow to a point where they can now begin to sell these brands as franchises as opposed to being bought over. I will say that the relationship is there already. There has been a lot of investment into Nigerian startups and I don’t see that changing over a period of time. What I am hoping is that Nigerian startups get big enough to be the ones to acquire. I see a continuous relationship