East Helping West Helping East Helping West Helping… Well, You Get the Idea

Some weeks ago, Wayan Vota caused quite a stir when he wrote a post alleging that the Kenyan internet industry was better than the Nigerian internet industry. Quite a number of Nigerians weighed in on the blog and it resulted in a slew of comments and rejoinders (the Kenyans stayed out of the discussion for some reason). I suggested to Wayan then that we have a debate between the Nigerian and Kenyan industries to compare and contrast what made them what they were. Instead we ended up doing the highly productive discussion about the internet business opportunities available in Nigeria. The transcript of that discussion is here and my thoughts on it are here.

I added a bit of humour to my post reminding Wayan that he still owed me a debate between East African Internet entrepreneurs and West African Internet entrepreneurs. I believe there are interesting differences between what is happening in Nigeria and Kenya that are worth discussing. Kenyans seem to have solutions with a heavy focus on empowerment and socio-economic accessibility, while over here we seem to keep a very keen eye on the global trends and can rapidly iterate local versions of global solutions in a way that fits how our people do things.

This time Wayan agreed with the idea of a discussion and like the previous session we plan to do something at the end of this month (April, 2010). However, it has to be a meaningful discussion, not a bunch of African lions roaring superiority over each other. We came up with the following topic that we believe will be valuable to both sides and can help foster new and fruitful relationships: “The evolution of start-ups culture in Africa: how the East differs from the West and what we can learn from each other”.

We hope to get a group of entrepreneurs from both sides of Africa talking about their experiences and passing on learning points. We hope that out of this will come partnerships that will benefit Africa and the internet as a whole. While much of the thinking and discussion leading up to this has focused on Nigeria and Kenya, we do not plan to exclude internet business people from other parts of the continent and extend an invitation to all to participate.

I had to write this post before the details were worked out because one of the Kenyans that I invited, Joshua Wanyama of Afrinnovator, was cautious about participating without more information about what the purpose is. To reiterate, the purpose is getting African internet business people talking about the way things work in their societies in a way that will give everyone ideas, draw solutions to some of the pain points and cause an exchange of contact information that could result in a lot more coast to coast commerce and friendships.

I, Wayan, Possicon of WebTrends Nigeria, and others will share word on time, date, and forum once we have all that worked out. If you are interested, particularly if you are from outside Nigeria, please give me shout on Twitter at www.twitter.com/the_dej.

Dej.

Map courtesy of www.yourchildlearns.com. The interactive learning maps on the site are great for your kids to try out.

No Limits: Nigerian Internet Business is Only Beginning (and I don’t mean 419)

  Last week, on the 26th of March, I was privileged to be part of an open discussion on Nigerian Internet Business Opportunities hosted on Skype Public Chat by Wayan Vota of ICTWorks.org. Don’t be fooled by my being one of the headliners (noted internet expert ???), I was certainly the least of the cast of participants in the discussion. I’m just a blogger while most of the people in the “room” were entrepreneurs, developers, designers, and ICT4D (information and communication technology for development) professionals. There was quite a bit of valuable material from this session to fuel discussions for some time to come. I expect to have several posts that feed off that session. I have included the link to the transcript of the discussion here.

The conversation was really multiple streams and recapping it as such just won’t work. The only way I can think to do this is to list what I consider the high points and try and treat different ones in greater depth in my future writings. So, in no particularly coherent order, here goes…

• Like in so many other areas, there is no limit to the opportunity for creative and successful internet-oriented, internet-hosted and social development-focused internet business in Nigeria.
• There is quite a bit of narrowness in the way we look at the internet as a business environment in Nigeria. In addition to building our own solutions that face our own Nigerian society, we can outsource design and development skills internationally for a living wage. You could be here in Nigeria and earn Euros and dollars with your PHP skill sets. We need to look beyond what we have seen people do here in Nigeria and explore what other people all over the world are doing such as developing solutions for devices like the iPhone and Blackberry.
• Like the Alaba traders collaborate to get you that shoe from their warehouse (also known as the guy down the road’s shop), internet entrepreneurs need to collaborate in sharing talent, ideas and lending support to each other in order to make a challenging task easier.
• In order to take ourselves to the heights we can attain, we need to take the long view on this industry. Instant monetisation should not be a target as it will not build a business that can stand the test of time.
• The Nigerian internet entrepreneur needs to focus on identifying real problems that can be solved with ICT, solve those and expect to see the cash come in down the road. We really have more important needs to address than creating pure web offerings (“frothware”) that do not enhance us developmentally, economically, culturally or politically.
• We need to partner with thinkers and doers all over the world including Nigerians in the Diaspora, expatriates invested in seeing development in Africa and local people on the ground already addressing real world problems and determine how we can make them more effective with ICT.
• ICT is only one component of an arsenal that needs to be brought to bear on our myriad problems in Africa. In my role in corporate IT, I am constantly reminded that IT’s only value is in what it can do in solving real world problems. We must never think that ICT is a silver bullet that slay all demons. At it’s core, ICT’s role is to help us communicate, help us capture and store data, and help us transform data into information usable for decision-making.
• Those of us passionate about IT need to help as many people as we can become capable of creating things using the technologies we love.
• The technically minded types among us can look beyond ICT to other technical challenges such as cheap and sustainable electricity provision, healthcare innovations, agriculture, and many more.
• We need to match technologists with business experts in order to get the best of both skill-sets.
• There are multiple tiers to the technology possibilities. As much as the Web is the richest, we should not ignore SMS, voice and low-bandwidth optimised internet solutions.
• Rather than building things from scratch we should take advantage of existing platforms, code libraries and APIs in order to extend existing functionality.
• Indeed we need schools and incubation programs to better prepare our young people (and the not-so young) to take bright ideas and turn them into viable real world solutions.
• While governments are a significant factor (even if it is only so we can duck when we see them coming doing the road) in providing some amount of infrastructure and regulation, and providing a stable polity, we cannot wait on them to provide anything and must embark on our missions, whatever they are as if the obstacles will melt away at approach.
• When we do come face to face with those obstacles, right there is a business opportunity for us or someone else to solve.

There are a lot of very smart technologists out there that are ethnologically, socially, economically and emotionally invested in Nigeria. In the one hour or so that I spent chatting with them I was impressed with the talent in the room and convinced that if more people like this are brought together more often and in ways that we can work on things together, we can make all the difference in the world.

@wayan: you still owe me a knockdown, drag out debate on the East Coast versus West Coast start-ups thing.

Dej.

ICT4D Skype Chat: Nigerian Internet Business Opportunities

Nigeria is a huge nation by any measure. Largest population in Africa, stupendous mobile phone adoption rate and 11 million internet users. The nation is a ripe platform for internet and communication services for transformation in Education, Commerce, Security and other aspects of national development. However, it doesn’t seem to be happening like it should. If anything, other African nations seem to have a better handle on this than we do.
Wayan Vota over at ICTWorks.org lit a bit of a fire when he blogged “Is Kenya beating Nigeria in Internet Business Opportunities?”. We Nigerians never take such things lying down and the debate in the comments section of his blog about his assertion got so heated, we decided to take the discussion live during ICT Works’ monthly ICT4D Chat.
A group of tech experts, bloggers, internet entrepreneurs and industry watchers will be getting together online using Skype Public Chat to tear into the subject of the whys and wherefores of the Nigerian internet industry. The discussions will be about why we are the way we are, the opportunities there are out there and the challenges to overcome.
Hosting the discussion is Wayan Vota and featured Nigerian internet experts and pundits include

• Loy Okezie of StartupsNigeria
• Oladejo Fabolude of Digital Crossings
• Sheriff Shittu O. of WebTrends Nigeria
• Oluniyi David Ajao of Web4Africa

The discussions are wide open for everyone to get a word in so why not join us at the next ICT4D Public Skype Chat:
Nigeria Internet Business Opportunities
ICT4D Skype Public Chat
6pm, Lagos Time, March 26th
(find  in your timezone)
The official press release for the event is right here. So what are you waiting for? Put the ICT4D Skype Chat in your calender now!
 Dej.
The picture of five was shamelessly liberated from www.loyokezie.com who shamelessly used our pictures.