Nigeria will not be left behind in IoE – Cisco

Can you tell us briefly about Cisco’s operations in Nigeria?We have been in Nigeria for over 10 years with four focus countries in Africa; Nigeria is one of them. We have a team of young people in Nigeria working through our network of partners, helping our customers either in the public or private sectors to […]

Can you tell us briefly about Cisco’s operations in Nigeria?
We have been in Nigeria for over 10 years with four focus countries in Africa; Nigeria is one of them. We have a team of young people in Nigeria working through our network of partners, helping our customers either in the public or private sectors to achieve their objectives.
Penetration or connectivity is key to achieving IoE (Internet of Everything) and we can see that Nigeria is still struggling to catch up. Even though we have a number of people with access to mobile devices and accessing the internet through various mobile platforms, QoS is still poor. What is your take on this and how do you think this can actually be addressed?
We have a lot of submarine cables that have landed in Lagos, and there are lots of policies coming out of the government and NCC to encourage private sector players to actually come and build infrastructure that will take connectivity to remote areas.
If you look at what Nigeria is known for, you will see that it is oil and gas and most of them are highly technology-driven, have fast connectivity to the internet and they have a play in the IoE space. Again, with the advent of democracy, we are seeing a lot of companies coming into Nigeria to start a manufacturing base and there is also a manufacturing play in the IoE space as well. We have actually seen two companies that have operations in Nigeria and are actually trying to embrace this in the manufacturing sector. We are not left behind; we are on the right track.
How strategic is Nigeria’s economy to Cisco? I ask because before any solution comes to Nigeria, it is first deployed in South Africa.
Nigeria is actually very strategic and there are a number of solutions deployed in Nigeria by Cisco before South Africa. The notion that it comes from South Africa is not correct. Prior to this year, South Africa was the biggest economy which has attracted a lot of opportunities for the country from different global players. Now, with the rebasing of Nigeria’s GDP, we are seeing lots of companies showing more interest in Nigeria than they did in the past. We have American companies building a multimillion dollar plant in Calabar, which in the past they would never have done.
Innovation comes from within Cisco and we have a couple of technology deployed in Nigeria before South Africa and we have technologies working better in Nigeria than in South Africa. For example, in 2010, a service provider in Nigeria built a submarine cable and they were the first to deploy Cisco’s highest earned router.

Is there any partnership between Cisco and some organisations in Nigeria to drive internet penetration in rural communities?
One is our Network Academy programme, a CSR initiative where we partner with government to develop skill sets with ICT basic networking skills which is the foundation level for every student that enrols. We make our curriculum available, free of charge, train a number of them who eventually begin to teach the students and we also make available some of our products used in the lab at affordable prices.
Currently, we have almost 10,000 students enrolled across Nigeria, 160 instructors and 130 academies with 44 percent of the student as females. Our academies are located across the six geopolitical zones of the country. For the Northern part of the country, we have in Abuja and Adamawa. We have more people in the southern parts of Nigeria so of course we have more academies in that part. In the last five years, we have had about almost 100,000 students pass through the program. The program equips them with basic networking skills to make them more attractive to employers. We also have a Career Fair where we invite some of our partners and students to a location so as to create a platform for them to market themselves to our partners and in the process some do get employed through that exercise. All of this is done free.