May 10, 2023

BY KEN UGBECHIE

Good news heals a heavy heart. Like the latest news of Microsoft investing in Nigeria to upskill five million Nigerians in three years. That’s good news in a season of gloom.

While we congratulate the Nigerian government for pulling this through, we must not fail to interrogate the unseen hand of Professor Umar Danbatta, the CEO and Executive Vice Chairman (EVC) of the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) in the deal.

And that pops the question: Why Nigeria? To answer this puzzle, we must understand that Microsoft is not a charity. It’s a $2 trillion global digital company, a 1975 start-up created by software maverick, Bill Gates, and his childhood friend, Paul Allen, who later quibbled with the bullish Harvard drop-out. Microsoft smells potential. It smells money from afar. It has eyes for smart people, smart economies, and potentially smart ecosystems.

Attending the 62^nd World Newspapers Congress and 16^th World Editors Forum which held in Hyderabad, India in 2009, this writer in company of hundreds of editors from around the world were treated to a Microsoft delight. We were bussed to Microsoft headquarters in India sited in Hyderabad, euphemistically called ‘Hitech City’. The signage that ushers you to the expansive premises reads ‘Microsoft Campus’. But make no mistake about it, this is not a campus in its pure sense. It’s an office housing the brightest and the best tech nerds. All young. Mostly Indians. It was this campus that Microsoft impacts the world, creating the future and altering the present.

Mr. Soma Somasegar, an Indian-American tech business executive who was once Senior Vice President, Development Division at Microsoft offered the closest clue as to what informed the berthing of Microsoft in India (by the way, Microsoft India is the biggest office of Microsoft outside its head office in Redmond, Washington, United States).

In answering the question, why India, in a publication on Microsoft India Development Centre (MIDC), Somasegar wrote: “The talent pool in India was what grabbed our attention. Even a decade ago, its English-speaking population was very large. The education system in India has a very strong foundation in math and science elements that are fundamental for computer science. We definitely wanted to tap into that talent pool.” And that says it all.

Back to Nigeria. So, what got Microsoft acceding to government’s request for a digital partnership? Look at the statistics. In the last couple of years, Nigeria’s fortunes have increased on the digital front. By January this year, Nigeria has 104.4 million Internet users; teledensity hit a record 100.8 percent by March, 2021. Courtesy of Danbatta’s passionate push, broadband penetration has climbed to over 41 percent by March this year. Active mobile connections nosed up to 187.9 million, adding 17 million (+10%) between January 2020 and January 2021. That’s a significant 90.0% of the total population. Within the same period, number of social media users in Nigeria increased by 6 million (+22%) to crest at 33 million. All of this, including broadband pervasiveness, go beyond telecoms. They underpin a brave new world of opportunities in e-commerce, banking, education, agriculture, entertainment, among others.

Because of increasing broadband and internet adaptation and ICT awareness, a new frontier in coding and programming is opening up for Nigerian kids and youths. Add to these, the endowed numerate smartness of Nigerians. This country, just like India, has a large pool of talents.  We have seen cases of barely educated youths creating Apps and building industry critical software. Nigerian students, at both secondary and tertiary levels, have competed in global contests with students from Europe, Asia (including Indians), the Americas, etcetera, and came out tops. With English as the nation’s lingua franca, Nigeria fits into the mould of a ready nursery for the making of Gen Next super kids. Even with myriad challenges in education, Nigeria still boasts a rich pool of math whizzes and science boffins. Creating good, scalable Apps is now a pastime. Many young ICT-savvy kids are strutting their stuff from Yaba to Yola.

A new vista opens. Coders, illusion creators, animators, aggregators and sundry players in the Internet of Things (IoTs) space are streaming their works across platforms. Microsoft has found out that Nigeria is the India of Africa. Nigeria has a huge youth population. The youths have drive, a desire to break limits; a passion to be unconventional. Among Nigeria’s youth population are smart men and women who can crunch the numbers, and toggle the algorithm. That’s what Microsoft loves. The regulatory success of NCC has created a free market digital sector where it’s now possible to work remotely. As the nation’s telecoms regulator ramps up broadband penetration, the likes of Microsoft, Netflix, IBM, Apple and other convergent brands in Hollywood and Silicon Valley would find more reasons to enlarge their foothold in Nigeria.

Already, Microsoft has an office in Lagos. But upskilling five million people is the biggest investment any company could make in a nation. Nigeria must seize this moment. The Nigerian government must look beyond the signage of Microsoft draping buildings in the six geopolitical zones but focus on what attracted Microsoft to the country in the first place: the pool of talents. That’s the nation’s strongest asset in a digitalised world, not crude oil. Nigeria should push for a fully integrated Microsoft office in the country.

Partnering with Microsoft in skills upgrade and solutions hands on experience, Nigeria can initiate innovations that will revolutionise the Next Gen enterprise and redefine the homes and workplaces of the future. There is even the added advantage of cheap labour in Nigeria as in India which Microsoft can leverage to maximize sustainability and profitability.

Nigeria’s Vice President, Prof. Yemi Osinbajo, deserves commendation for convincing Microsoft to commit to Nigeria just weeks after we lost Twitter to Ghana. But the big pay day will come when Microsoft establishes a Development Centre in Nigeria, the type it planted in India from where it has created multiple solutions using hybrid software engineering to solve global challenges.

Just imagine for a moment: If all the Yahoo-Yahoo geeks could turn their IT skills to good use; if they could focus on building solutions and not how to liquidate corporate and personal bank accounts or any of the sleazy deals in cyberspace, then the world would count on Nigeria to drive the next generation enterprise.  May this first bold step lead our youths from the path of cybercrime to the noble path of creating solutions and impacting the world.

Warning! This partnership is not political and must never be subjected to quota system. Let’s put our best foot forward. Let’s adopt the Microsoft creed as expressed by Steve Ballmer, a former CEO of Microsoft: “Microsoft’s success has always been based on our ability to attract and retain the brightest minds from around the world.” Let only the brightest minds from around the country be the beneficiaries of this rare intervention. President Buhari should ensure that he steers this away from primitive politics. This is about tech. It’s either you know it or you don’t. After all, the glory belongs to Buhari. Competence and capacity, not clannishness and cliquish considerations should drive the process.

First published in Sunday Sun..