Software blues for a prodigal nation

Malaysians have a moonlight tale they love to recount to the ultimate discomfort of Nigerians. They had ridden on the back of Nigeria’s prodigality to become a major net exporter of rubber, which they first took out of Nigeria about four decades ago. They love to tell the story to teach Nigerians a lesson on how providence rewards those who astutely seek after newer height.

It was from Nigeria that the Asian country first took its seedlings of rubber plants, and while it rose to become a king in the business of rubber exportation, its benefactor, Nigeria, was reduced to becoming a nonentity in the same business.

Another Asian country in the '80s decided on a similar course, but this time the business was not rubber, neither was the host Nigeria.

Faced with an overwhelming challenge of making its monstrously large population productive, India looked to the West to revitalize both its economy and its demography. It saw a vision of a country that could compete effectively in the new economy, which would be powered by the sheer weight of brainpower encapsulated in software.

The new economy -- or, as it is often conveniently referred to, the "e-economy" -- was by its original design expected to have its center of gravity at Silicon Valley, America’s major IT park and home to giants that include the likes of Microsoft and Google.

Well, the West didn’t quite reckon with the Indians. As some anti-colonial thinkers would love to say, the new economy was supposed to be a continuation of imperialistic conquest, and it was founded on the theology that the Bretton Wood institutions will continue to foster their gospel of subservient economic principles on the world’s developing economies.

The buffs at Silicon Valley and those on Wall Street did not quite realize that, unlike the previous revolutions that could be confined and were indeed confined within the limits of continental boundaries, IT would be a transnational octopus to fully realize itself.

When the Indians started churning out brain chips, the West knew it was time to eat humble pie. They courted the Indians, set up chip factories to exploit the cheap labor in the Asian country and escape the snare of environmentalists and labor activists in the West. Today, the Silicon Triangle includes China, Taiwan and other emerging IT houses in Asia.

The West had also come to see in practice what the Bretton Wood institutions did not discover in theory: that the IT sector in Europe and America would grow faster than the labor market’s ability to meet the job openings. The sector had grown in leaps and bounds beyond even the wildest imagination of the most optimistic IT analysts.

As a result, the IT sector, even in some western countries with some level of xenophobia, is grossly undeserved by indigenous manpower. To meet the shortfall, western powers such as Germany, Britain and the United States beckon on India and other Asian countries every year with a special express visa. All of Europe with America is hungry for techies, and each year, millions are wooed via the net to come and take a waiting spot.

Trust the Indians and other Asians. They are filing out to occupy prime IT positions in the West. They are the hottest techies in demand, and who would dare blame the Indian government, which saw a vision in the '80s and decided to play out the vision for real?

IT visionaries had proclaimed over a decade ago that IT would be an economic leveler. They have India to point to as the fulfillment of their vision. And they can also point to South Korea and China as the new hub for IT. India rakes in over US$20 billion every year from exporting software and has established a much-coveted place for itself in the new economy. Now, the West can only ignore India and China at its own peril.

But the India feat did not happen by chance. It took careful planning and the cooperation of the public and private sectors. Both sectors had their own views on how IT could be moved forward. They, in fact, had their differences, but they had a common motive of pushing India up there.

One of the first things the Indian government did was to set up technology incubators and begin the process of creating a digital village in a place called Bangalore. It also positioned its indigenous software developers well enough to gain the recognition of the established operators in the West. And it did not treat the local chip makers as just another item for political campaigns. If it had done that, India would remain just another potential software giant.

It gathered its analytically inclined manpower to constitute the basic element with which Bangalore would be turned into another Silicon Valley, and in no time, the West started to notice. The Indians could no longer be ignored. They had become a major power in the e-economy.

India has so many things in common with Nigeria, black Africa’s most populous country. Both countries take the top spot on the world’s demographic map. India is second with over a billion people, while Nigeria takes the ninth position or so with over 150 million people.

The two countries are wracked by frequent sociopolitical and religious uprisings, and both India and Nigeria are faced with the challenge of getting their economy steam right. India is more than a head above Nigeria here. Most people will bet their lives that Nigeria has as much credentials as India to enter the "e-age."

But there are questions that beg for answers. Does the Nigerian government understand the software industry? Does it realize the place of IT in building a viable economic structure that has eluded us for so long? Time, and only time, will tell.

The Bretton Wood institutions did not have us in mind when they drew up the map of the new economy and allocated space to everyone. Neither did they have the Asians in mind. But see what the Indians and those stubborn Asians they failed to consider are doing. See how Asia is daily "unpartitioning" what the West arrogantly thought was a superb demarcation between who will write the chips and who will pay with blood to use them.

There are policy statements and attempts to move Nigeria on the IT highway. But only time will tell if the army of IT enthusiasts are genuine or fake and if they can stand the heat that lies ahead. So many policy statements have been made in the last few years to help advance the cause of IT diffusion and usage, but there appears to be little done in the exercise of willpower to make those laudable statements practicable testimonies.

Among the IT enthusiasts, you would notice a trend in advocacy that tended to be defined by the level of patronage these set of advocates enjoy from within government. The loud calls on government for proactive action by notable IT advocates is dying out as they increasingly win IT-related contracts from government agencies and institutions to supply foreign hardware and software for which they have centered their criticisms in the last one decade.

The very people who raised their voices against undue software importation and the domination of corporate Nigeria by foreign chips without input from the local knowledge industry are becoming IT contracts, finding reasons to connive with government at not growing local capacity in the local software industry.

We should worry that the voices that have been asking government to act proactively in growing capacity for local software development and exportation have been silenced by the economic reality of surviving in a stifling environment.

The Software Taskforce has already gone to sleep, and the much touted seven-point agenda of this current president of the Federal Republic has no clear cut role for IT growth. Where, then, is the hope to be part of the information society by 2020? Truth is only time will tell.