Nigerian IT Developers in Focus

Starting an IT development business requires more than having IT knowledge. You need modern workspace, technical and infrastructural support, mentoring and some other important inputs. I had a chat with Nnamdi Nwanze the Technology and Ecosystem Advisor at iDEA Nigeria on why one needs to have the right basis in starting an IT development business in Nigeria.

Nnamdi is an expert in computer languages and building data structures.

On how he sees the IT development community in Nigeria so far, Nnamdi stated that he sees it as a great developer community with many people learning things right from the universities and on their own.

He said that there is a recent survey that shows that 98% of Nigerian developers are self-taught, so, the sector is growing in leaps and bounds.

Responding to why there is dearth of skills which makes a lot of Nigerians to still export jobs instead of giving to Nigerian developers, Nnamdi sees the reasons from two perspectives.

The first is that, at the university level, the lecturers are teaching and learning the mterials at the same time, so, they do not have the depth of knowledge to impart to the students.

Secondly, he said that some of the developers are self-taught, thus, learning some bad habits along the way. To gain recognition, therefore, he stated that they need to start weeding themselves of those bad habits.

According to Nnamdi, most of the languages still being taught at the university level in Nigeria are outdated, e.g., Fortran, hence, his calling for a complete overhaul of the entire system of teaching at the university level, so that modern languages can now be learnt by the students.

Some of the experiences he garnered while at the United States, which he will like to apply here in Nigeria include passing on the knowledge of how to build Data Structures, using Java language, for instance, which will not start to teach Java language, but how to build software that are resilient and hold data very well, etc. The emphasis should not be on learning languages as we presently have it here in Nigeria.

On what he is actually doing to share some of these ideas and knowledge with young developers in Nigeria, Nnamdi said that there is a course offered by iDEA Nigeria, where a curriculum is set to teach the developers every Tuesday, and this is free of charge. Nnamdi is knowledgeable in languages such as PHP, Java, SQL, and a host of others.

Reacting to a question as to when we can start developing solutions for export, Nnamdi stated that we are currently doing that, stating the case of iDEA Nigeria, which currently has a team that is building solutions for both the local and the international market. In his opinion, he thinks that Nigerian developers go on to learn from foreign platforms not knowing that, for instance, that opportunities for them to learn some of these things are available at places such as iDEA Nigeria.

He stated that you do not have to be a computer science student to be an IT developer, but you need to have the drive as well as the passion for it.

Nnamdi said that from jis experience, working with startups in Nigeria, he is of the view that startups with technical co-founders are able to go to the market with a product faster, scale better and have a  full rounded team without spending much. To change the tide of Indians taking over a huge chunk of the pie in IT development, Nnamdi said that our developers here in Nigeria need to reduce their prices to enable them to corner a sizeable chunk of the market too, as presently, they seem more expensive.

He stated that in the United States, their IT developers are charging between 30% to 50% less than what ur guys here in Nigeria are charging.

In the final analysis, Nnamdi recommends that our developers should go out there and learn at places like iDEA Nigeria, universities, etc., and emphasis should be on foundational architecture instead of on learning languages. He also advised that they bring down their prices a little bit so that can compete favourably in the market.

CFA is the Founder, www.CFAtech.ng & Co-producer/Presenter, Tech Trends on Channels Television