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Software Can Generate $10b Annually if Harnessed-Obaro

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John Obaro is the managing director of SystemSpecs. He has had a distinguished IT management career and is regarded as one of the most respected personalities in the Nigerian IT industry.

Under his leadership, and with a team of professionals with varied experience, SystemSpecs has attained the enviable position of Nigeria’s leading software house and aspiring to become the de-facto software institution in Africa.

Before establishing Systemspecs, Obaro worked with United Bank of Africa, International Merchant Bank (IMB) among others.

He spoke on issues around software development in the country.

Evolution of SystemSpecs In the Software Space
I left Intercontinental Merchant Bank (IMB) in 1992 as Head of Systems Department to start SystemSpecs.

This was after I led a team that implemented Nigeria’s first international banking application on a network linking Lagos and four other towns. 

By this laudable feat, I helped in pioneering Nigeria’s online real-time banking at a time when most banks were still debating its feasibility.

SystemSpecs started with a foreign financial and business application called SunSystems and due to demand from our clients then, we decided to develop HumanManager, a Payroll/HR application.

As the market developed and we began to envision the emergence of e-business and e-payment space in Nigeria, we went ahead to develop and introduce Remita, a world class e-Payment application into the Nigerian market.

Remita has today been adopted by all Nigerian banks and is used for the payment of all Federal Government contractors and employees under the Central Bank of Nigeria’s e-payment initiative.

Attaining leadership requires foresight, creativity, innovation, focus, excellence, discipline, hard work, resilience, patience and consistency; these are necessary roads that any successful entrepreneur must travel and we give God the glory for where we are today.

SystemSpecs is strictly a software company with focus on e-payments, financial and human resource management applications.

Challenges of Nigerian Software Industry
Nigeria, like most African countries that are in the developing nation’s league is predominantly plagued with “information poverty”.

Data is such a hard thing to find in Nigeria, so people just make up the numbers and the man that can shout the loudest gets the most attention. Unfortunately, you don’t really need to shout to win an argument if you have verifiable facts.

Today, no one can estimate the country’s earnings from software exports as they would for cocoa or oil export. 

According to National Office for Technology Acquisition and Promotion (NOTAP), the country loses over $1billion annually to software importation simply because most Nigerian companies prefer to import foreign off-the-shelves software to meet local needs where indigenous software could have provided better solutions.

Any software that comes from abroad was built mainly for that environment and anyone who uses it here is just a secondary user.

This has further thinned the potential of the Nigerian software market which by now should be in excess of probably $10billion annually if well harnessed.

There are some people who don’t believe in themselves, therefore, they cannot even believein their immediate environment.

Their belief is that something must come only from the western world for it to be good. I put that to ignorance.

However, this is not to say that I am not mindful of some challenges with a few locally developed software such as low quality assurance, non-scalability, improper documentation and packaging among myriads of other issues. If we don’t deliberately share success stories, no one will believe the indigenous software space is really worth the effort.

SystemSpecs’ Critical Success Factors
We have done a lot with the Remita integrated solution. You can’t get that anywhere in the world because they, for instance, do not have “ghost worker” challenges.

So, I will say it is high time government further encouraged the use and adoption of indigenous software in the country. I think with the right policies and awareness, indigenous software will blossom in the country.

Trends & Opportunities in the Nigerian Software Industry
Today, we live in a world that is driven by information technology and the software industry  which has been a source of galloping income for some countries is at the driver’s seat. 

A faster and more powerful economic and technological development has taken off in Africa and the Nigerian Software industry is likely going to easily become the most significant regional player going by current developments in the country.

There are so many opportunities for the software industry in a developing economy like Nigeria given the low capital entry requirements as well as the industry’s high value, high growth, high technology and knowledge-rich profile of software activities.

It is apparent that the industry requires skilled manpower but few raw materials which are not in any way damaging to the environment.

There is a big opportunity to remake the software space because of the fundamental shift of the software business focus from just the corporate market to the consumer experience.

The need to bring the consumer experience into the development and use of software is good ground for easy harvests. 

There should be sufficient home-grown software that can handle the day-to-day lifestyle of the Nigerian people.

The major requirement for the software industry is human capital and with the country’s size and abundant supply of low cost software engineers or graduates, majority of whom are self-taught, the country stands a chance to provide highly skilled professionals with absolute wage comparative advantage in the international software market.

 Nigerians are beginning to realize the importance of software for day-to-day activities and have therefore began to invest in this sector, although the rate at which the industry is growing is still at a very slow pace.

Cloud computing and mobile applications are also new trends in software development. In these areas there are so many opportunities for developers who know and understand these technologies.

Opportunities for Upcoming Software Developers
Software development is an art. You must develop some kind of stronginterest in it for you to succeed.

Apart from updating your knowledge and skills through training on new technologies, you must be focused and patient.

 There are lots of institutions with the right development programmes springing up to help interested persons in software engineering and related fields. So get up and get trained!

Whether as an employee or a self-starter, you will require mentorship for product and industry understanding.

Mentoring helps you to gain good momentum and quickly exit when your venture is not likely to succeed.

 Like I said earlier, you really have to be creative to succeed in the software industry.  It may already be too late trying to develop a banking application in Nigeria right now because we have lost that to the foreign players but when you understand what banking means to you as an individual you can develop software around it to address specific unmet or undiscovered needs.

This is why the mobile money application was so successful in Kenya unlike Europe where there are so many banks with several transaction platforms.

 To become a successful entrepreneur you must also develop certain skills in management, marketing and human relations.

Launching Pads for Entrepreneurs
Do not make money your goal, make the delivery of quality software your goal and remember this may take some time, and then money will come.

Be patient. A lot of software companies that will stand the test of time do take a long time to build.

 You may need to learn three vocabularies; “Partnership, Collaboration and Team execution”. Even marathon races have support.

This is one of the ways you can create safety net for yourself and mitigate the risk of wearing out during the software development phase as a self-starter especially knowing fully well that there are some heavyweights in the industry lurking around to offer you jobs rather than partnerships as a small developer.

Don’t be afraid to make mistakes but don’t make the same mistake twice. Be ready to fail. Unfortunately, today there is the stigmatization of failure in our environment.

The whole idea about success without failure is really funny.

The Remita product that the whole nation boasts of today was a product of a failed bid! Be creative and resilient in the execution of your business plan and it’s not just about business plans but the thinking behind the assumptions of your business plan that matters.

Be professional in managing people and finances and go to school to learn same if need be.

If you happen to require loans, seek help first from informal sources. If your friends and family have not invested in you, why should someone else?

You must develop a thick skin especially to survive the Nigerian business terrain and by this I mean a strong staying power; the ability to stay focused on what you believe to be a solution that can sell.

Understand the intellectual property laws and rights, and don’t be in a hurry to give out your code without protection. It could be costly.

Prospective Entrants into the Software Industry
Software industry is such an amazing one because of its potential for the economy of individuals and nations. India today makes more money from software than Nigeria makes from oil.

The richest companies in the world today are in the computer industry.

Records have it that half of the ten richest men in the United States made their money from software-related businesses.

However, more than making the money is the fulfillment of helping to solve daily life’s problems for people.

If you must enter the industry as an employee or entrepreneur, I will leave you with three words and they are “innovation, innovation, and innovation”.

Innovation is apt in designs and architecture, in business models, and in monetizing your solutions using cost effective solutions distribution mechanism.


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EAIF Commits Additional US$30M to Support Indorama’s Expansion with Third Urea Plant in Nigeria

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The Emerging Africa Infrastructure Fund (EAIF), a Private Infrastructure Development Group (PIDG) company, has committed a US$30 million senior debt facility to Indorama, a leading producer and exporter of fertiliser.

The investment enables the construction of a new plant, port terminal, handling stations, and storage facilities in Nigeria, providing a major boost for the country’s agricultural sector, which is a crucial driver of the country and region’s economic growth.

EAIF acted as a co-lender within a broader debt financing package arranged by the International Finance Corporation (IFC), mobilising US$1.25 billion from a syndicate of impact investors, development finance solutions, and commercial banks.

EAIF’s investment increases the Fund’s lending to the company to $111 million, reflecting a joint-ambition to accelerate Indorama’s growth strategy and Nigeria’s aspirations for diversification and industrialisation.

The new funding unlocks fresh capital to enable the construction of a dedicated port terminal and state-of-the-art urea fertiliser plant, anticipating an increase in its current capacity from 2.8 million metric tons to 4.2 million metric tons per annum.

The expansion leverages the company’s strategic location as a freight-competitive supplier serving the needs of significant urea markets in the southern Atlantic, including Brazil, Argentina and Uruguay, as well as West Africa, South Africa and the USA.

The facility bolsters Indorama’s capacity, extending its complex beyond the current two urea fertiliser plants, which is well poised to meet the entire demand of the Nigerian market.

The third urea plant aims to maximise output to meet the food demands of growing populations as disruptions precipitated by the COVID-19 pandemic and the Russia-Ukraine crisis affect food security around the globe.

Global crop production is reliant on the international supply of fertiliser. The landmark project is expected to position Nigeria, Africa’s largest economy, as a leading producer of urea among the top 10 producers worldwide.

Contributing to the UN Sustainable Development Goals 8 and 9 on Decent Work and Economic Growth, and Industry, Innovation, and Infrastructure, EAIF’s loan forms part of the Private Infrastructure Development Group (PIDG) objective for new infrastructure to drive action on climate and nature.

The construction of the port terminal and third plant is set to begin in 2024, with commercial operations expected to commence in 2026. During the construction phase, it is estimated that over 500 jobs will be generated, further contributing to economic development in Nigeria and beyond.

Commenting on the transaction, Olivia Carballo, Managing Director, Emerging Market, Fixed Income at Ninety One, the fund manager of the EAIF, said: “Our continued support for Indorama demonstrates EAIF’s commitment to harnessing the region’s significant economic prospects.

Africa’s potential for industrialisation is tremendous, and this landmark project is a testament to Nigeria’s enhanced ability to produce and export competitively priced, high-quality fertiliser to farmers in regional and international markets, which will remain a priority for years to come.”

Munish Jindal, CEO, Indorama, said: “Indorama will utilise state-of-the-art technology and adhere to stringent environmental standards to ensure optimal efficiency, product quality and sustainability.

We believe that the establishment of this fertiliser will position Nigeria as a key player in the global agricultural market. We are committed to maximising the potential of this project to benefit farmers, communities, and stakeholders across the value chain.

The involvement of esteemed lenders like the Emerging Africa Infrastructure Fund will not only help Nigeria’s in becoming one of the largest exporter of the fertilisers in the region but will also address the issues of global food security. We extend our sincere appreciation to all our partners, lenders, and stakeholders for their unwavering support and dedication to our shared vision.”

Sérgio Pimenta, IFC Vice President for Africa, said: “Reliable access to high quality fertiliser is essential for food production and food security around the world. IFC’s investment in Indorama, along with African, Asian, European, and American partners, signals our joint commitment to support the agriculture sector, Nigeria’s economy, and the expansion of Indorama, an important supplier in the global food chain.”


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Lifi.net Achieves 500mbps Speed to Rank among Fastest Internet Providers in Nigeria

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Lifi.net, a fast-growing internet service provider, has attained internet speed that is many times faster than the documented average internet speed in Nigeria as at January 2024.

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Latest disclosure by LIfi.net shows that the company now delivers up to 500 megabits per seconds (mbps) internet speed in unlimited services provided to homes and offices. This is higher than the country’s average internet speed of 26.74mbps.

As internet subscriber base increases in Nigeria and hit 161.68 million in January, the quality of internet service provided by operators to their users still constitutes concerns as 2G network which has limited speed dominates the space by covering 57.78%.

The Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) revealed through its latest data that while 3G is responsible for 9.36% of internet users in the country, 4G covers 31.75% of internet access and 5G internet only serves 1.11% of internet users in the country.

This combination explains why Nigeria ranked 93rd on the global mobile internet speed test out of 144 countries tested by Ookla, a U.S-based internet speed analysis firm, in January, putting the country’s median internet speed at 26.74 megabits per second (mbps).

However, Lifi.net (NT/007/22), a licensee of NCC, is among few Internet service providers (ISPs) that deliver fastest internet speed in Nigeria with up 350mbps for homes and 2500mbps for offices while assisting new ISPs with speeds over 5000mbps at the data centre and delivering the capacity to their various hubs at no extra cost.

“For over five years Lifi.net has been a leading network company, providing quality internet solutions at the speed of light and at affordable rates. We have highly technical and hard-working personnel and partners. We are very skilled at managing Cisco and Mikrotik Routers’ deployment, configurations, and integrations, fibre laying, and splicing,” says Abraham Oluwambe, Chief Operating Officer of Lifi.net.

He added that as operators attract more subscribers to their respective networks, they should equally place a premium on upgrading the quality of services to deliver broadband at the fastest internet speed possible.

“Our services are not only widespread but also affordable. We believe in making quality connectivity accessible to all. We understand the importance of budget-friendly solutions. Our cost-effective broadband plans ensure you get the best value for your investment without compromising on quality.

“While providing high-speed and reliable broadband connectivity, operators may choose the floor or the peak performance of its service. At Lifi.net, we always go for the latter,” he said.


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Our 2023 Ads Safety Report

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By Duncan Lennox, VP & GM of Ads Privacy and Safety

Billions of people around the world rely on Google products to provide relevant and trustworthy information, including ads. That’s why we have thousands of people working around the clock to safeguard the digital advertising ecosystem. Today, we are releasing our annual Ads Safety Report to share the progress we’ve made in enforcing our advertiser and publisher policies and to hold ourselves accountable in our work of maintaining a healthy ad-supported internet.

The key trend in 2023 was the impact of generative AI. This new technology introduced significant and exciting changes to the digital advertising industry, from performance optimization to image editing. Of course, generative AI also presents new challenges. We take these challenges seriously and will outline the work we are doing to address them head-on.

Just as importantly, generative AI presents a unique opportunity to improve our enforcement efforts significantly. Our teams are embracing this transformative technology, specifically Large Language Models (LLMs), so that we can better keep people safe online.

Gen AI Bolsters Enforcement 

Our safety teams have long used AI-driven machine learning systems to enforce our policies at scale. It’s how, for years, we’ve been able to detect and block billions of bad ads before a person ever sees them. But, while still highly sophisticated, these machine learning models have historically needed to be trained extensively – they often rely on hundreds of thousands, if not millions of examples of violative content.

LLMs, on the other hand, are able to rapidly review and interpret content at a high volume, while also capturing important nuances within that content. These advanced reasoning capabilities have already resulted in larger-scale and more precise enforcement decisions on some of our more complex policies. Take, for example, our policy against Unreliable Financial Claims which includes ads promoting get-rich-quick schemes. The bad actors behind these types of ads have grown more sophisticated. They  adjust their tactics and tailor ads around new financial services or products, such as investment advice or digital currencies, to scam users.

To be sure, traditional machine learning models are trained to detect these policy violations. Yet, the fast-paced and ever-changing nature of financial trends make it, at times, harder to differentiate between legitimate and fake services and quickly scale our automated enforcement systems to combat scams. LLMs are more capable of quickly recognizing new trends in financial services, identifying the patterns of bad actors who are abusing those trends and distinguishing a legitimate business from a get-rich-quick scam. This has helped our teams become even more nimble in confronting emerging threats of all kinds.

We’ve only just begun to leverage the power of LLMs for ads safety. Gemini, launched publicly last year, is Google’s most capable AI modeI. We’re excited to have started bringing its sophisticated reasoning capabilities into our ads safety and enforcement efforts.

Our Work to Prevent Fraud and Scams

In 2023, scams and fraud across all online platforms were on the rise. Bad actors are constantly evolving their tactics to manipulate digital advertising in order to scam people and legitimate businesses alike. To counter these ever-shifting threats, we quickly updated policies, deployed rapid-response enforcement teams and sharpened our detection techniques.

  • In November, we launched our Limited Ads Serving policy, which is designed to protect users by limiting the reach of advertisers with whom we are less familiar. Under this policy, we’ve implemented a “get-to-know-you” period for advertisers who don’t yet have an established track record of good behavior, during which impressions for their ads might be limited in certain circumstances–for example, when there is an unclear relationship between the advertiser and a brand they are referencing. Ultimately, Limited Ads Serving, which is still in its early stages, will help ensure well-intentioned advertisers are able to build up trust with users, while limiting the reach of bad actors and reducing the risk of scams and misleading ads.

  • A critical part of protecting people from online harm hinges on our ability to respond to new abuse trends quickly. Toward the end of 2023 and into 2024, we faced a targeted campaign of ads featuring the likeness of public figures to scam users, often through the use of deepfakes. When we detected this threat, we created a dedicated team to respond immediately. We pinpointed patterns in the bad actors’ behavior, trained our automated enforcement models to detect similar ads and began removing them at scale. We also updated our misrepresentation policy to better enable us to rapidly suspend the accounts of bad actors.

Overall, we blocked or removed 206.5 million advertisements for violating our misrepresentation policy, which includes many scam tactics and 273.4 million advertisements for violating our financial services policy. We also blocked or removed over 1 billion advertisements for violating our policy against abusing the ad network, which includes promoting malware.

The fight against scam ads is an ongoing effort, as we see bad actors operating with more sophistication, at a greater scale, using new tactics such as deepfakes to deceive people. We’ll continue to dedicate extensive resources, making significant investments in detection technology and partnering with organizations like the Global Anti-Scam Alliance and Stop Scams UK to facilitate information sharing and protect consumers worldwide.

Investing in Election Integrity

Political ads are an important part of democratic elections. Candidates and parties use ads to raise awareness, share information and engage potential voters. In a year with several major elections around the world, we want to make sure voters continue to trust the election ads they may see on our platforms. That’s why we have long-standing identity verification and transparency requirements for election advertisers, as well as restrictions on how these advertisers can target their election ads. All election ads must also include a “paid for by” disclosure and are compiled in our publicly available transparency report. In 2023, we verified more than 5,000 new election advertisers and removed more than 7.3M election ads that came from advertisers who did not complete verification.

Last year, we were the first tech company to launch a new disclosure requirement for election ads containing synthetic content. As more advertisers leverage the power and opportunity of AI, we want to make sure we continue to provide people with the greater transparency and the information they need to make informed decisions.

Additionally, we’ve continued to enforce our policies against ads that promote demonstrably false election claims that could undermine trust or participation in democratic processes.

Overall 2023 Numbers

Our goal is to catch bad ads and suspend fraudulent accounts before they make it onto our platforms or remove them immediately once detected. AI is improving our enforcement on all these fronts. In 2023, we blocked or removed over 5.5 billion ads, slightly up from the prior year, and 12.7 million advertiser accounts, nearly double from the previous year. Similarly, we work to protect advertisers and people by removing our ads from publisher pages and sites that violate our policies, such as sexually explicit content or dangerous products. In 2023, we blocked or restricted ads from serving on more than 2.1 billion publisher pages, up slightly from 2022. We are also getting better at tackling pervasive or egregious violations. We took broader site-level enforcement action on more than 395,000 publisher sites, up markedly from 2022.

To put the impact of AI on this work into perspective: last year more than 90% of our publisher page level enforcement started with the use of machine learning models, including our latest LLMs. Of course, any advertiser or publisher can still appeal an enforcement action if they think we got it wrong. Our teams will review it and, in the cases where we find errors, use it to improve our systems.

Staying Nimble and Looking Ahead

When it comes to ads safety, a lot can change over the course of a year: the introduction of new technology such as generative AI to novel abuse trends and global conflicts. And the digital advertising space has to be nimble and ready to react. That’s why we are continuously developing new policies, strengthening our enforcement systems, deepening cross-industry collaboration and offering more control to people, publishers and advertisers.

In 2023, for example, we launched the Ads Transparency Center, a searchable hub of all ads from verified advertisers, which helps people quickly and easily learn more about the ads they see on Search, YouTube and Display. We also updated our suitability controls to make it simpler and quicker for advertisers to exclude topics that they wish to avoid across YouTube and Display inventory. Overall, we made 31 updates to our Ads and Publisher policies.

Though we don’t yet know what the rest of 2024 has in store for us, we are confident that our investments in policy, detection and enforcement will prepare us for any challenges ahead.


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