By Chris Uwaje

Yesterday, we were told it will take us 2,000 years to locally refine crude oil into petroleum and develop a bomb – but we did that within few months during the Nigerian civil war and came out with “Ogbunigwe,” a bomb with much dynamism and superiority than other inventions!

Lessons learnt dictates that we must believe in ourselves and indeed in our collective knowledge and wisdom.

Today, Nigeria Software and by extension, software developed in Africa and by Africans has arrived and cannot wait for anyone but move on and positively explode to add unprecedented value to governance and economy! Software is life and constructive expression of creative logic, innovation and productive independence in the information centric knowledge society.

Currently, we live in a world where 3,000 books with heavy knowledge stuffs are produced daily (e-book inclusive), where Nigerian mobile phone ownership and subscription rate has surpassed the 110 million threshold and where Nollywood is sleeplessly scripting globally competitive storylines and producing breath-taking movies. Telling our story ourselves, competing and promoting our knowledge culture globally is the reality of human development and creation of wealth.

Therefore, anyone, (government, investors, market forces etc.) who neglects to recognize the power and emerging business numbers of Software-Nigeria (Nigeria Developed Software) is missing out on a significant aspect of the entrepreneurship bottom-line required for engaging the opportunities of Information Society. For this and other cogent reasons, Software-Nigeria can’t wait. We cannot wait for India, USA, Europe or indeed any other country for that matter! We must define our own model and forge our software identity and move on – and the time is now, before the Cloud, and yes we can.

Global IT spending will hit USD$3.73trillion in 2013 – according to Gartner Inc. Also, software spending will reach $158billion by 2016. This translates to the fact that we now live in a ‘Software-first world’ where Nigeria’s future resides. Meanwhile, the recent United Nations (UNCTAD) Information Economy Report 2012 on “The Software Industry and Developing Countries”, has rightly recognized software as not only fundamental, but critical to national development and security but also for national prosperity and survivability.

The critical infrastructure and economy of modern nations is largely controlled and managed by software. In short, software has become a prime and critical national resource, vital to national well being, sustainable development, creation of wealth and global competitiveness. The recent UN studies therefore rightly emphasized that ‘Software’s Critical Role Raises Fundamental National Issues’. This has necessitated the accelerated involvement of government of most nations in the WSIS program agenda. The study further observed that nation’s dependency on software raises national issues and challenges that must be addressed in a coherent manner.

While ISPON continues to serve as the chief software advocate of Nigeria (C-SAN), we also submit that the software industry can become an alternative to oil – with respect to revenue generation and wealth creation. We are therefore concerned about the current alarming rate of national technophobia and in particular, the visible ignorance about the critical and significance role of software in 21st Century national global development. By all indications, software technology can become a very feasible alternative to our national oil revenue generation — currently put at about $12 billion a year. The key benefit of a vibrant software industry is in producing more knowledgeable and better-skilled human capital for nation building.

TO BE CONTINUED NEXT WEEK.