By Nnamdi Ojiego

For local software providers to measure up with their counterparts in most countries of the world, they must be exposed to the modern and proper way of software development.

This was the view of Chief Technical Officer, CTO of Websoft, a technology company, Mr Omoniyi Ewete, who said that exposure of local vendors and usage of local software by government institutions, corporate organisations and private individuals, are very key to the development and adoption of local software.

He said local software are not inferior to foreign ones because, they pass through the same requirement test in the process of developing software. According to him, the major challenge facing local providers is lack of patronage of their products.

“The challenge for local vendor is that you have a software but you don’t have clients to patronize you.” This he said, was due to the wrong perception by the public that locally produced software is inferior or of low quality to foreign ones which are seen as of high quality.

“But the mistake people do make is that they fail to realise that foreign software started from somewhere and continuous usage by companies and organisations has improved the quality of some of the imported software. Some of the foreign software have passed through evolution which has made them a really marketable products”, he revealed while stressing that until Nigerians changed their views and started using local software, it cannot be improved on because, it is through usage that a product can be adopted and subsequently becomes a household name among the people.

Other challenges that hinder the development of indigenous software according to Mr Ewete, included lack of technology transfer and exposure. He stated that despite the challenges, indigenous software still has some advantages over foreign ones as every imported software must be localized. “Some changes and modification need to be done before adaption. And that’s the advantage local software has over foreign.”

He however, called on software engineers to brace up and get exposed on how things are done properly elsewhere by attending conventions, seminars, trade fairs and training courses on software development and marketing in countries like India, America and China, stressing that the exposure and knowledge garnered through the training could be applied to make our software much better.