Helping to grow the Nigerian Tech Ecosystem - A call to the big local tech companies

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I hope the right people in our big local tech companies (BLTCs) get to read this post, and start playing bigger roles in our communities like Laravel Nigeria, Localhost, Angular Nigeria, Datalytics, DotNet, forLoop, Python Nigeria, HackGrowth, and of course Square by Devcenter.

Although I didn’t mention TEDx in the original post, because it isn’t a tech community. But I feel I should mention that the TEDx Surulere event which held a few weeks ago–which was awesome, could have been better, if it had more sponsors.

The more the BLTCs stay outside these growing local tech communities, the more they allow foreign companies take a stronger presence in their own backyard.

Do read the post on Medium, and also share to as many people as you know in these BLTCs. The communities are rising, and they (the BLTCs) may lose out to foreign companies, if they don’t act.

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Out of interest, from your Devcenter perch - do you always get the feeling the big local companies are not interested? Or they just don’t see the value?

Also, how many companies in your opinion are ‘big local tech’ companies? Depending on how you determine them…doesn’t seem like a lot to me. Maybe the only way this can grow is the way it’s growing - startups and individuals doing the work.

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Perch is an interesting word to use lol.

Most of my thoughts on this were gotten from discussions I had with or listened to from various meetup organizers. My thoughts were also influenced by a study I did on how Google utilized its GDG program to build developer adoption of its product, and how Facebook, GitHub, Product Hunt and a few others are beginning to see the need to build their product communities.

The big local tech companies may be interested, and from conversations I have been privileged to have with some of them, it appears so. And if it appears so, then, they see some value in it. But even at this, they do not actively go out to look for it, or position themselves in a way, that lets them get it.

Take for instance Interswitch. They are launching a cloud platform. Analyzing the product off the top of my head, I see their main users being local developers or startups. If this is the case, how do they plan to get customers, who have become loyal, to entities like Amazon, Google Cloud, Heroku, Digital Ocean or the likes?

They could do this by increasing the awareness of this product. This would normally be done via paid advertisement and some paid social media or promo campaigns. But overtime, we have learnt that paid triggers (advertisements and promos) do not last, they only bring in reward seeking users, and these are not the kind of users they would need to scale such a platform.

They would need loyal users, the kind Google has gotten through their community GDG, the kind Facebook is creating using Facebook Developer Circles, the kind GitHub has built using the GitHub Community. If they choose this, the strongest and surest way I know they can do this, is by building their product audience. That can be done through a series of processes targeted at developer communities were their ideal users are. Now Interswitch is one out of some of them, and I have a feeling, if I study the rest, I would see a similar case.

So they seem interested, they may have seen the value, but it appears they do not yet realize how big the value is. Foreign tech companies who have finished utilizing their own communities and are coming to their back yard to take their own communities. Communities which they laid the foundation for.

True! They aren’t a lot, maybe they are, who knows lol.

But if they leave it for Startups and Individuals to keep doing the work, they shouldn’t feel bad when they get pushed out of business by these guys, or developers and designers (some who are doing the work) ask for more money, or in some way or another they lose out.

Basically if they leave the growing to someone else and they don’t lend a hand, they will lose, and they will lose big time.

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Devcenter is a vantage position as you guys (along with others), are doing a great job for the ecosystem at large.

In regards to Interswitch - I look at them differently. Of course they’re a very successful company generating massive revenue yearly. But if they executed even a tenth of what you’ve described that they should do in the community - it will suck out a lot of air and innovation from startups (not restricted to fintech startups). They can’t seem to focus on anything other than their cash cow and will end up wasting everyone’s time. So let’s be glad that this incumbent is not getting in the way.

As an example, have you seen their certification programme for students? They seem to be experts at rolling out half-hearted attempts to engage with community.

Back to the need for ‘BLTC’, my argument is that there are very few of them. And their role (using Interswitch as an example), can be detrimental. But I understand why it might appear an easy one to fix. Like why can’t someone with position and clout in Interswitch read this post and start doing the no-brainer things? Sponsor this…sponsor that. Hire a few good people specifically for developers relations. Stop implementing half-baked ideas etc.

But what about the hard problems with no easy fix like our educational system?

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True, very true.

For our educational system, that will require some work. Mentor communities are trying, but a lot more needs to be done.

I had thought about how I could help make the education system a bit better a while back, and one idea came to mind. Working through school Alumni to create study groups, meetups and hold short term programs that help the students see and learn beyond their curriculums. Also going through the Alumni to help the school develop new curriculums and training programs.

All this is still in my head, but I know somehow there is definitely a way, as I have the will.

What ideas do you have though, how do you think this can be done?

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If I condensed my thoughts, I would say:

  1. Our education system is poor but all the resources to be a good developer/designer are freely available or within reasonable reach. From MOOC to countless YouTube videos, blog posts, forums, etc. There’s just so much to bridge the gap.

  2. What our education institutions can instead do is provide the incentives and ways to make above resources available to the prospective Nigerian developer/student. Not even in a big way like Stanford/ YC combination, but little but deliberate steps like incorporating those resources in class lectures, assignments, exam questions etc.

  3. Provide facilities to help projects grow. It’s not coincidence that a lot of startups get formed in universities as. However, in our case, there’s hardly any help. Practical steps like free internet, PCs, server etc will go a long way

I don’t know much. But I suspect if above could be done, it will be of more value to a student (future dev), than getting a free Interswitch t-shirt.

In all, our ecosystem/community is growing and young and one thing that we can all agree is that - a good Nigerian dev will perform as well as the best anywhere. In this way, I’m talking code for code, pixel for pixel.

The next step, will be to show people a new way to think and operate.

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Hope it is OK to “join the 2-man convo” between @PapaOlabode and @sprime :slight_smile:

So here are my 2 cents.

  • Most Nigerian schools are just there to teach the archaic curriculum. it is difficult getting lecturers who do not understand the latest technology to teach it to undergrads. A better approach is for corporates and startups with vested interest in such talents to get them early via extra curricular activities. Google is getting it right via its GDG and ambassadors programme. Interswitch has that opportunity too. @PapaOlabode will remember the Interswitch’s certification course

They should forget charging people arms and leg for learning about their API and focus on teaching this curriculum free of charge on campuses.

  • There is almost no “existent” business model teaching people for free apart from what Switch and Adela are doing. Maybe finding a proposition to justify the investment might be a win-win. Any ideas in this regard are welcome.
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I totally agree with the above. The truth is for the ecosystem to grow - more people have to brought into the fold. It’s a numbers game, before quality. Talking of numbers, @sprime do you have any rough numbers of developers/designers in Nigeria? Are we talking low thousands or tens of thousands. Or maybe even hundreds?

And yeah @spokentwice I remember Interswitch courses, where they get to charge students up to N30k for learning how to use their platform. Genius!

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The number of devs and designers, I cannot say specifically. Although, StackOverflow says there are about 3.5k Nigerians on their platform (check here). If I were to estimate, I’d say about 10,000 or there about, with more of them being beginners.

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