I cringe every time 2 or more companies in the same space claim to be “Nigeria’s biggest x” or “Nigeria’s first x”.
Look we are not saying be close minded. Nigerian firms should not be made to compete in unfair business environments. How do we learn and grow? I am on the contrary open minded. But we must identify true investors and work with them. We have to grow. Foreign firms cannot keep providing services and we keep relying on them. Basic necessities must be home grown. This is a must. No amount of left-wing, right-wing, bigot abuse will change what is true here. Our country’s policies must exert the supremacy of indigenous firms over foreign firms. This is how it is done everywhere in the world.
If foreign forms want to operate in Nigeria they MUST train Nigerians. That is the only way we can benefit, else it is just another western looting strategy.
The real problem is that Africans let these little things slip by. That is why we end up at the bottom of the skill chain. In these foreign companies’ countries, You cannot operate as a foreign company there and be totally profitable.
I’m not even sure where to start here. You throw around these strong phrases such as “foreign investors looting” and “government must intervene” and forget that the biggest looters are home grown and government supported, and their preferred use of the loot is to buy property in London or Dubai, or simply let it cool off idly in a tax haven.
Nobody owes Nigeria anything. We have chosen to embrace free trade and foreign investment because we know that it is a major catalyst for GDP growth. Case in point - telecoms. A massive state run sinkhole for decades until the South Africans and Zimbabweans arrived. A decade later, and it has driven the revolution in tech infrastructure that enables most of the people in this forum to read this. Maybe indigenous firms were not ready then, you may say, and they are now. Next case in point - the power supply chain. Another even bigger state run cesspit. Privatised to indigenous firms and what did we get for it? The FGN had to bailout the same firms we sold our national assets to. You see the trend here?
I’m not saying Nigerian companies can’t make it work but we work best when we compete on an even footing and not by government patronage. Konga needs no government policy to compete with Jumia. Maybe just Swedish and South African money. Hitv had government patronage in their quest against DSTV. Superior value won.
TLDR; What sustainable businesses need is more value creation and less government.
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Tell her o
They need those FDIs too; you know its also in the interest of the government to provide enabling business environment specifically targeting foreign investments?
The start up scene is still early days in Nigeria and as much as these foreign entrants give the former relevance by participation, to the Nigerian government tech is still small beans on the call for FDI compared to the oil industry et al.
We are mostly reactive in this part of the world and when we see foreigners moving in on our own turf, we wet our tongue for the wrong reasons so keep in mind that when the investment from tech can no more go unnoticed the sharks will turn their blood snotting nose this way, and the guiding laws and regulations will get ridiculous real quick.
You know that story of the Bicycle smuggler and his bag of sand. He crosses the border each day, each time with the same conspicuously packed bag filled with sand, and every time he gets pulled over by Customs. They will search the bag and each time let him go, thinking to themselves what fool peddles sand., not knowing that as their minds would biasedly single out only the bag [of sand] for inspection, as they have been ‘trained’ to look for concealed contrabands, they fail to notice he’s been moving a different bicycle each trip. And that’s what he’s really smuggling!
The corrupt state of affairs in Nigeria is almost genetic, when we see a foreigner we see dollar signs, he sees a lot of leverage in a loosely regulated state. And prey play he must.
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The hubris of youth. You remind of my activist friend back in 6th form in England. So much fire, all to the left.
I think this is a fine time for everyone to read or re-read Paul Graham’s seminal essay on How to Make Wealth. Wealth isn’t money and it isn’t a zero-sum game. An investor making $50 bln didn’t steal it from you. They took a calculated risk you didn’t take and created roughly $50bln of value that you didn’t make. All things considered of course.
Here are some particularly poignant quotes from the article:
If you want to create wealth, it will help to understand what it is. Wealth is not the same thing as money.
Wealth is the fundamental thing. Wealth is stuff we want: food, clothes, houses, cars, gadgets, travel to interesting places, and so on. You can have wealth without having money.
A surprising number of people retain from childhood the idea that there is a fixed amount of wealth in the world. There is, in any normal family, a fixed amount of money at any moment. But that’s not the same thing.
I can remember believing, as a child, that if a few rich people had all the money, it left less for everyone else. Many people seem to continue to believe something like this well into adulthood. This fallacy is usually there in the background when you hear someone talking about how x percent of the population have y percent of the wealth.
Their tax policies are setup within the guidelines of the WTO and are generally applied to favour economic growth irrespective of your nationality. Where African companies stumble is with compliance with US and EU quality standards, and you can’t really knock them as long as they are evenly applied to all companies, which they generally are.
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You are all over the place. You exclude large multinationals but then you go ahead to use Virgin and BA as examples of what’s wrong.
The $2billion dollars they (and others in the airline industry) make is not a reward for employing Nigerian pilots and giving them a wage. It is for creating $2bln+ worth of value for those who use their services. If anyone wants to compete with them, you need to match their reliability, safety, punctuality, and customer service. They don’t need to keep $2bln in Nigerian banks simply because only a fraction of their costs are paid in naira.
Speaking as someone who has stepped out of the British university bubble, worked in local and foreign teams, and created jobs both local and foreign, I can tell you that the the dollar sees no colour. It sees value. The naira on the other hand is still sick with colo-mentality.
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My apologies. I don’t see you as a racist or a bigot. Far from it and I never used those words.
I do however, think you have exhibited proclivity for some seriously damaging left-wing ideology. Why I think it is important to rebut your points in no uncertain terms is because with your UK-educated background, you fit the profile of those whom in a decade or two, are very likely to be influencing government policies in Nigeria, as the old guard leaves for the new.
I recall when the late, ever ebullient Hugo Chavez was spouting the same protectionist mantra and hypnotised majority of Venezuelan hoi polloi behind him. He said the same things as you. These foreign companies are stealing our money, putting local companies out of business, and how the government must step in and correct it.
A decade later, he is gone, but the Venezuelan economy has been destroyed
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This exactly some of the things am saying. It has nothing to do with color or race as @techscorpion would like to paint. It is simply a problem of a society without laws. And investors take advantage of this. A lot. These investments help a select few individuals and does nothing for the population. All we do is pay for services from our govt salaries [probably borrowed from IMF] and hustle. The truth is that, the common man does not feel the effects of these many investors.
There is literally no data to support the assertion that the impact foreign SMEs operating in Nigeria is anything more than a rounding error. The companies that can afford to come to Nigeria and “take our jobs without training us” are almost by definition multinationals. If anything, it’s Nigerians that are going to China, US, UK to import goods, education, healthcare, etc from their SMEs. Maybe you want our government to fight them in their country. It tried restricting forex availability to curb importation but we all know how that story ended.
One more thing, I’m not sure why you keep making references to racism, bigotry, etc. Nobody is calling you those terms or thinks of you in those ways. You see that stuff on your shoulder? It’s a chip. Get rid of it and stay on message.
To answer your question. It’s the consumer that’s the problem. Their needs have been influenced by globalization and the standards of expectation are higher. SMEs in Nigeria need to realize that and need to compete at higher level to provide the value the consumer seeks. That’s all there is to it.
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Who is talking of “Protectionist Mantra”? Please I am talking of business and doing business. Nothing personal in business my dear, just business, 'Business, Political and Financial interests", Nothing personal. SMEs in Nigeria must be supported. The foreign companies are putting local out of business. Don’t know about stealing. Venezuela not taking the right correctional measures does not mean the man was wrong.
When u go to London to open your App development company as an American with and American passport [Am using these 2 countries so u wont cry “Color”], you cannot bring a team of 50 American app developers with you. You must go adhere to the apprenticeship program and take on British apprentices and teach them the job. And whatever funds you make in the economy is beneficial to the British economy first not the prime minister or some politician. Import and Export of Knowledge is also a thing u know.
Secondly, If there is a local app development company, your company wont even qualify for their “International skills requirement”.
u r funny. i will leave it at that. My issue is when people raise the business and economic issues stalling africa’s growth people turn it into “race”, “color”, “bigot” and what not. Therefore blurring the underlying problems of the economy which really has nothing to do with all those things.
Wrong. Very wrong in fact.
In the UK, you can hire from where ever you want. If you are selling into the enterprise, you may need to hire local sales execs for practical reasons, and not because it is government mandated. Heck, a lot of app dev companies in the UK and US hire most of their employees from India, and they work in India. Bringing it closer to home, I know a silent app dev company in Nigeria that rakes in $1million dollars per annum and their client base is almost exclusively in the US, and their devs are all in Lagos.
What’s life without a bit of fun? 
But seriously, where are you getting this race shit from? WTF!
Absolutely not true. You can’t even take scholarship students in the UK if they do not hold an European passport. [Be u American, Australian or whatever]. Obviously you have never tried to hire someone as a UK business owner. You cannot hire from where ever u want. You must Hire from the “EU”. Now they left the EU dont know the new laws though. Even the Americans and Chinese were pushed out of their business space.
You are conflating the “right to work in the UK” with “employed by a UK registered company”.
One requires a special visa, whilst the other can be a consultant anywhere in the world, and quite often allows the savvy business owner to take advantage of transfer pricing.
I’m not even going to bother about the final sentence.
I wont say anything because anyone who has actually lived in the UK knows exactly the business risks involved taking up someone who does not hold an EU passport. You have to pay the UK govt every year for each non-EU citizen u employ. Regardless of country or continent. TRUE OR FALSE?
Lol. Blighty is my country and home, just like Nigeria. I didn’t go there for Masters.
False. Please try to understand what transfer pricing means. There are different types of staff. The ones I’m talking about are the ones classified as “independent contractors” to whom you outsource work that your local EU employees would have have done
Exaclty right.
There’s no reason why UberNigeria should even exist. We have equivalent startups who are struggling to compete with Uber.
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