Helping to grow the Nigerian Tech Ecosystem
A call to the big local tech companies
I met Emeka Azuka Okoye at the Localhost Nigeria meetup on Friday. On seeing him I was geared up to challenge him on his statement “there is no tech ecosystem in Nigeria”. But as we talked and he explained, I understood him, and as I sat down to write this post this morning, I finally agreed with him.
He said and I quote
“We cannot say we have a tech ecosystem when the big local tech companies are not playing a big part in it, and the academia has no part or play in it.”
I agreed with what he said, because if you look at the words ‘tech ecosystem’, you will see that the second word ecosystem, means a complex network or interconnected system, where the system is self creating and sufficient. That is, what is needed to make the system work, thrive and be maintained is created within the system.
This means a tech ecosystem is a place where the members of this system can learn, grow, work, earn, and build the system, from different entities in the system.
To learn anything tech-related in Nigeria, we use external resources. Our schools do not teach software development/engineering the way mechanical engineering is taught, and the community which is another avenue to learn and grow, is mostly supported by foreign companies, and smaller local tech companies (local startups). The big local tech companies (BLTCs) are not yet supporting local communities as they should, they are not yet connecting and working with the community, to help the community grow.
They should help the community grow because, it is from this community that these BLTCs will get the talents they need to create the products that the same community will consume for renumeration. They also need this community to like them, so they can easily work with and sell to the community. This creates a self sustaining circle, and in so doing, one part of the interconnected system is created.
The first part, which turns the members of these communities to talents that can create, needs to be done in the Academia. Schools need to create new curriculums that teach this.
Mentor and learning communities are beginning to sprout up to help handle this part, and they are doing a really good job. From the Android Learning Community to the Logo Gym community, to the LiteUX community, iOS Mentorship Nigeria and Andela & Switch NG’s closed self containing tech ecosystem — where you learn, work, grow and give back in one place.
But more is needed, especially with respect to the most used software development languages like PHP, Python, Ruby, etc.
This is where the BLTCs can come in to help, not small local tech companies like startups, but big local tech companies. They can sponsor these communities. In so doing, increase their brand loyalty, add value to the pool of talent available to help them create, and also help create the open interconnected system. This open interconnected system is what we can call the tech ecosystem in Nigeria.
Thanks to Victor Olomo, Akapo Damilola Francis and Olabinjo for feedback as I wrote this post.
