Happy New Year peeps!
On the heels of Gbenga Sesan’s predictions for the Nigerian tech scene in 2011 I thought I should do mine.
Enjoy!
- Mobile Payments will take off: The Central Bank of Nigeria has given licence to companies to effect mobile payments. Although we will be playing catch up, it will be at a rapid pace. It will herald real ecommerce in Nigeria. Watch out for PagaTech; When 3 Stanford graduates are in a market, expect some exciting competition. Watch out Interswitch.
- Broadband Price crash: MainOnefibre has landed, GLO one I assume has too. NigComSat will send a communication satellite to space this year. The way the price of bandwidth will crash while increasing in capacity will be unprecedented in the world.
- Twitter and Facebook Protests:It is election year in Nigeria and like the Iranians, Nigerians will shout fire and brimstone (online) if the results do not go their way. Attempts will be make to co ordinate protests via social media. It will be interesting.
- Eastside vs Westside:Like Mr Sesan said, there will be a more pronounced rivalry between east Africa (Kenya) a and West Africa (Nigeria) about who is supreme. Nigerians would believe being the ‘giant of Africa’ they should be regarded as number one even though Kenya has the achievements that can be pointed to. Hopefully the competition and rivalry will be healthy.
- Reforming NIRA:The .ng issue will blow up this year and the regulators NIRA will be reformed. .ng will be sold at a normal price. (more on this in the coming days)
- Real Web Programming: Sorry to say, but most Nigerian programmers are of the Charles Taylor and the Idi Amin breed. Access to bandwidth will mean access to tutorialsthat will teach a lot of us modern programming.
- Less Clones, more startups: With more people knowing how to program and with mobile payments, will see people start creating real startups. We have actually startedalready
- More Blogging. Contrary to what my man Gbenga Sesan thinks, Blogging will be on the rise. It will be consist of Picture and Micro blogs. Posterous and Tumblr will be the friends of Nigerians.
- Internet Security: Nigeria will start paying attention to internet security. As I was typing this, I saw the report of the defacing of the Kenyan websiteby a hacker. Nigerians will use their new found programming knowledge to test their might. What better way to do it than to test the authorities. Also, the advent of mobile payments will make the compromising of security more attractive.
- International Tech Visitors: Mobile payments, better broadband, more startups, mobile penetration, and Nigerian topics trending on Twitter Globally, we will see Global companies taking note of Nigeria as usage of their apps will see a surge from this parts. We will see SeedCampand co looking towards this side of the world. Google, Microsoft and co will start paying more attention to the developer community. More exciting international events will be held here.
- Global renowned Nigerian founded startups: Watch out for Identified, BookNeto, Precurio, Lotaar (mine:) , and some more startups by Nigerians that will make a mark globally.
Wild Cards
- Nigerian Porn sites:As a result of the broadband crash and improved bandwidth, people will now put scarce media content online. 🙂
- Government censorship: The internet will invade the country like never before and the government will be caught unawares. They will try to respond by passing some ill thought out laws.
If you are interested in penetrating the market of the future, NOW is the time. If you are Nigerian, it is time to come home.
May you live in exciting times!