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| DigitalSENSE backpage interview with Okere |
Operating
in Nigeria, is not an easy task, how would you say it has been compared to
other African Countries where CWG has offices?
Obviously,
a lot of opportunities are in Nigeria because of the size of the economy, the
population and of course, the fact that there is very great demand for our oil,
but if you look at other economies as well. Take for instance Ghana, it’s
becoming preferred headquarters for companies that are bringing their
operations into West Africa for the reason of stable power supply, better
infrastructure and security. Then, if you look at country like Uganda, which
has got a very good natural habitat which is the biggest lake in the world, so
they all have their different attractions, but clearly, Nigeria in terms of
opportunities is a head on shoulder above other countries in the region.
You
said Nigeria is more or less above all other countries, can you throw more
light and are we actually tapping those opportunities in what we are doing now?
If we
are looking at a retail operation, retail mindset, then clearly a population of
160million is a gold mine compared to Ghana which is about 25 million. So if
you look at it from either angle, the item of which you are going to sell in
that kind of population makes the business much more attractive in terms of
economy of scale.
However,
it’s not everybody that can benefit from this window of scale of population,
because sometimes you are coming in from enterprise perspective and in the
enterprise perspective, you now start looking at which companies you can do
business with; the manufacturer, the telcos, the oil and banks. Are those
sectors growing? So you are depending on those companies to grow so that you
grow with them by building on the back of the retail. So, if you are doing
business with the bank, the bank is banking people and companies, you are
hoping the bank increases their business so that the business you are doing
with the bank will also increase in terms of storage that you need for storing
their banking record. If the bank is not growing because you are not able to
tap fully into the populace, then your business is also stunted.
Today,
as I speak to you, I understand that only 20 per cent of Nigerians are banked
that 80 per cent are not banked. So, if we are able to bring those 80 per cent
into the formal banking sector, then of course they would need more technology
and then we do better. Having said that, Nigeria offers you the numbers, but
Nigeria also offers you a high per capital in terms of the oil revenue that
contributes significantly to the economic life of the external reserves. To
that extent, Nigeria is a head on should above. Ghana has just discovered oil,
Uganda has just discovered oil but it’s going to take some time to reach the
commercial quantity or production which Nigeria has reached. A close competitor
would be Angola which is producing about 1.5m barrels per day versus our 2.3m –
2.4m, but the difference is that Angola seems to be exploring more and
therefore increasing their reserves and anytime they get the green light from
Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) they can increase their
production. On the other hand, our own exploration I understands it’s not as
vast as it should be.
Recently,
the issue of cashless has been all over the place. Is Computer Warehouse Group
playing within the cashless system in Nigeria? What exactly are being offered
by Computer Warehouse Group?
I
would say we are one of the leading players in that arena even before the
Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) announced the cashless policy. We have the system
in place offering our products in conjunction with Fundamo, the product is call
Fundamo; Fundamo is now part of Visa anyway in South Africa, it’s been acquired
by Visa. But we have our technology for mobile money and today we have in our
data center, services which we provide to banks and microfinance houses hosting
them on our mobile money platform; where they do transactions from our
platforms and we charge them per transactions; so we have been doing that even
before the announcement of cashless Lagos. Before that, we also had a platform
for microfinance banks, of course microfinance banks may not have the budget to
buy their whole Information Technology (IT), therefore they would like to use
Finacle. Finacle is the application which we have supplied and supported in
about 14 of the 24 banks, so it’s a dominant application.
But
in terms of having it as a single tenancy in your environment, you need to pay
for the licenses for the hardware and then the whole team of our technicians to
operate it. Many microfinance banks should be happy to run software as a service
(SaaS) business and pay per use. So we have software that they are using, and
we are talking with the major telecoms.
Is it
the Finacle application you are talking about now?
It’s
our own banner application, we would like to bring into that, but we have not
finalise with Infosys which owns the IT right to bring Finacle into the cloud,
so to speak. I think that would probably happen in the next couple of months,
there are also accelerating, knowing that cloud is the future but they need to
get some legal aspect of it right. But while they are doing that we are not
waiting, we are done with our own in-house developed application to provide
services to microfinance banks, there are tier two banks that we would be happy
to take Finacle for their operations if it’s available on the cloud and it will
soon be available.
If
you look at your Automated Teller Machine (ATM) for instance, where you can do
a lot of your cashless transactions apart from withdrawing mobile money, you
can pay for your DSTV bills and so on.
Out
of about 9,000 ATM in Nigeria, we have supplied and supported about 3,000 which
is about a third. So each time you go to the ATM, chances are 1 out of 3 is
supplied and supported by us. It’s not just the ATM, on weekends even if the
ATM is in a branch and there is no power, so we provide power backup and
backhaul, so the ATM should be able to link to your banking application to know
whether you have balance or not to be able to dispense money, so we provide the
communication link. So, we offer these as a service to some banks that don’t
want to hold it, they just say “provide me this service, I would do my cash
only,” so we charge them per quarter for that service, some say “I would buy
outright,” so we sell the ATM, but 3,000 ATM are being supported by us.
You
made mention of cloud computing and that’s very interesting; in Nigeria, do you
see the market readily available?
Clearly,
there is a market - people do not just want to buy things and then replenish
them after three years and again. People are happy for instance to use Gmail,
small businesses and so on. They don’t buy any server, you just provision
yourself, you go in to put your details and then you create a Gmail account and
you can receive and send mails. How nice would it be if by provisioning
yourself from the hospital management system, you can run your hospital or if
you can provision yourself in the financial system you can run your small bank
or microfinance bank. Clearly, people want to use this service, the major
stumbling block is the broadband which is not available because when you talk
about cloud, then you talk about broadband because cloud is going to be hungry
on communication.
But
now we have about 80 per cent of our broadband on the shore, it’s not been
moved in because of the last milers to do that and the lack of conducive
operating environment. There are some telecommunication companies that have
backbone around the country and maybe, there should be a way by which they can
discourse with last milers like DCC, which is one of our subsidiaries to take
that infrastructure and bring it to the inland to the last man, peoples’
doorstep. That has not succeeded very well, so maybe, the costing has not been
rightly find or the definition of roles is not clear yet. I would expect, for instance,
the telecoms (network operators) to sit back as wholesalers and sell bandwidth
to last milers who would now vend it to enterprises and individuals. But you
find out that the telecom companies (carriers) go there to compete in the
enterprise with the people that’s suppose to take the last mile.
The
telecom companies are already struggling on the voice; they have paid so much
fines, I don’t think they have the bandwidth to add data to it at this point in
time directly, they can add data to it indirectly through partnership with last
milers like DCC.
So,
you are canvassing for a better partnership module between industry operators
and owners of the carriers themselves.
I
think this is what will break the deadlock in terms of the hold on broadband in
Nigeria and I think perhaps the regulator and the Ministry of Communications
Technology have a role to play. Perhaps they can say to the carriers “I would
give you right of way but I also need you to do X and Y;” “I would give you a
reduced cost of the right of way but I want you to ensure that you give the
backbone bandwidth at a certain cost to the last milers so that he can put in
that investment that is required to take to the customers who need it.” Now the
customers don’t have it, I doubt that you have broadband in your office but if
you think you have and you can’t watch YouTube in your office, probably you
don’t have good communication to qualify it as broadband.
Computer
Warehouse is known for being a good partner with Finacle, how good has the
partnership been over the years?
Probably
this is one of the classic lists of partnership that can be copied in terms of
what we have achieved in the trust and integrity that is in that partnership.
We met Infosys which is the owner of Finacle banking application in 1999, just
before the Y2K. Many companies are looking at changing their internal working
system in order to be compliant and that was a good time. In 2000, we had three
banks that came on to the Finacle platform at the same time, we had STB, we had
at that time it was called Comet Bank, it became First Atlantic, it later
became Finbank and now it’s been acquired by FCMB, and then we also had Oceanic
Bank and eventually we have big banks like First Bank and UBA.
Today,
we have 14 banks including Stanbic and the rest, and there is more requests or
more interest from banks that I cannot mention now that want to move over to
Finacle. Yes, it’s something we are doing right, it’s not that Finacle is the
best developed software but what I think is the bottom strength of that
partnership is that the local absorption of the technology to provide effective
local support and implementation has helped. They don’t want to wait for people
to come from India to come and implement or to solve a problem.
We,
at CWG can do that, at every point in time we have two of our people there at
Infosys on the global helpdesk so that they are taking difficult problems from
global customers and they also have two of their people here in Nigeria that
are looking at problems that are coming from Nigeria. The whole point is that
all this information feeds back into the future release of the software that
makes it better, so the combination of all these has made the partnership
between Infosys and Computer Warehouse on the Finacle application to be a
module to be copied.
Recently,
the National Information Technology Development Agency made a pronouncement in
terms of usage of foreign computers in federal ministries and public service
system in Nigeria, how do you see that selling or making the market better?
In
any economy, local content and anything to encourage local content is for the
greater good. It reduces joblessness and it also makes it possible for the
industry to grow. If you take the Korean industries, their cars are not the
best but because of consistence support by the government, they have improved
it to the standard that is challenging the Japanese cars. Twenty years ago, the
Japanese cars were on the same situation challenging British, European and
American cars. And today the Japanese cars have become the standard.
We
may say that we are not there yet in terms of the technologies to produce
computers, we would probably compete at the top end, the server end, whatever
we can do let’s do it. We are talking about the end user devices; desktops, maybe
handheld phones and so on. If there is a way we can encourage people to go into
that business by guaranteeing some patronage provided they meet certain
qualities standard, let’s do it. But in terms of cutting our nose to spice our
face, let’s not do that. We don’t have the infrastructure to manufacture large
servers, enterprise servers, for those let’s continue to partner with the
global manufactures, there are low hanging foot there because even if they
bring in those servers in town or in country, they need local partners to
install and support them, and this is how we begin to learn about the
technology before you know it, we probably start assembling such high grade
servers here as well. But it’s step by step, anything that has to do with local
content any moment is in the right direction.
Computer
Warehouse Group has been known to be very passionate about education system in
Nigeria, can you share some of the things CWG has done in terms of supporting
education system in the country and how do you think you can make it better?
As
our Corporate Social Responsibility mandate, so a lot of the CSR we do is
around education, we won an award in 2011 as the best CSR in Nigeria. So what
we do is specific to universities, with UNILAG, we are discussing with them
about the IT Park where we also provide faculty to bring the practical aspect
of computing and this is from the successful academy which we have run. We call
it the CWG Academy; we run it in house, we went to that academy because there
was a depth of skills and we couldn’t get the value from the people we are
employing. So, we set up the academy to provide skills for our own use. It
became so popular and many people started coming into the academy, people that
are already on a job, we graduate 50 people quarterly. So we take the best 10
per cent and our customers take some and our competitors take some. At least
the company is adding to the skill pool in Nigeria. So, this is why we
discussed with UNILAG about ICT Park. We support the best graduating student in
computer sciences department in University of Lagos, University of Ghana and
Makarere University, Uganda and provide them with automatic employment to join
our service in addition to giving them a notebook and in case they want to go
further.
These
are little things we do which mean a lot to the particular people, the
universities.
Recently,
the Founder of Dell was in Nigeria and being one of Dell partners in Nigeria,
how was the visit and what would you say is the impact of that visit to
Computer Warehouse and its customers?
You
would recall that Computer Warehouse is probably now the oldest partner of Dell
in Nigeria. We started the company on being a straight Dell partner, we were
not doing or dealing with any other system – just only Dell supply and support.
So we became very close to Dell and we are able to then learn from their best
practices; they opened up to us, they trained our people and certified them.
They gave us tips on how to run our company successfully, so Dell coming, for
me shows commitment. Before then, in 2010 we had gone to visit Michael in Texas
with some of our enterprise customers that were looking at virtualization,
server consolidation, storage consolidation and as a result of that visit, we
are able to get those customers convinced.
We
also have the technology to provide probably what’s needed in the country. Now
we are in partnership with Ecobank for all their 32 branches globally providing
them with this service; with First Bank, UBA and MTN. So, for me coming to
Nigeria by Michael is showing that he’s betting on Nigeria as an emerging
market to invest and that would signal similar companies to also do the same.
We
seem to be losing the battle a little bit at this point in time to Ghana
because of things being set up there, West African head office and the head
Technical Support Center Ghana there are other companies that are doing
likewise, Michael coming here probably shows the way to other people that –
Nigeria is still a place to consider when you want to do business.
Some of
the things we discussed at the meeting is one; Can we have training centers
here so that we don’t spend so much on flight and accommodation for the few
people we send for training. If the training and certification can be done for
West Africans here in Nigeria, then we can train more people and we can provide
more services to customers and sell more Dell.
Number
two, can we have what we call the Executive Briefing Centre, this is actually a
centre where we call touch and feel, you find it in Houston, Texas, London,
Ireland. Can we have the West African seal, the visa process, let’s say someone
wants to do a big project, they would want to see your technology. You want
their CEO or CTO to come to America to see things and feel, and the visa
process is so long. If it is available here we can take more people to the
competence centre to touch and feel, and give them the comfort.
Three,
should we look at having a data centre, today Dell is very seriously into
cloud, can we have the Dell data centre that is of minimum of category three
where people would now have the confidence to collocate or to take software as
a service and we would give Dell the first mover advantage in that area,
probably being the first manufacturer to put a data centre in Nigeria and they
can do it. They have the technology and the money to do that. These are some of
the things which we discussed and we told Michael that it would be a good idea
to look at.
You
think that this would also translate to some goodwill for your customers?
I
happen to sit on the advisory board of the Minister of Communications
Technology and I know how passionate she is about getting these global
technology companies come and partner our universities to provide training
here, to provide competence centres here and whenever I have the opportunity to
talk to such companies, I would echo the same feeling because am equally
passionate about that; it would benefit our customers of course.
The
Ministry of Communications Technology has just clocked one year, looking back on
where we are coming from, what would be your review of the ministry up till
date?
I
think they’ve done remarkably well in the short period of time; one year only.
This is probably the youngest ministry in Nigeria but if you look at the
initiatives, trying to carve a framework for IT, they call it the ICT Policy.
But the question is to get people to meet their government through online as it
is done everywhere in the world. If you want to register a company you have to
go all the way to Abuja, from Lagos to Abuja is not that difficult but if you
are going to come from Calabar which is a remote place, does it mean that they
shouldn’t set up companies, do they probably have to move to Benin, from Benin
to Lagos then to Abuja and you have to take a hotel. Elsewhere in the world,
it’s online. If you want to register a company you do that online, you want to
fill your tax assessment, it’s online.
Today
if you want to apply for a visa, it’s online. You know, to get the appointment
then the VSF people would take your passport then they will grant you the visa
or give you reason why you need to personally come if it is beyond its routine.
I think this is what the ministry is trying to do. The ministry is trying to
strengthen our agencies such as NITDA, Galaxy Backbone so that they can do more
of becoming the government ICT companies. NCC, this is their first time to
announce a fine for carriers, I am not saying that we should make a habit of
fining carriers but there had to be a signal that the NCC, say let your quality
of service be of minimum acceptable standard. I would be happy if that money
can go into beefing up the infrastructure and improving the quality of
services.
But
clearly, there are a lot of initiatives that the ministry has embarked on and
there is a lot of achievement as well. They are also probably the most
listening ministry, because there have been so many fora where they brief the
stakeholders in the ICT community of what they are planning to do and those
they have achieved, and they take feedback on what they should do.
Moving
forward, what would you say that you are looking at the ministry achieving in
the next one year?
I
think if we can reach a point where people are identified by cards. Let me give
you example with Ghana. Their ID card is still in process but in the main time
they did a very good voters’ registration so the voters registration card has a
biometric of good standards which are not accepted in banks as means of
identification. We have done several identity cards, several voters’ card even
the last voters card I got, my local government cannot accept it as an ID card.
So, talk less of a bank and it’s supposed to be biometric, they spend the same
amount of money. I think if we can have a way by which we can enable local
players to help in computerizing the government agencies, working with Galaxy
Backbone for instance but the pace is slow in terms of the whole automation
process of Nigeria. The more automation the better, the less objectivity,
custom goods, is there a way by which there can be more automation in it so
that you complete with a lot of your documentation online so that you just go
for vetting and only the ones which require clarification that you will
physically go with. If we can achieve that, it makes the whole economy work
faster.
Don’t
you think we need some level of political will to get to where you are looking
at us reaching, especially from our political class; these things at times
trickle down from the head. They would be there as ministers and some other
people and if they are not too conversant with the ICT’s value, giving certain
approval becomes difficult?
And
again, I must give it to the minister because during my recent trip to Abuja, I
went to the Digital Bridge Institute (DBI) and I was amazed at the number of
civil servants that are being trained on ICT. I understand there is a similar
institute campus in Lagos at Oshodi and there is one in Kano and there is plan
to build one in each geopolitical zone which means there is going to be one in
Enugu and then Asaba. But the training that is taking place of government
officials I think that appreciation would then help in terms of when you say
the political will because these are the people that when they have been
trained, they would begin to look at how they were doing the job before and how
they can do it.
And
they can begin to demand the automated way of doing it. It shouldn’t just stop
at the federal, we should take it down to the state civil servants as well as
the local government civil service, and I think once people are aware, the need
is created. It will also rest on broadband because at the end of the day the
more technology savvy you become the more you need the broadband. You have an
iPad, you can imagine if they shut you down from the internet connection.
Let’s say you don’t have a SIM card in it or
you don’t have connection, what’s the use of this iPad. You have the iPad
because you are using it to access the cloud and that means you demand more and
more bandwidth meaning you use more and more services. At the end of the day,
the political will come from an appreciation of what is possible and that come
from the training which I see the Digital Bridge Institute doing quite a bit of
which might not be enough but there may be need for more to be involved in that
education process.
What would be your advice to
Nigerians on ICT adoption and usage?
ICT
is a double-edged sword, it makes life simple, it can also make life complex if
you don’t put in the correct security. For the benefit of us, we are looking at
the mistakes of those that went before us made.
If
you go to America; Identity theft in America is big issue and so we need to as
well clamour more use of ICT, more liberal opening of banking doors to ICT. We
are talking about cashless here and there, we have to put the security fence to
make sure people are not disillusioned and go back to their old style. So on
the security aspect, my problem is that in Nigeria, it seems as if the onus is
on the person that’s been wrongly debited whereas you will see unless the bank
can prove that the debit was taken by you, it’s refunded. If that may be the
case in Nigeria, I think a lot more of the bank would be looking at putting in
the required security.
I
must also commend that the changing of ATM cards from magnetic stripe to Chip
and PIN has greatly improve the security of that medium meaning more people are
more comfortable with that, it’s never enough we can always do more in terms of
providing security that will make people rest assured and would make them adopt
the technology.
Do you have any reservation
on the recent report by the Orosanya’s committee concerning the ICT sector?
Well,
I know there are some recommendations about mergers and acquisitions. I think
you can’t really look at the theoretical aspect only, perhaps from the stronger
aspect, it would be economical and make a lot of sense too. But you have to
look at practicality, what is on the ground and it takes a lot of consultation;
people have to see the benefit, people have to see - how am I protected and
what’s the need for me, what’s there for the greater good and it takes some
time but I agree with the principle of what the report is saying that it’s
sometimes unworthy to have five agencies doing the same thing, why not just put
them together. Even if you look at private sector equivalent, you and I know
that base station sharing is probably the best way by which we can accelerate
the provision of telecom services across the country but how many telecom companies
are sharing base stations. Sometimes you see one base station here and beside
it you see another, we are talking about private sector.
Why then don’t they merge
the base stations and have one base station then you would start thinking about
the practicality; who provides the fuel for the generator of the base station?
How do we share cost in case we need to repair or replace the generator? Am I
sure that this man would do his own?
So
those templates have to be revealed and the two telecom companies have to see
it as workable and they have to see, what’s the need for the greater good of
both of them, then they could be the one clamouring for it. I think it would
happen but it’s happening quite slowly. Having said that there are some base
stations that are shared, I think that the mergers in the sector and industry,
there is a lot of consultation that have to go in and there are also people
involved. Chimamanda Adichie says the fact is one side and then the right is on
the other side. So when you say 70 people died, it’s just 70 people that died,
it’s a fact but when you look at a relative that has 7 children and his
housewife that has died, it becomes a different story entirely, then there is a
motive implication in that.
When
you say merge, some people are looking at ‘oh, am going to lose my job,’ we
just say 500,000 people are made redundant maybe, the human side of the story
is the same thing that I have told you. Somebody that has no other means of
living, so we have to look at how to make it practical, humane and then
implement it.
Coming back to security, do
you think the Nigerian government is applying ICT adequately in terms of
combating insecurity in the country? Or what do you think should be done?
I
have seen some efforts, if you go to especially Abuja, they are putting some
cameras and I believe the cameras are loaded with solar-panels; it is a good
initiative, but are we serious about it or is it just an award of a contract.
We can do more and we don’t have to reinvent the wheel, there are people that
are already using such technology. If you go to the UK, if they are looking for
a criminal or something, it’s just for them to review their CCTV and they would
say zoom it down to here; so much technologies available which we can use.
But
we must have the willpower to look beyond the contract and say, how can this
thing help the citizenry and have a structure of a continuity of that thing?
Not that we would just put those things and when this government goes or the
minister goes, then the whole thing becomes a white elephant. There must be
sincerity of purpose. But the technology exists; we have not used enough of it.
We can use more and you don’t have to reinvent, and you can afford it if we can
cut down the wastage on the system.
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