Simon Utsu|3 December 2017
In the last two years, Amazon CEO, Jeff Bezos has been in an out of the #1 position in the world's rich list. But just last week, he cemented a place (for the foreseeable) future in that position (#1) due to the central role his Amazon played on Black Friday. Doesn't this mean that the service sector (tertiary) has now surpassed the primary sector? Are we now in the service age?
And most importantly, why has a huge market like Nigeria not been able to harp onto this global trend? Because just this week, it was in the news that Nigeria's leading e-commerce solutions provider, Konga had sacked 80% of her workforce; a good friend of mine was affected. Why is the Nigerian e-commerce sector experiencing a contrasting fortune (to the world's) even with all the huge potentials available? These are the questions I expect my fellow Nigerian youths to be dwelling on and not tithe, tithe, tithe.
I did a research today and found out that 75% of Americans profess Christianity and 40% of Americans are devout Christians. What this means is that about 130 million Americans are committed Christians who attend church activities on the regular. This also means that they're more practising American Christians than Nigerian Christians. So who are the people that say religion is the problem of Africa? Don't you think Africa's problem is her people and their way of doing things?
Going back to the e-commerce issue for instance, the main problem facing e-commerce in Nigeria, if you ask me boils down to what I call "lack of bipatrite integrity", which is lack of integrity both ways. The customer not having trust in the retailer because oftentimes than not, what he/she displays online is a far cry from what is going to be delivered. And the retailer not trusting the customer to pay on delivery; we even had several scenarios where exquisite items were ordered and the delivery people were murdered when they went to drop the items and pick up cash. This even led to the major e-commerce merchants cancelling their payment on delivery option.
So what I expect from software solutions architects is for them to come up with a product or solution that would bridge this integrity gap. That's how billionaires are made; providing solutions to niggling problems that most even fail to observe.
Simon Utsu
Is a Nigerian social commentator
