Columnists in Nigeria excitedly announce the latest electric car technology, and how it means progress. Yes, it means progress for humanity as a whole, but for Nigeria in particular, it is demonstrative of a trend that is extremely dangerous.

Oil prices have dropped. They will continue to drop. Technology is making it feasible to get oil in places that they previously were not accessible from. The big multinationals are selling their oil fields in Nigeria. When you see people exiting a business, what is this indicative of?

Oil is dying. The western world knows it, that is why they are heavily investing in converting the things that used to use oil to electric. The newest cars are electric or hybrid. This trend will continue, because there are many ways now to generate electricity from non-oil sources. 30% of Germany's electricity is renewable and non-oil. Their cars will be powered by this same electricity. What will they need Nigerian oil for?

www.nairaland.com/attachments/2232568_gasflaringpollutionnigeria_jpeg1bd04d828d4e1e50cc0f01c3a0cd8234

People do not really realise this, but almost any income you see in Nigeria is trickle-down oil money. Our entire government (the biggest spender) is almost entirely powered by oil money. Even the taxes collected are re-collected oil money.

Even the new fangled e-businesses – if you have someone buying a pair of boots, he got the money from his job at a security company, who make their money guarding oil workers. So much of the money rotating about comes indirectly from oil.

Now when the oil prices drop, and they will, a lot of that money will dry up. People will stop having free cash, and the economy will dry up. So we will become dependent on our manufacturing and exports. Which don’t exist.

Are we going to build a machine manufacturing industry now? An industry that took Germany and Japan the last 100 years to build? What chance does Nigeria have, considering how few engineers we have, and how all good engineers easily find jobs in the U.S or U.K? To do so will be next to impossible, realistically. Nigeria will likely never be able to compete with other countries when it comes to machine manufacturing.

I am biased, but we do have a chance. Our programmers. I have worked with programmers all over the world, in Germany, China, India, etc. And I have found something – Nigerian programmers are actually great. The programmers in Nigeria are great, the ones working outside of Nigeria are great. Nigeria has a unique chance to build a manufacturing and an export industry right now by focusing on knowledge based skills.

The industry of producing information based intangibles is new. It’s like when countries were building cars at the turn of the last century. That’s where we are right now. If we invest right, Nigeria can become one of the top five exporters of software and software products. And when that oil dries up, our liquidity will come from the software.

The government of a country is responsible for the long-term outlook of the country. The software industry is one of the few viable industries that can be invested in right now to give Nigeria the long-term ability to export goods and earn revenue. Entertainment is another one. Other older industries like machine manufacturing or tourism will be really hard to activate because of the existing competition out there.

The private sector is supposed to be selfish. And everyone in the private sector needs to realise if their business is long term oil dependent. If it is, they should start investing in industries that are not. Software is one of them.

Action plan

1. Private sector: Divest into non-oil dependent industries. Consider the software export market and outsourcing centers. Build software local so you have expertise for the future.

2. Government:

- Fund the tech departments of universities somewhat better.
- Government software should exist as tiny modules that are completed by smaller companies, so there is steady project flow to keep the companies occupied (not monolithic contracts). To make this happen, there will likely need to be a very well designed technical department to design such.
- Incentivize software export. E.g for the first $10,000 brought in via an exported piece of software, match it with $10,000 tax credit
- Have trade-fairs where Nigerian companies can demonstrate what they have built

3. NGOs

- Create avenues that enable developers understand how they can sell software (not just create it)
- Help software developers come up with structures around what they build so it becomes commercially viable
- Create paths-to-market that make it easier for devs to monetize
- Do not just focus on products under your ‘leadership’. When you see folks doing good stuff, give them the additional resources they need (e.g design talent) even if they did not pass through your ‘program’

The danger for Nigeria is real. Our entire economy is based around a resource that is rapidly losing value. We really cannot afford to wait much longer before investing in viable things we can export in the future. When economies shrink rapidly, war breaks out. Businesses collapse. The government takes on debt.

Germany started its push to transition to renewable energy in 1980. 34 years later, they have achieved 30%. It takes time to create a transition such as this. We need to start now.

Source: http://techcabal.com/2014/10/29/software-developers-help-save-nigeria-oil-dries/

Author: Mark Essien, founder of Nigeria's biggest and best hotel booking site (Hotels.ng)

Photo Credit: https://www.flickr.com/photos/59138075@N00/1236287628/

Mark has a point but at the moment, the demand and supply graph doesn't look good. To make matters worse, government has a terrible soft spot for software developed abroad.

Nice piece

Let them get to work,why wait till it dries up

I will be one of them

We've been waiting for that time since several years ago. Hackers be lying in wait...

E-Commerce sites like , www.Jumia.com , www.Kaymu.com will blossom
Business Social Network Sites like : www.Brainterm.org will explode
Forums like: nairaland.com , naija pals .com will get more revenue from advertisers

Mobile apps will gain more investors
Developers in general will earn much more as monthly take home.

More people will drop out of school to start new tech companies .
New, younger and smarter billionaires in their 20s will emerge.

Younger and smarter presidents and politicians will emerge...
And america says, oil prices will drop further across the world, so dont expect any miracle on the naira.






so





















NB:
If you always wanted to own 24 private jets like some saudi prince
Buy my whole street and return the houses and properties to their respective owners before i bought them, like Mark Zuckerberg
Buy 99 iphone 6 to propose to my gf like some chinese developer
Buy a whole island like Larry Elison the owner of Java and Oracle
Own $7.5b in my account but ride bicycle to work like Dustin Moskovitz
Where $20,000 jean like them kids a Sillicon Valley

Ask all the school in a town to send a list of everything they ever wanted to build or own, then pay for it all like Mark and his wife.
Kick polio out of every fuckkking country like bill gates
Give a speech to graduating students at havard and other top universities like Steve Jobs


You are a developer and your time is near...

Am a software developer

Am Back

Story
GEJ u won't go scot free

Investing in software developers/developing in Nigeria is a waste of time and money. The competition out there will even cripple our own local software developers even before they know it. First where are we even going to export the technology to? To Europe that has the best software environment and developers or to America that is currently leading in software technology.

• India/China have invested seriously in software technology but till date they still lack behind in that aspect.

• Nigeria doesn't even have a steady power
• what is even Nigeria's database construction?
• our operating system contruction is very poor.
• no compiler contructions.

Nigeria should just invest in agriculture because that's the future.

Well, theoretically true.

But to accelerate that, we need policies that encourages software developers. Such as those regarding intellectual property.

To a large extent, we need a bit of tech savvy leaders wielding some administrative offices in Nigeria.

True, this is the best time d government should look for other means of generating external revenues for the economy instead of wining about the drop in oil price, but don't worry @ op, when Buhari is sworn in as president, He will do all this & more
Sai Buhari
Vote for change

You no lie at all..Software Development rocks....

I think we need to find the solution for it,even though technology will serve us good but that doesn't mean it has no solution,but if I really get what you are saying is that Nigerians shouldn't fully depend on oil.

Tell me something

They will not understand Mr seun. IT is seen as oyibo thing in Nigeria, they dont know that americans appreciate foreigners like nigerians more than their own people who dont have time to focus and commit much brain work to it, but here we neglect and abandon them

Ok

I hope tis possible...

I pray o

That would be great.
Action speaks louder than words though.

Una dey joke.


How can ICT survive without power.


On this

Government

Fund the tech departments of universities somewhat better.

Yes this is very important.

That is to say, they will have to sack all this pascal and outdated programming language lecturers and employ those that knows the world trending programming language. Check Nigerian university curriculum and see for yourself. It seems guys are wasting their 4 years studying rubbish.



I commento ma reservo.

Nice write-up.

Just here to read comments

Until software developers can grow out of their geek culture and learn to be innovators and entrepreneurs, there is no hope competing against foreign competition.

All those good points mean little if all out IT culture is not organized on a global standard.

@Seun i completely agree. I was at the Ministry of Communications Technology the other day and i was asking the Minister and his advisers, "When was the last time we organized a talent hunt and exhibition in the IT sector"? All we hear these days is entertainment. While these are good for social integration and entertainment, what is being done about the real talent sector that is capable of generating foreign and internal revenue for the country? We have talented IT Professionals and Enthusiasts and i believe we havent missed it yet, We can invest more on this sector and train these guys. It takes about 1 Year to fully train an IT professional from novice to professional, then Let him develop and perfect with experience, and it is something Nigeria can do. We cannot afford to be paying other countries to develop our technology. Imagine a certain popular bank in Nigeria paying N4.5 billion naira to an Indian startup company to develop its banking applicaton software.

We really have to focus on IT Development in this country. Invest on IT as much as we are investing on Agric.

Establish a Bank of Technology just like we have Bank of Agriculture, to invest, finance, empower and develop IT in the country.

Also, open IT research centers all over the country, something like e-library and research centers so that people in the IT sector can come together and network, freelance and also have unlimited access to electricity and bandwidth for their projects.

well said

Youngzedd:
Una dey joke. How can ICT survive without power.

The software development aspect of ICT actually doesn't require much power. How much power does a laptop require?