By Onome Amawhe

The emergence of Information Technology has forever changed the way economic and social development occurs in Nigeria. Most stakeholders in IT industry prefer to talk about what’s coming.

James Agada is the CEO of Computer Warehouse Group

Not what’s happened. But to be able to make informed guesses about the prospect of the IT industry, it’s important to understand its origins in Nigeria. James Agada is the CEO of  Computer Warehouse Group, a leading pan-African IT company in Nigeria.

As a major stakeholder, he thinks the origin of IT in Nigeria is replete with memories of the oil industry:  “ I think that the first serious introduction into IT in Nigeria was most likely through the oil companies because some of the people that became doyens of IT in Nigeria worked in the oil industry.

A person like Donald Etiebet had done a lot of work with the oil companies so; my suspicion is that a lot of the initial investment in IT in Nigeria possibly came from the oil companies. And that can be quite easy to understand because they are one of the first sectors of the economy to seriously apply IT to analyze data. IT was also applied in the scientific search for oil because it couldn’t have been possible for them to process large amount of data without using computers”

“From its early uses in the oil companies, IT spread into the banks from where it rolled on to some government agencies. All these was before the advent of the micro computer revolution that came in around the early 1980s and became widespread in the banks. And ever since, IT has become mainstream. And the revolution continues”.  Agada’s account of the origin of IT in Nigeria stands in good stead given that he’s built a life and career around IT.  As a graduate of Electronics engineering, he had always known that he wanted to do something with computers.

“I’ve always had interest in computers and robotics. And my early interest in computer was driven by the story of man called Seymour Cray who used to work for IBM Computers before setting out to start building his own version of super computers.  As a young boy in secondary school; I was enthralled that he was building the fastest computers in the world. Following this, I was inspired to follow his lead. Subsequently, I gained admission to go to Waseda University, a comprehensive research university based in central Tokyo”.

“Unfortunately, my parents didn’t have the money to send me to Japan so I had to let it go. But from then onward, I knew I was going to study something related to computers and by the time I got into the university to read Electrical Engineering that allowed me to design computers and all kinds of things.  And I thoroughly enjoyed the programming both with the mainframe and microcomputers we had in our school’s department which enabled to learn software and hardware.

By the time I was doing my final year in the University, I had alreadystarted building my own computer from scratch and writing the operating system and eventually that became my profession and life”.  The lifelong passion for computers eventually paid off when he came on board as co-owner of Computer Warehouse Group (CWG) providers of integrated functions and shared services. The company has since advanced as a major Pan- African Systems Integration company with branch offices in Nigeria, Ghana, Uganda and Cameroon.

CWG boasts a client’s base across Government, Banking & Finance, and Oil & Gas, Manufacturing, Telecommunication and Education as well as other key sectors of the African economy.  Initially starting out as Computer Warehouse Limited, the acquisition of two other firms namely DCC Networks and Expert Edge Software made the company change name  to Computer Warehouse Group. Agada Recounts the story of the merger:  “I worked for in Inland Computers with the founders of Computer Warehouse Limited. And then we all left at some point to set up our own individual businesses.

I started a company called Expert Edge Software and Systems and we were a small struggling company.  And most of the time, we were always being bailed out by our friends in CWL with whom we did a lot of project together. Eventually they made an offer to buy over Expert Edge Software and Systems on the condition that I joined. And because Expert Edge wasn’t doing particularly well and given that we had the technology without the business acumen, gave in and took up the offer”.

“In 1997 Computer Warehouse Limited acquired Expert Edge and one other company. It then rechristened and became Computer Warehouse Group”.  Since the emergence of the company as Computer Warehouse Group, the corporate culture has been fast paced. “We are in a fast changing business sector and realized that standing still would be an invitation to death.

At any given point in time, there’s always something changing. The second thing is that CWG is an entrepreneurial company so as much as we are growing and putting processes in place, we want people to take responsibilities by getting things done in spite of whatever has happened. And therefore, that does lead people to take a bit more risk whilst focusing on results. And for a long time, we’ve been dealing with customers and manufacturers directly. And it’s a very open environment where we say ‘silence is not golden’. Everybody’s got to speak up for themselves and what the boss says is really immaterial because for anybody to stand out here, they’ve got to be able to speak up for themselves and the company”.

“So, the dominant thing here is the entrepreneurship and the willingness to constantly evolve”.  James Agada has been CEO of Computer Warehouse Group since January 2016. He thinks the main challenge for him is being able to hold the CEO position while at the same time navigating a change:  “The constituency is much bigger now because there are so many people who will ask questions but we’ve done a fair job of defining our destination more than five years ago.

And it’s the urgency of getting there that has changed especially in the environment and economy that we find ourselves. So, at every turn there are painful choices to be made until we create something that becomes stable for some time before we change it again”.  He goes on to explain that the company’s  policy of doing five year plans are part of the  key  strategy to enable it to emerge as the number IT platform provider in Africa by 2020.

“The benchmark to be number one is for us to have platforms that about 40 million subscribers could use. And we should be able to get the equivalent of an average revenue per subscriber of 1$ a month. So that’s already defined and there are a lot of hidden changes in that statement because that would means having facilities that enables subscription of such patronage and we have to find the services”

“But the big part of it is that there’s a big spectrum of possible services that we can deliver to give us that kind of volume. There are services for healthcare, transport, education, bill payment, internally generated revenue services for government.  We’ve succeeded with some and failed with some but we are determined to triple the number of subscribers on our service platforms this year. I think it’s both a hard time to be CEO of an IT company in Nigeria but it is all the same an exciting time because of the possibilities of opportunities to make an impact”.