2013 is just two years from 2015, the year set aside for the attainment of the Millennium Development Goals,  and seven years from 20 2020, Nigeria’s self set date to join the top 20 economies of the world. 

Between 18 and 24 months from now the world would start listing the degrees by which nations attained the MDGs.  

Nigeria is not likely to be upset if her name does not come up for mention in 2015 because we have set a superior goal for 20 2020. Coincidentally but unfortunately the sense of urgency has just been deleted from the pursuit of 20 2020 by the declaration from the USA that Nigeria would be a world leading economy in 2030.

 The shifting of dates for national development is about to become a national past time. However, that research, from the USA, is suspect because it is coming from the very shores that have predicted the disintegration of Nigeria by 2015.

Meanwhile, it is generally accepted that ICT will drive the transformation of Africa, with Nigeria in the forefront, from an agricultural to knowledge society. 

Rather than wait for 2030 we can invest in ICT not as a panic measure as we did in 2006 and 2011 salvaging the voters’ registration exercise by importing, assembling, and deploying over 120,000 laptops and data capture machines in a few weeks. 

In the process we overwhelmed the volunteer work force that INEC had engaged for the exercise. Come to think of it we tend to have a special liking for panic measures as was recently played out in the now controversial attempt to buy 10 million GSM phones valued at N60billion for rural farmers in Nigeria. 

Whether our development as a nation is pegged to any timeline or not, the sober thing for us to do today would be to adopt a long term ICT strategy to ensure that we are ready to leap when opportunity calls. 

There are key objectives that ICT professionals must pursue in 2013 as our contribution towards creating a character for the ICT industry while refocusing this nation. 

As an IT entrepreneur, let me begin with the objective of education, which I believe is the most daunting challenge facing the development of the ICT sector in Nigeria. 

We have not focused enough on education as a people who see ICT as a golden opportunity – computer appreciation for the general public and for first time users, reviewing the content of the ICT curriculum in schools, massive campaign to teach computer literacy to teachers (at all levels) and civil servants, retraining existing professionals to capture recent trends and innovate for the fatherland and setting up incubation centers. 

 It would be right to assert that the computer finally arrived in Nigeria in 2001 with the emphatic launch of Zinox Computers. 

The wonder-exclamations that the launch achieved from the highest levels of Government to the citizens in the street convinced me at the time that we were right to initiate the Computerize Nigeria Initiative, a company that was dedicated to the creating of awareness for the adoption of the computer as a major tool for work and play. T

he scope of work to be done in education further dawned on me when I met distinguished Professors who familiarized themselves with the computer keyboard for the first time ever at a Zinox hands-on workshop.

All ICT companies take training so seriously that it should be an integral part of their marketing strategy. Last week I had to cut short a business trip abroad to take part in training for 20 teachers from the North East. 

The emphasis is on training the trainer but often we have to train the work force of our Clients’ on how to operate and maintain new equipment. The more people that become knowledgeable about the computer, the more prospects we are likely to have for computer ownership and the fewer ignorance related calls we get for support. 

The CNP spent huge sums placing advertisements in the newspapers targeted at governments on the need to computerize their citizenry and operations. However, there is a limit to what one company can do in a country of 160 million people. 

In 2013 I would like to see an orchestrated approach that would speed up the building of local capacities working through the schools, professional bodies and the mass media possibly within the framework of the Public Private Partnership. 

Closely related to the quality of formal education is the issue of Young Innovators. My regular sponsorship of the National Association of Computer Science Students, NACOSS, provides insight to the immense potentials of these young persons. 

Quite recently I had to provide support for a group that is working to make the CBN’s cashless policy the mode in all campuses. 

In 2013, I want to see more corporate persons sponsor youth competitions, workshops and fairs. Each State Government should at least sponsor one NACOSS event in 2013.

As in previous years the answers to what constitutes local content and how to enforce its imperatives would determine the rate of PC penetration in 2013. Foreign competition, academics and politicians have belabored the concept of local content and deliberately blurred the strands of national interest in the concept.

 I am a Nigerian entrepreneur and the new global economy can only be relevant to me to the extent that it helps to grow the financial, technical, and manpower needs of Nigeria. Local content is a concept used to define the extent to which a product or service is locally produced.

 It also refers to the ratio of locally produced products and services that are deployed in the day to day running of an organization. 

For example, the Zinox brand of computers was developed by Nigerians, designed by us, fabricated with partners in China and assembled here in Nigeria.

 The imprint on the product is Made in Nigeria and proponents of local content are saying that the best way to support local industry is through patronage. 

They also agree that the only way to tackle the scandalous preference for foreign products is to sanction all those who flout the Presidential directive that MDA’s must buy Made in Nigeria PCs. All those who talk of efficiency, competitiveness, and the new global economy in abstract terms miss the point. 

The same academics would point to China, India and Brazil as examples of emerging economies that have got it right but they fail to mention that these countries all had protectionist policies that worked. 

China and India together are home to over 2.5 billion people and the need to create employment, wealth and a stable society gave rise to policies that restricted what products can come into their country.

 I can tell you that Coca Cola, in spite of its popularity and clout, was not being sold in India when I was a student in the early eighties. Every country with its national interest and security well defined strives to be an exporter and not an importer of goods and services.

The industry is pleased with the pedigree of the Minister of Communications and Technology, Mrs. Omobola Johnson, as a professional who was appointed on the basis of her being an active participant in the ICT sector. 

She certainly knows where the shoe pinches. We trust that in 2013 she would concretize her initiatives to improve local content development in the ICT sector. 

In particular, we want to see her join issues in the public domain, in the absence of sanctions, with MDA’s who flout the Presidential directive to buy Made in Nigeria PCs; set up a machinery to police the multinationals to ensure that they outsource their business processes to Nigerian ICT companies, national interest would best be served if installation contracts, maintenance, upgrades and procurement are handled by Nigerian companies against the tendency to outsource to Asian companies; the students’ PC ownership scheme requires fine-tuning because no students’ loans scheme has worked in this country, only a stimulus of this nature can guarantee that the IT sector records growth in 2013; force banks and oil and gas companies to compulsorily run Nigerian software as alternative packages in their businesses; ban the importation of all consumer PCs into the country; liaise with her counterparts in the West African sub region with a view to form an alliance that allows a free flow of goods, services, know-how and capital. 

I see a very busy but tough 2013 for Madam Minister, an uncharitable course for the delectable lady from Accenture. 

There was another lady, within the current democratic experience, who was appointed into the pharmaceutical sector at a time when Nigerians were dying in droves because of fake drugs.

 A gun was aimed at her head but rather than run she chose to dig into the trenches and by the time she left office, Nigerian pharmaceuticals were being proudly exported to countries in the West and East Africa sub region. 

The issue of quality must be addressed in 2013 by Nigerian ICT practitioners. When I launched Zinox in 2001, Microsoft in endorsing the product said that Zinox had ‘surpassed international quality standards’. 

I can tell you that most Nigerian OEMs produce very high quality and world-class IT products because competition is keen and the home environment is skeptical. 

Their devices are often fabricated in the same Asian workshops that fabricate for the ignorantly preferred foreign brands. The problem is that the sector is hampered by the lack of human, technical, and financial capital to respond satisfactorily to the realities of supply and demand. Moreover, the trendy pace (sometimes faddish) of international competitors is always pressurizing the logistics and inventory capacities of the local OEMs. 

Threatened by regular losses each time the market migrates from one hyped variant to another, the local OEMs are forced to order in small numbers at a time. 

The result is the high cost of operations and inevitably higher costs for local brands in a market where there are hardly differentiating attributes between brands. 

The local OEMs must pull their resources together, submerge the ego of maverick brands, share know-how, and produce under one or two truly digital plants if they are to survive the challenges facing them and lead this nation to her manifest destiny. 

Nigerian OEMs must learn from their brothers in hip hop music – these are the days of the collaboration and it is common to see musicians who are in a feud today, collaborating tomorrow.

Let me conclude this piece by expressing my satisfaction with the 2012 NITMA Awards because it threw up for our review some of the problems facing the Awards and Recognitions mechanisms within the industry.

I congratulate Juliet Ehimuan Chiazor of Google Nigeria for winning the IT Personality of the Year. Her professionalism must have made a difference for the highly critical membership of the Nigeria Computer Society, NCS, to choose her.

The leadership of the NCS also receives my appreciation for permitting Dr. Eugene Juwah, Juliet Ehimuan Chiazor and the CBN Governor Sanusi Lamido Sanusi to be among the personalities shortlisted for the Award. 

However, it is important to note that one of the functions of an Award is to use the yearly tracking of performances to tell the story of an Industry. 

For example, how did all the nominees for the IT Personality of the Year 2011 crash out of contention in 12 months?

Did they give up on the work that recommended them in 2011? I agree that an Award does not follow a succession plan but the chances are that those who were in contention with Juliet Chiazor in 2012 would also be in contention in 2013 unless some rare work opportunity throws up a new personality. 

This observation is not meant to cast aspersions on NITMA 2012 but to strengthen its mechanisms as it evolves to be the most authoritative ICT Awards in Africa.

In 2013, I would love to see the ICT Publishers Alliance develop a memorandum of understanding that would bring all media initiated Awards in the ICT sector under one powerful, credible, and viable platform. 

This is one instance when the phrase ‘the more the merrier’ means bad business. 2013 calls for closing of ranks among all stake holders in the ICT sector if we are to achieve the globally competitive ICT industry of our dreams. 

Leo Stan Ekeh, is Chairman, Zinox Group.