I presented a paper on “The Business Opportunities of Mobile Services” yesterday at the Annual Assembly of IT Professionals in Abuja. It was hosted by the Computer Professionals Registration Council of Nigeria, CPN. The presentation is attached.
The main points I made were that the metamorphoses of technology has made us improved our living standards and sharpened our business instincts that things that were not possible a few years back are now possible. I used my personal experience of having to modify some of the claims which I made in a few of my presentations of old to prove that the whole world may just have been changing and improving. All in a space of less than 15 years that the internet arrived our shores.
I used a few data to demonstrate that there is no stopping the reliance of our life’s on mobiles systems and the huge business that is in there for us to do if we must make all the un-served over 130 million Nigerians to be served. I submitted that the technology exists now waiting for the business initiatives to take over.
I invited Nigerian IT practitioners to know that their own aspect of the business is mainly in Content Creation which, for now, is only imported if it exists at all in our own industry.
My position is that Opportunity cannot be more than this.
I take the position that good political leadership is one of those things that will take us there and that professionals in all their groupings can bring this about by making sure it is only the politicians who are ready and willing to use ICT that have the right to lead us, come 2011.
I made it known that we in ATCON will invite Presidential Candidates of all political parties for the 2011 elections to address our members on what plans they have for ICT while I admonished all other professional associations at all levels to also engage the politicians at various levels what they have in stock for their own professions and trades too. With that, we shall put politicians on the spot and prepare them for accountability in all aspects of their responsibility even before they transform into ‘excellencies’ and ‘honourables’.
To me, while politicians are campaigning to catch our votes we too shall be campaigning to stop the unsuitable ones among them from coming into office since such minds can only take us back, not forward.
