Flush with the success of the campaign to win the Federal Secretariat, Ikoyi as home to Nigeria’s pioneer software park, this article reminds the IT community that we must together reach for a broader coalition of forces; a cross-sectoral platform enervated by the tantalising possibilities of global significance, and challenged, not intimidated by the race which we are starting late if we are to reach the outskirts of the vision.
It’s been a long journey but with the goal just peeking over the crest of the Adeniji Adele flyover, my eyes were drawn strangely away to the rippling waters of the lagoon to my left. Like many other dreamers in mankind’s time on this planet, the waters seem to me to be asking questions: what lies beyond the distant horizon from which these waters have travelled? Where did it all begin, where do these waters call home – the end of their journey?
For a few minutes I enjoy the quiet thrill of my inward thoughts, unshackled by reality, in the quiet, loneliness of the sweeping Third Mainland Bridge at 6.15am —too early for the lane-hoggers, the blast of horns and screeching sirens—separated by a mere half hour from the unwelcome intimacy of scurrying strangers in cocooned but cloying closeness as they cast furtive glances into each others cars seeking connections…friendship? Understanding? Actualisation? (my Toyota is bigger than yours…)
Today I turn off at Foreshore Towers to claim my prize. Stepping out in the peaceful but unkempt forecourt of the Federal Secretariat Ikoyi, my shoes crunch what’s left of the gravel stones that once lined the edges of the well-planned roads. Roads that once guided the movement of the high and mighty, men and women whose words and actions in turn created the networks of relationships that is Nigeria today.
I clasped my hands behind me, looking up towards the gaping windows of the burnt wing through which the dawn skies peered giving life almost through expressions painted by the colours of early dawn. I shivered with respect. The awesome gravitas of the monument coursed through my body as though a giant generator buried beneath my feet was humming to life. I shut my eyes to recover my vision of OBJ’s software park.
Like phantoms from nearby cemeteries, the Park came alive —the young and daring, the eager and brave, the hopeful and intrepid, the disillusioned and desperate—literally all flowers striving for the sun to blossom in its rays. Many would flourish and fail; others would endure in stubborn defiance of their mediocrity; a few would blossom and spread brilliant petals to attract suitors, carriers of pregnant pollen to many lands. On these wings would rest the future of a nation.
I wondered the corridors of power, opening the occasional door to listen to conversations, brain storming arguments, industry gossip, lectures —emotions of dealmakers and the passions of innovators interlaced by the impersonal metal of call centre operators and detached venture capitalists. Standing atop the felted parapets surrounded by massive satellite dishes silently, invisibly moving billions of bits of data in and out of the ether of the global network of computerised economies, I felt a curiously familiar pain in my feet. Mentally shrugging it off, my thoughts turned once more to the lagoon in the distance—where did all that water come from? What had fallen into water, where to start this ripple lapping the shores of even periphery countries like Nigeria?
It does not seem so long ago that I first wrote about the Federal Secretariat Ikoyi and the vision of its monumental significance as the place of incubation for our national re-birth. Last month dreams turned to horses when OBJ acceded to our request for the building of Nigeria’s first Software Park. The pebble had hit the water and no-one knew n whose shores the ripples will land in the coming era. It is enough that the ripple shave begun they say, but I sense that it is more important that we guide and jealously guard the waters into the non-destructive harbours of our enlightened national interest and economy. We must yoke our new reality to our vision not divorce it, ensuring as we do that the reality serves the vision. We must see what we want the Park to be as well as what we do not want it to be. We must articulate and document our vision as the roadmap along which to guide our new and evolving reality. We must imagine distant shores in times ahead of ours and know for sure that the waters we cause to ripple today also came our way from lands foreign and from a time past of which we have little knowledge.
We might be tempted to folly, to see our latest “triumph” in the light of a war well-fought and won. We would be like the Trojans who had for nine long years, battled the Greeks with no indication whatsoever that either side was any nearer winning than had been the case when the first spear was hurled. And then one morning ,Troy woke up to find the siege of the city lifted and the only sign of an alien presence being a massive wooden horse standing silent and disquietingly alone on a plain once filled with the fury of bitter warfare. ‘It’s a gift ‘, some said. Others warned, ‘Burn it!’ ‘Smash it open let’s see its insides!’ History does not tell us the reasons why, but it does record the sacking of the city the following morning while the Trojans lay in drunken stupor around the now disembowelled horse that they had dragged into their city for a precipitate victory celebration.
The grant of the Software Park holds within its self also the antithesis of victory. In order that we may not “snatch defeat from the jaws of victory”, we need to remind ourselves that information technology for its sake merely dis-intermediates, disrupts and divides societies and its institutions. In an extensive commentary, the Bridges.org Report states inter alia that:
- Real disparities exist in access to and use of information and communications technology (ICT) between countries (the "international digital divide") and between groups within countries (the "domestic digital divide").
· "In the entire continent of Africa, there are a mere 14 million phone lines — fewer than in either Manhattan or Tokyo. Wealthy nations comprise some 16 per cent of the world’s population, but command 90 per cent of Internet host computers. Of all the Internet users worldwide, 60 per cent reside in North America, where a mere five per cent of the world’s population reside"(Nkrumah).
· "One in two Americans is online, compared with only one in 250 Africans. In Bangladesh a computer costs the equivalent of eight years average pay" (The Economist).
- There is an overall trend of growing ICT disparities between and within countries:
· All countries, even the poorest, are increasing their access to and use of ICT. But the "information have" countries are increasing their access and use at such an exponential rate that, in effect, the divide between countries is actually growing.
· Within countries, all groups, even the poorest, are also increasing their access to and use of ICT. But within countries the "information haves" are increasing access and use at such an exponential rate that, in effect, the division within countries is also actually growing.
- Underneath the apparent widening and narrowing of the ICT divides, the underlying trend is that privileged groups acquire and use technology more effectively, and because the technology benefits them in an exponential way, they become even more privileged.
· The infusion of ICT into a country paints the existing landscape of poverty, discrimination, and division onto the new canvas of technology use. Because ICT can reward those who know how to use it with increased income and cultural and political advantages, the resulting digital divide shows up in increasingly stark contrast.
· Therefore, ICT disparities usually exacerbate existing disparities based on location (such as urban-rural), gender, ethnicity, physical disability, age, and, especially, income level, and between "rich" and "poor" countries.
The digital divide is not a single thing, but a complicated patchwork of varying levels of ICT access, basic ICT usage, and ICT applications among countries and peoples. It can be described as a failure at three levels.
- · A failure of development initiatives. Development initiatives have been essential in providing basic access to underserved populations, but have failed to provide sustainable, replicable models for community ICT use
- · A failure of market forces. The private sector has slowly spread technology to middle income groups, but on the whole has failed to see the developing world and underserved populations as valuable markets which require targeted products.
- · A failure of the government. Government policy has often tried to meet the short term demands of their constituencies, but failed to provide a coherent long term plan for prosperity, or hindered the efforts of development initiatives and the private sector to address ICT disparities. We must be clear that the broader ecosystem that constitutes and supports the software industry involves more players than the developer community. It extends to ISVs building products on operating systems, small businesses and academic institutions offering training and certification programs, publishers providing reference books and knowledge base sources on the Net, consultants and solution providers in the hardware and software space, etc.
In moving from laggard to e-business leader in under two decades, Singapore formulated a national IT strategy under the leadership of the National Computer Board with extensive involvement of the Economic Development Board, interested government agencies, business associations and universities. The six main elements of Singapore’s strategy were:
§ Policies and Institutions such as establishing National Computerisation Committee and standardizing key technical and information areas.
§ Skills Development through computer literacy in schools, broad-based civil service training, computer science education in universities and specialised software training institutes
§ Telecommunications Services using state-of-the-art technologies at internationally competitive rates
§ Demonstration Projects on a large scale such as civil service computerisation programmes and creation of government-to-government and government-to-business e-platforms
§ Software Industry development through enforcing copyright laws, providing specialised financial services to small software enterprises, promoting joint ventures with multinationals, establishing innovation centres for technology transfer an supporting innovative software product development
§ Promoting IT use in small enterprises through cost-sharing for consultancy services, sectoral surveys to identify common needs and funding for developing common software packages for these needs.
Today, Singapore ranks 7th amongst the world’s 60 largest economies—ahead of Finland, Denmark, Netherlands, Switzerland, Germany, Hong Kong, Ireland, France, Austria, Taiwan, Japan, Belgium, New Zealand, South Korea, Italy, Israel, Spain, and Portugal.
As Michael Porter has reminded us, national competitiveness is usually a function of a set of determinants one of which is a critical local demand which compels industry to develop its competence to a level that in turn creates an export capacity for high quality economic output. As amply demonstrated, most African countries do not have the national capacity to make such effective demand for IT as to create a viable local software industry. With the exception of Egypt and South Africa, those that can like Nigeria have failed consistently to articulate and mobilize the leadership required to bring about change in their e-readiness status.
To realise this, we must creatively battle the local environment, turning obstacles to opportunities and constraints to challenges. We must do so with a firm focus on meeting, creating and extending global standards in all we do if we are to earn a place on the global stage. We must break the mind trap everyday and challenge ourselves to get out of the boat. We reject ab initio, the perception that coming out of Africa, we have only to run a race of perpetually catching up. We must embrace with vigour the conviction that we are an integral part of the 21st century economy with the common global imperative to create life opportunities, particularly through the levers provided by information technology.
Yet, we cannot do this alone. We must together reach for a broader coalition of forces, a cross-sectoral platform enervated by the tantalising possibilities of global significance, and challenged, not intimidated by the race which we are starting late. Our national leaders, key policy advisers, and educators must understand clearly that the new economic order will be driven primarily by information technology. To participate fully in this economy, we need first to understand its dynamics and then to consciously plan and implement policies that create the capacity to compete.
These then were the stones in my shoes, the gravel from the road, perhaps from the long journey to this rooftop. I should perhaps have recognised the pain for what it was; stopped to shake out the shoes before going on but I could see the rooftops of my vision ahead and broken out in a run. As I did that now, my feet were red and scratched from the friction with the stones; my shoe leather pocked permanently with indents from the sharp edges of the stones. I really should have stopped to shake them out.
Turning to leave OBJ’s Software Park, I thought to myself that my vision like our country too can become a comfortable shoe filled with stones we think we can ignore when it’s really best to stop and shake them out before continuing the journey to the outskirts of the vision.
March 16th 2005
LAGOS