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| www.rikowski.wordpress.com |
Convergence
describes the relationship between content creation, its intermediate
distribution and ultimate consumption. Technology has found application in a
pool of dynamic fields including media. Today, books, magazines, newspapers and
radio & TV are moving into online portals called computed clouds where
uncountable consumers can reach them. The preference of service subscription is
rapidly increasing and reflecting in the mode of content purchase by consumers.
With the pervasive acquisition of smart phones and portable internet devices, even
the naive would easily identify this as a future trend. Africans are doing well
in this regard; at least, IT products/service offerings like MXit, Obami, Jobberman, 2go, Motribe,
PesaPal, 10Layer, to mention a few, practically corroborate this opinion. Nigeria
isn’t doing badly either. Two of the highest broadband communication channels
in Africa, MainOne and Glo1 submarine cables, are owned by Nigerian companies. However,
ICT is a factor that ensures that no economic sector remains the same. So, things
will keep changing and people must keep adapting.
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| By Glasbergen |
NYSC should be given some kudos for
creating ICT community development units for corps members who are interested
in sharing ICT knowledge within their local communities. However, it would be
better if NYSC actually creates an interactive innovation competition between
corps members themselves; partly to unleash innate potential and also encourage
knowledge transfer.
But it
is important to catch them young. In the United States, primary school kids are
already learning creative ICT through programming tools like MIT’s Scratch. We should be past the realm of
debating the continuity or otherwise of UTME & NECO. School curricula,
especially for public secondary schools need to be redressed. Even the present
ones are often disregarded or boycotted by teachers who sometimes prioritise
extra-occupation jobs over their primary responsibilities. Maybe we are quick
to forget that a standard that is faulty coupled with implementers that are
suffering will tend to produce educated illiterates.
We
need to extend ICT services to rural communities at prices that are
pocket-friendly. This is partly a responsibility of the government. Policies
that encourage the planting of fibre cables or provisioning of microwave
transmission to places outside highly populated metropolises should be
developed and implemented. If the cost of offering services to people in the
rural areas will create irrecoverable expenses for internet and telecom service
providers, none of them would extend their service offerings to those regions. Again,
the cost of doing business honestly in Nigeria is still high; companies
complain about multiple taxes, several agencies discourage business persons
through corrupt practices and special hidden stakeholders such as militants,
kidnappers and hoodlums both vandalise business infrastructures and threaten employees’
lives. Eventually, more people flood into metro cities and the imminent
population congestion in several urban centres continues to grow into a daytime
reality.
During
a recent official visit to Co-creation
hub (CC Hub) in Lagos, I discovered what other young people outside Lagos might be missing and couldn’t help but ask my host some personal questions. From my
findings, CC Hub is more like an open techie garden that accommodates
academics, agencies, investors and inventors who plough ideas and incubate them
towards solving many of the customised problems existing in Nigeria. I am yet
to be a beneficiary of the organisation but I know that through CC Hub, young
people meet with their peers virtually or physically to work together on tech
projects. Days later, CNN's Errol Barnett had his visit published too.
I think we need more CCHub-like groups in Nigeria and not just in Lagos. After the similitude of India and China, population is an obvious blessing for
Nigeria. But if we do not find ways to create population leverage, the negative effects associated
with this strength will produce jagbajantis fruits. May such fruits never come in multiples.
