Stones in My Shoes: Visions of OBJ’s Software Park —3

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 7^th 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 21^st 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 16^th 2005
LAGOS

Visions of OBJ’s Software Park —2

Part Two of a call to wake up to the national urgency of prioritising the knowledge economy in national planning by Chinenye Mba—Uzoukwu, CEO of InfoGraphics Nigeria limited and member of the National Executive Council of the Nigeria Computer Society (NCS).

In the first part of this article, I had stated that for the first time in our history the internal contradictions of the economies of the advanced industrial nations offer us advantageous access to lucrative markets for soft skills and goods.

I asserted that the ability to create, distribute and exploit knowledge has become a major source of competitive advantage, wealth creation and improvements in the quality of life in the 21^st century. This is evident from the newly industrialized economies of China, South Korea, Taiwan and Singapore, all of which have transformed their economies by improving the technological performance of their industries. All without exception now compete consistently and successfully on a global scale in a growing number of industries. Broadly speaking, a country’s technological infrastructure encompasses the education system, the private and public research organizations, the network of technological and scientific associations, and its legal institutions such as intellectual property rights as well as institutions and legislations which provide incentives to develop and exchange technologies.

This article develops the thesis that in the context of the above, the recent move to auction the Federal Secretariat is folly. I put forward the argument that software technology and the internet, with their low physical entry barriers and high local value-added, offer newly industrialising countries a chance to quantum leapfrog. As a consequence, Nigeria is better served by a public-private sector initiative to utilize the complex as the largest industrial (read “software”) park in Africa than by the pecuniary “rentier” interests of prospective real-estate speculators and asset strippers.

In this climate of monetization, NEEDS and “enabling environments”, what argument could possibly be put forward for NOT auctioning a property that is currently wasting away? The answer has been pre-empted by information reaching me even as I write this article, that the edifice has already been sold! This is folly – a persistence in acting against enlightened self-interest (unless of course we posit that the government is not enlightened). To pursue my argument to its logical conclusion, I am tempted to go back to sleep, a place where dreams can indeed come true.

The OBJ Software Park is about building a new world, a real place in defiance of Nigeria in which dreams can come true. It’s a vision for a massive knowledge factory cum incubator, where the quiet rumble is not that of empty stomachs but of buzzing synapses linking thoughts and technologies to create new tools for a world in a hurry. It’s the engine room for the production of the beams and girders that can bridge the societal divide through stimulating entrepreneurship and unshackling innovation from the chains of a hostile investment environment. Like Ted Waitt of Gateway, innovation and entrepreneurship do not come in clearly branded packages, stamped and sealed with corporate approval.

Cutting through the emotion and hype about the digital divide, there can be no doubt that the disparities between the "haves" and the "have-nots" is growing, and the potential impact on society — whether good or bad — is exacerbated by technology. According to Bridges.org, the following challenges are manifest:

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.

· E-readiness assessments are a valuable tool with which to gain this more informed, region-specific understanding, and to develop an action plan.

Just how are countries around the world faring in their efforts to harness the Internet and its related technologies to create positive change in their economies and societies? Which are moving rapidly to upgrade their communications infrastructure and dismantle barriers to global e-commerce, and which are merely giving the Internet lip service? In an effort to answer these questions, the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU), together with its specialist communications and Internet division, Pyramid Research, compiled "e-readiness rankings" in 2002. The rankings scored the world’s 60 largest economies on "e-readiness" — the extent to which a country’s business environment is conducive to Internet-based commercial opportunities. The underlying assumption is that in order to stimulate the creative ferment that the US witnessed through the 1990s, countries need to satisfy a long list of prerequisites.

The factors which determine whether a country is prepared to seize the opportunities presented by the Internet and related technologies were:

Connectivity (30%). E-business simply cannot function without adequate telecommunications and Internet infrastructure. "Connectivity" measures the access that individuals and businesses have to basic fixed and mobile telephony services, including voice and both narrowband and broadband data. Affordability and availability of service (both a function of the level of competition in the telecoms market) also figure as determinants of connectivity.

Business environment (20%). In evaluating the general business climate, the EIU screens 70 indicators covering criteria such as the strength of the economy, political stability, the regulatory environment, taxation, and openness to trade and investment. The resulting "business environment rankings" measure the expected attractiveness of the general business environment over the next five years.

E-commerce consumer and business adoption (20%). Payment and logistics systems form the backbone of this set of criteria. Here we evaluate the extent of credit-card ownership as well as the existence of secure, reliable and efficient electronic payment mechanisms, the ability of vendors to ensure timely and reliable delivery of goods, and the extent of website development by local firms.

Legal and regulatory environment (15%). The legal framework governing e-business is a vital factor than can enhance or inhibit the development of electronic trading. We consider the extent of legal support for virtual transactions and digital signatures. Ease of licensing and the ability of firms to operate with a minimal but effective degree of regulation are other criteria.

Supporting e-services (10%). No business or industry can function efficiently without intermediaries and ancillary services to support it. For e-business markets, these include portals and other online intermediaries, web-hosting firms, application service providers (ASPs), as well as website developers and e-business consultants. The rankings assess the extent to which local companies and organisations have access to these services.

Social and cultural infrastructure (5%). Education and literacy are necessary preconditions to a population’s ability to navigate the web and drive future domestic Internet development. Because entrepreneurship and risk-taking play such an important role in building new e-commerce models, we also assess the national proclivity to business innovation and receptiveness to web content.

On this scale, Nigeria falls in the ranks of “e—laggards”: 56^th of 60 countries with a meagre 2.91. According to research from Bridges.org, at the macro-level, the digital divide 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.

I am convinced that the latter two failures are pivotal and together they constitute the burden of the Nigerian environment. There is ample evidence to show that governments can play a fundamental role in creating an environment that will foster technology use and encourage national and international investment in ICT infrastructure, development, and a skilled workforce. Government action is also important in spreading the benefits of technology throughout society, and governments have the power and mandate to balance the needs of their citizens for long-term economic growth and social prosperity.

In Nigeria though, Government policies aimed at attracting foreign investment in the so—called real sector facilitates the outflow of resources in form of repatriated profits and payments for imports and services while allowing the demands of industrial production, owned and controlled in large measure by foreigners, to consume foreign exchange resources on the grounds that local industry has capacity to make only a marginal contribution. It is on this basis that the oil industry controlled by multinationals has continued to lock out local IT firms from the sector, perpetuating the very capacity issue that gives grounds to the discriminatory practice. Even in the area of software licensing, the Global Licensing Agreements under which these multinationals take cover effectively result in repatriation of foreign exchange for licensing and support services which would otherwise go to grow the local industry. In this light, it would be interesting to measure the value contribution of the information technology component to this government’s banner achievement—the $2 billion GSM networks.

An even more interesting statistic would be the volume of value-added that is attributable to the local IT industry. What is on record is a mind—boggling $539 million outflow from the Central Bank of Nigeria for IT (software, hardware and services) in 2003. Perhaps this is at the heart of the decision of the Federal Government to invest about N126 million on building and equipping 6 buses with PCs, connectivity, VSAT, air-conditioning and a host of peripherals in order to travel to remote areas for Nigeria and teach the people the benefits of the internet and email!

Pause for a moment with me in sober reflection then read on.

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, sector surveys to identify common needs and funding for developing common software packages for these needs.

Today, Singapore ranks 7^th 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.

The world has turned a corner and it is not waiting for us to catch up. As a country, we must see the “IT problem” in order to rise to the challenge itself. A few years ago in another forum, I had stated that, “If a conscious and sustained policy is not articulated in respect of IT, the next 5 years will see Nigeria waking to the painful reality that we have once more missed the wave, the Fourth Wave, on which world economic order of the new millennium rides.”

That policy begins with a dream and a vision so large that it wakes you up as it did me — with a thumping in the heart—and a burning desire to make real something greater than the sum of our collective lives. Next time you drive past the old Secretariat, stop under the branches of its tree—lined front and close your eyes; perhaps you too will see the vision I have seen — a thousand flowers blooming in the technology gardens of the OBJ Software Park, Ikoyi.

Lagos, Nigeria

May 1^st, 2004

Visions of OBJ’s Software Park —1

Part One of a call to wake up to the national urgency of prioritising the knowledge economy in national planning by Chinenye Mba-Uzoukwu, CEO of InfoGraphics Nigeria Limited and member of the National Executive Council of the Nigeria Computer Society (NCS).

I woke up with a thumping heart and a smile on my face. Then I realised it was just a dream. The President was still in Abuja, the opening ceremony was a mirage and I was obviously suffering from malaria. A couple of weeks before I had intrigued my friend and partner, Pius, with the idea of converting the abandoned Federal Secretariat in Ikoyi into a business park, a technology—based complex equipped to incubate the emergence of a thousand small—to—medium software companies. Before I take you into the bright lights of a tantalising future I had glimpsed, let me first share my present nightmare.

A few months back I had taken a wrong turn and driven past the tree—lined front of the and had a fleeting thought about how the haunting atmosphere of the decaying, but still magnificent structure was a reflection of the emptiness most Nigerians of my generation feel when looking back at our country’s promises in the early 70s. Already much has been written and expressed about the “wasted years” — I will refrain from joining the chorus of lamentation. Often I am reminded that the time has past for this: perhaps we should have joined the tide of Nigerians heading for the Diaspora. We have stayed but that is a story for another day.

I have written and stated at various fora that it is my fervent belief that this nation must come to the realisation that “the hope for a strong and progressive economy in the 21st century, does not lie with the so-called real sector no matter how much we wish it were so.” As a result of the beliefs we have held and carried over with tenacity from the era of the command economy paradigms of the 20^th century and its attendant policy implications, we continue to walk in the well—trodden but myopic path of economic salvation lying in “industrialisation”. This economic powerhouse we are constructing largely in our minds will never export chocolates to Switzerland, milk to Holland, poultry to China, leather to Italy, cars to the US, computers to Singapore, coal to Russia, steel to Japan, tyres to France, cotton to India or cement to Poland. It will not do so either to West Africa since these countries produce exactly what we do the way we do. Equally important, the Nigerian economy represents approximately 70% of the GDP of the sub-region—who then will we be exporting to? North, East and South Africa are no-go areas. What then is the basis of our much-vaunted economic planning if we have no markets for what we have decided to offer the world in trade?

For 40 years we have pursued a mirage—it is time to wake up. The future lies in the knowledge economy. 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. By implication, building meaningful capacity in the national economy will demand new policies and a new generation of political thinkers. In the old economy, fixed assets, financing, and labour were the principle sources of competitive advantage for firms. Countries focused on physical infrastructure for factories, gap financing for big industrial projects, and marketing and incentives to attract industry.

In the Knowledge Economy, we need to shift our focus from “hunting and gathering” (industrial recruitment) to “gardening” (promoting growth from within). Tomorrow’s jobs will come from fast-growing entrepreneurial firms, and not from the small number of assembly and re-bagging plant relocations. Countries that ignore entrepreneurial growth in favour of expensive zero-sum industrial recruitment will do so at their own peril. An excellent example: in the early 1980s, The state of Iowa in the US chose not to provide a loan and business assistance to Ted Waitt, a twenty-something fledgling entrepreneur seeking to start a new firm, since his was not a large firm nor a big industrial recruitment prospect. Waitt, who had an idea of selling computers by mail order, stayed in the same metropolitan area, but went just across the state border to South Dakota, which was more than happy to help him grow his company. Today, that company, Gateway, is one of the largest employers in South Dakota.

Back home, for most of our working population (generally between the ages of 25 and 45 years) the reality and the promise which together create the crucible of hope in which they desire to forge their destinies lies far from the prescriptions of the mandarins of command economics. Rather, look around you: everywhere you will see stubborn buds of entrepreneurship raising shoots through the hard and brittle soil of our economy. Threading traffic in the hot sun and swirling dust of the metropolis, our youth are hawking pure water and GSM cards. In dark, narrow corridors of overcrowded markets, they jostle for the attention of buyers in intense competition even with Indians and now, Chinese petty traders. Along the streets and skirting stinking gutters, they prop up makeshift sheds of broken planks and blue plastic beneath which they house a treasure strove of odds and ends, second—hand shoes and clothes, bibles and photocopied motivational books. From these scenes to the well—established boardrooms of Corporate Nigeria is a long journey that few have negotiated in nearly 40 years of independence. Herein lies the real story: that in a massive nation of aggressively entrepreneurial and capitalist—oriented people, the indigenous business class is still described as nascent while the framework for entrepreneurial activity (funding mechanisms, policy formulation, tax incentives, legislation, etc.) are stuck in neutral gear and heading nowhere slowly. There will be no economic miracle in Nigeria unless this gap is closed and rapidly too.

The key to closing this gap this lies in stimulating small business growth, spurring an innovation—led expansion and building our national technological infrastructure. According to a 2003 Report by the House Small Business Committee of the Congress of the United States House of Representatives, during the early 1990s, there was a period of economic contraction in the US, which led to one of the longest economic expansions in US history. This expansion was characterized by the acceleration in growth rates of real GDP, productivity, employment, investment and wages. For example, from 1995 through 2000, the annual average GDP growth rate was 2.55%. And over the 10-year boom, equity prices registered a spectacular increase, median household incomes jumped by more than 8% and almost 1.7 million families left the welfare rolls, ushering in a new era of economic prosperity. The Report observed that an economic phenomenon that was key to recovery then is the power of small companies. In the 1989-1993 recession, these small companies created approximately 3.8 million jobs, outpacing large firms by nearly 500,000 jobs. It was the laid-off, white-collar executive who was most likely to start a business, as roughly 25 percent of downsized managers over the age of 40 started their own firms. Historically, small companies have led the way to recovery due to their ability to respond to sharp changes in economic conditions, spur job creation instead of layoffs, and maintain profits in an uncertain environment.

Observing the innovation-based economic growth of Singapore, Winston T.H. Koha and Poh Kam Wongb state that Technological progress and innovation has always played a central role in a country’s economic growth. As an economy advances to the global technological frontier and narrows the technological gap, the potential for economic growth from catching up with the leaders through capital accumulation and learning existing technologies diminishes. This has meant that historically, the efforts of country’s like Nigeria to attain rapid economic growth have been built on flawed premises ab initio.

For the first time in our history however the internal contradictions of the economies of the advanced industrial nations offer us advantageous access to lucrative markets for soft skills and goods. We must recognise that the control over the means of production is no longer exclusively in the hands of the advanced industrial economies. Today, the ability to create, distribute and exploit knowledge has become a major source of competitive advantage, wealth creation and improvements in the quality of life. In the 20^th century, newly industrialized economies such as China, South Korea, Taiwan and Singapore, have transformed their economies by improving the technological performance of their industries through well-thought out science and technology policies. With their deepened technological capabilities, they are now able to compete consistently and successfully on a global scale in a growing number of industries. They have combined policies for investment that encourage and reward entrepreneurship with those that facilitate the greatest flow and use of commercially-relevant technologies.

A country’s technological infrastructure is a key component of a nation’s set of competitive advantages in technology creation and innovation. Broadly speaking, a country’s technological infrastructure encompasses the education system, the private and public research organizations, the network of technological and scientific associations, and its legal institutions such as intellectual property rights as well as institutions and legislations which provide incentives to develop and exchange technologies.

In the context of the above, the recent move to auction the Federal Secretariat is folly. If the government does not know what to do with, we do. In the concluding part of this article, I will paint a vivid picture of the dream I had and ask you to join in inviting OBJ to commission the largest industrial ( read “software”) park in Africa.

 

Lagos: Nigeria
5th March, 2004