Jump Starting the Nigerian Mobile Revolution!

It was a privilege sharing my thoughts at MobiFest held August 17 at the University of Lagos. Impressive ideas were discussed, challenging issues were raised and there was meaningful networking by industry players.

The web & mobile space is getting pretty much heated in recent times in Nigeria. There’s no doubt things are changing in the Nigerian technology space especially in the area of software like we’ve seen in the telecoms and banking sectors.

I believe that someday we’ll have internet billionaires in Nigeria but I doubt if it’ll be as soon as 5 years as predicted by Chika Nwobi at MobiFest due to some peculiar Nigerian issues.

However, I decided to share my thoughts on what we must do as mobile industry players to accelerate the growth of mobile technology in Nigeria:

1) Innovation – I believe we can do a lot more in the area of creating solutions that are useful and relevant to users here. We’ve not seen enough creative ideas that can jump start a revolution. I usually tell developers: “the easiest way to get ideas is to ask the users. Your family, friends are those who’ll use these solutions so you can start by finding out exactly what they would love to do with their phones”. You’ll be amazed by what you’d find.

2) Global in Thought - Local in Deed - Culture is one of the biggest hindrances to the growth of technology in general in Nigeria. Why should I use Google Maps when I can easily ask someone for directions? , the average user thinks. We need to make our technology and products world class yet our implementations suited to local needs and relevance. You can’t copy & paste technology here. You’ll get massive “ERRORS”!

3) Collaboration - Conferences like MobiFest should be held regularly, dedicated to mobile ideas, challenges and solutions and I suggest at a quarterly rate. More people should get involved and the larger companies with interest in the mobile space need to lead the way in terms of support and sponsorship.

4) Web first – Mobile can’t grow without the web growing first. Before mobile technology will experience real growth there must have been giant solutions in the web space. What I suggest to independent product developers is to go ahead succeed on the web probably create a platform that creates useful content that you can wrap mobile technologies around.

5) Open Sesame – We need to create an open system like we see with the recent app store revolution. Someone asked if there was a regulatory body for developers at the conference & I kicked against the idea. I mean you can regulate firms but developers? You’ll kill the little existent innovation in the market. I want to be able to use apps developed by Nigerian 10 year olds soon.

6) Users! Users! Users! - people must be motivated in some way to use mobile technologies and apps either using the “bandwagon effect” like we see with the current Blackberry trend. Whatever works! The issue is if that no matter how good your app or solution is you need to get users on board to be profitable.

I take time out to appreciate the efforts of Emmanuel Okoegwale and his team in putting MobiFest 2010 together as well as all the participants ... and to all those who are doing something today to add value to Nigerians using the mobile platform, I say well done. See you at the top!

Feel free to drop me a mail at oduntanodubanjo@gmail.com on anything "mobile + Nigeria" related.

Follow me on Twitter: @odustriangle

Cheers!