Adeniyi Ologunleko is the managing director of Prosellers, West Africa, frontline information and communications technology solutions provider.
He started his career as a sales representative in-charge of West African Market with Procter and Gamble, one of the leading consumer product companies.
He developed interest in ICT during his six years stay at MTN, from where he established Prosellers West Africa.
Ologunleko spoke to Chris Alu in Abuja on innovative solution provided by his company and other issues.
Technology Solution to Check Kidnapping
The Tramigo technology is a geographical position system (GPS) device and what it does is that, if you install it in a vehicle or any moving object, you can know the precise location of that object at any point in time.
The major advantage of Tramigo solution device is that it will return to you the exact location of the object or moving vehicle. What we did was to add a device into the technology that makes it useful in addressing the social menace in our society, and we discover that kidnapping and vehicle theft are some of the menaces. So now, with Tramigo, when installed in your vehicle, there is a button that is hidden in the vehicle which if you are driving and faces a threat of kidnapping or threat to your safety, you can quickly press the button and once you press the button, it is already connected to some of the security agencies, GSM system and your family members will get short message service alert system immediately.
Even up to ten people can get an SMS knowing your exact location at that moment. The message will indicate that you are having some challenges or attack. With distressed SMS alert, the security agencies can find ways of tracing down the kidnappers through the information received on their GSM phone, by so doing they can intercept the vehicle and they can trace the attackers and rescue you.
We also provide solar solutions and equipments. The solar technology we provide can provide back up power to devices, because power failure is one disadvantage that can frustrate business effort, so we adopt solar into our technology as back up for the devices to work very well.
Research and Development for Economic Advancement
Well Nigeria just like some other African countries have economic challenges such as poverty. This affects the ability of most citizens of countries in Africa to think which affects research; also the government finds it difficult to provide the kind of money needed for research and development. In most cases, it is thinking that leads to research or discoveries. In this regards, our academicians are still struggling to come out of the circle of poverty while we don’t even have scientists that can invent or embark on research. Government which is supposed to provide infrastructure to enable economic advancement and research is not living up to expectation. The environmental challenges makes R & D in Nigeria difficult, for instance, ICT parks and equipment, we don’t have them, so it is really difficult for such advancement to take place.
Other countries are investing money into research through synergy, so we can also form a synergy with some of these countries to move ahead, at this point Nigeria don’t need money in form of loans from World Bank, but we need partnership for technological development, through that our engineers, and scientists will be able to acquire the relevant knowledge for economic advancement. That is where we can talk of an enabling environment for a reliable partnership like what China is doing. China is a developing country like Nigeria. What China has done is that they know that they don’t have money for research and development, but they created an environment that is conducive for the people who have that technology, and knowledge to come and set up factories in other to translate that innovation to products, and in the process of doing that, their people will be employed and ideas will be shared, that is how China broke out from some of the factories to start their local products which we consume here in Nigeria and now they are far ahead of us.
Government Driving the Application ICT
Honestly, government cannot do so much in driving the application of ICT in our national lives, I think you have two components to it, you have the public sector component and the private sector components, and the public sector components, government has a key role to play. The private sector component, is already rising up to the challenge in that area, so it is the public sector that is remaining because the private sectors effort is the one creating awareness to people. For instance, your newspaper is one of the key newspapers that educate people mostly on ICT development weekly. So, government has not done that and also government has a major role to play even in the legislation for ICT development in the country, which will help the private sector to intensify their effort in bringing ICT into our daily life.
Supporting Prosellers Services
Our collaboration with Tramigo is basically from the point of view of technology partnership.
Tramigo has been able to invent a world class technology as a matter of fact; Tramigo is the only GPS tracking technology in the world. It is the world best selling in over 200 countries and market leaders in the world in the tracking device solutions. We collaborate with Tramigo, basically on the GPS area which is very important to our service provisioning, because of the technology. They have continued to improve on it to enable us provide the local landmark data service that works with the satellite in addressing social challenges. They help us to provide the geographical mapping code, the GPS satellite will translate.
More so, the device is a stand alone device and what I mean by a stand alone device is that it is a device that does not need internet connectivity, and does not require some of the complication associated that is down or up services. On its own, it is a world class innovation, however locally here in Nigeria what we do is to provide the geographical map in consonance with our streets, areas and major buildings in Nigeria, all to assist the device to work effectively, though it is difficult to describe all the major buildings in Nigeria but we have to do it to help the device work well. This is because once the device in your vehicle sends a signal to the satellite in orbit, and it replies the device a coordinate, that is the geographical area, the latitude and longitude. So, our job is to enable the device by providing software to enable the device to translate that coordinate into a physical area or place like Wuse, Garki or Herbert Macaulay street etc. We also provide the software back up for easy identification. This is done in a matter of few seconds for the device to locate your identification for follow up. Apart from that, we have experts and equipments/updates that constantly monitor and update the land mark data in Nigeria.
Future of Prosellers
In the next five years, we want to see Prosellers becoming a bigger company in the African continent in providing sales and marketing services to the tracking device, and that our partners, Tramigos are working round the clock to ensure that any new technology that is coming out of the laboratories will be transferred to Proseller immediately for sales. New innovation will be added to the tracking device in no distant time. So, we would like to stand as a bridge between innovation and market by giving satisfaction to people in the needed ICT areas.
High Cost of ICT Equipment
I think that prices of ICT equipment are coming down but nevertheless, I don’t think one can talk of high cost now as a major challenge because prices are coming down globally but in a relative way. However, cost poses a challenge because of the economic nature of our society today, and government is not making any efforts to provide infrastructure to lessen the burden of vendors of ICT device and system in the market.