I have been thinking about some issues surrounding the tech scene in Nigeria whilst I like the use of other technologies made by foreign countries to power product development and ideas.
I am still surprise that with our talent we are not developing truly innovative and first of its kind platforms for Nigerians such
Front-End Web Development Framework(Foundation, Bootstrap etc)
CMS like WordPress
Back End Development Framework such as Codeigniter, Yii, Zend and more
Solid Web Browser to compete with Chrome, Firefox, Safari etc
DropBox and more
Even Operating system should not be left out
Because with this we can truly take control of our technology future just incase some guy decide to pull the plug
The list goes on and on because there is a lot of potential in such platform than eCommerce here to eCommerce there tomorrow.
I am not saying we should build out own Facebook, or Twitter, or Whats App or things that are used
My version: Nigeria should forget eCommerce and Start Building Real Infrastructure
We can’t, Sir. At least not yet.
Lets leave US aside.
Chinese govt have their own official Linux (Modified to their taste).
Alibaba do have their own cloud like Azure and co.
Not to make mention of what is happening in Shenzen!
Kapersky Russia just completed their IoT-focused Security OS.
Nginx hails from Russia
Yandex is not bad.
The problem is that we don’t have what is required for these things to work:
Govt Seriousness.
Education: CS, EE is a mess in this country.
Societal issues.
Electricity
Security (esp for infrastructures)
The list is endless man!
Building eCommerce doesn’t require most of these things. They don’t usually care about:
O(1) or O(logN)
Why would I need a Nigerian Bootstrap or Codeigniter? People should concentrate on building solutions that solves real problems in Nigeria. We have more to gain from competition in the eCommerce space than say someone building a Nigerian browser (seriously, who gives a f***).
That is why Nigeria will always and forever be a dumping ground for tech products and exploited by foreign tech companies. And now the Chinese are sucking us dry too.
We need to embrace our own tech scene and build robot solutions for Nigerians. Anyone who can provide good product to only 20million users will be a billion dollar tech company.
My brother. You’re kidding. What would happen if every country decides to start making their own frameworks? And what makes you think building a new framework is real “innovation”? Na wa o, where did you get this mindset?
In fact, this topic was just a piece of troll-ship, I’m sure.
In addition to what has been said by others, this is just lack of prioritization. Those countries with Dropbox and WordPress and every other thing you mentioned have already solved most of the problems that the Nigerian market still suffers from. You don’t start reading the alphabets from letter “M”. You have to start from A first, then move to B and C and so on.
We can’t even boast of over 50% of Nigeria’s population using internet yet. So many fundamental problems that need solving and you want to start climbing the ladder from the middle. Let’s take care of real problems that face the real Nigerian consumer first. Have you thought of how to make trade easy for the market woman with a big store? Or how to integrate our agricultural sector into the tech sector? I don’t even know where to start. So many things we can do. So many B2B and B2B2C and B2C opportunities for you and I to solve.
Also, why should we forget eCommerce and focus on another thing? The eCommerce industry in Nigeria is still in its infancy sef when you compare it to the true purchasing power of the Nigerian populace. Do you know how much brick and mortar still makes in Nigeria? Billions of dollars. The eCommerce industry hasn’t even cracked $1bn and is probably still at least 2 years off that. We can do eCommerce and still build other things at the same time. There’s enough of us around to do that.
We should build first for ourselves before considering what can be exportable to other countries. One of such innovation that solved a national problem was TSA by systemspec/remita. …hope you remember how FG made a mess of it ?
Another ideas is that since we have less than 50% Internet rate, we should attempt to innovate around SMS and USSD solutions to solve needs for rural people. Cellulant lived on that business model to distribute fertilisers to farmers in Nigeria, now they are going into mobile money as a multimillion dollar business.
Overall, I think that innovating around OUR problems is better than global competition that has no merit.
Who says we can’t. All the technology we use today which one is built in Nigeria and don’t forget that most of the projects you see today were developed by student in Universities of other countries so what does it says about educational system fk
It’s only ibroheem that make a clear reason why it can’t happen now. No wonder most company just remove Nigeria from list of countries they provide service to and what do Nigerians do find try beg our way to connect to them.
For Africa to grow technology innovative not just websites will play a massive role in it. Because when our generation don’t do something now trust me in 20 years time we still going to say them say crap.
I will be more supportive of Nigerian tech than carry stupid apple computers around. Look at China, Japan Korea do they give a sh** about American technology no. Why simple answer they utilised the advantage of human capital.
And big European and American companies run to them which has run to Africa to build something Zero
We have at least overy 50 million of that but we can’t empower them either in our universities or society.
My man…those countries made strides because they had serious, competent governments that were thinking long term and laid a lot of the ground work for their citizens to build on. You’re actually being quite naive. Do you know how many problems young Nigerians try to solve on a daily basis that gets knocked down either by dead bottleneck bureaucracy or just blatant corruption? The one we’re doing on our own despite the odds stacked against us you’re still yabbing. This is funny.
My position is that, it is pointless if those global solutions you want us to create don’t have local relevance. To put this in context, all global solutions were developed to solve local problems, before they scaled to other countries.
While it might look like oyinbo have solved all the problems, you can easily relate with mPESA and Ushadidi. These solutions were not originally designed to be touted as global solutions, they 3rd ed up becoming one because it found use cases elsewhere.
