Digitization holds the key to Africa’s development-Cisco

Cisco, foremost technology company recently released a study indicating that 75% of businesses worldwide will be digitized by 2020. However, only 30% of such businesses will ultimately be successful. Further insight on the study with emphasis on the future of Internet of Everything (IoE) in Africa, the growing rise of cyber-crime and other burning ICT issues are dissected in this interview with Dare Ogunlade, GM, Cisco Nigeria, Ghana, Liberia and Sierra Leone.

It was mentioned in one of the key presentations that cyber-crime is now estimated at $1 trillion, which is a staggering amount of money. How much of that is traceable to Africa and more specifically to Nigeria?

We may not have the exact figures allocated for Africa specifically, but global cyber-crime industry rakes in more than $1trillion dollars. The cyber security market, which specializes in defending organizations from cyber-criminals, falls far short of the true opportunity. That is why security is now one of the topmost priorities for Cisco.

The public sector is of course the largest employer of labour in most African countries. How can governments across the continent deploy the process of IoE in efficiently running their affairs?

The public sector is one of the key vertical industries where we see a high value of stake for IoE. An example of what we have seen in other parts of the world, and we are in the process of having dialogue with some governments across Africa about the same in the context of a smart city, smart traffic management solutions, and smart lighting solutions. These solutions help to integrate jobs even though they are less manually intensive jobs but more around ICT. So, there is a lot we need to do in partnership in both public and private sectors to create the skills because there would be more ICT skills needed most specifically in the public sector. On one hand, there is opportunity for job creation with a different type of skill, and on the other is  the problems themselves. For instance, I have not been to any major city across Africa where there is no major problem with traffic that leads to loss of productivity. So, whether it is Lagos, Nairobi, Cairo, or Johannesburg they all have horrendous traffic problems that are not going to be solved any time soon.

We believe technology is probably the only thing that will go some way in addressing the issue leading to a vivid improvement on productivity because people will spend less time in cars where they are unable to be productive.  We believe there is a productivity benefit, safety benefit, and power usage benefit, in terms of smart lighting. Around job creation, governments will have to look for help from companies like Cisco in how they re-skill and up-skill a lot of people who may have some sort of skill but do not have the capabilities yet around ICT, and the Cisco Networking Academy is one of the major things we are doing to assist in that regard.

Recent Cisco reports stated that 75% of businesses will be digitized by 2020. Does that include African businesses or countries, and if so, what is the percentage?

Yes, it was a global statistics although I have not seen that broken down figure regionally, but definitely there could be an interesting discussion on whether it could be more in Africa or less because arguably there is a great deal of potential for upside across many African countries if they do digitize, whether it’s a small business or in the public sector. We do not have the data point here at the moment but there is every reason to believe that the statistics does apply to Africa. Another statistics that we should not lose sight of is that about 30% of those businesses will fail and only 30% will succeed.

Is it worth it to digitize if at least 30% of those who digitalize will fail?

Well, you either do nothing and go out of business or you try to reinvent yourself, find out new revenue streams, try to disrupt yourself and maybe move into other markets and up your chances of succeeding and growing. It is pretty sure in our opinion that if companies do not do anything then the future will not look bright.

What does it actually mean when a business is fully digitized?

Defining digitization all depends on the vertical an industry is in. When a bank is fully digitized, it means that customers can access the bank and its products anywhere through any channel, whether it is through a smartphone or home broadband or whether it is actually having the customers go into the bank.  For a retail bank, having access to the bank 365 days a year, 24 hours a day and being able to access products or insurance claims. It is actually being able to do everything in a virtual world.

In the healthcare sector, there is clearly an element of telemedicine today but how far is that ultimately going to go and in which life time? But it is about the core processes and how people interact, suppliers, customers and  internally.

There are two opportunities really, one is the re-invention which is finding new opportunities that can exist without technology and the second is digitizing your business and streamlining that. One is about efficiency and the other is about growth opportunities.

One thing that caught my attention is the fact that we need to change the conversation, focusing on business rather than technology. Could it be that the uncertainty of disruption underneath innovation across the board is now part of why customers are now seeking business alliances?

Business leaders understand that without strategy they are going to be disrupted so the good news is that there is an opportunity for us to go and have those different types of conversations. A lot of the customers do recognize Cisco as industry leaders and thought leaders in that area so there is no shortage of opportunity to have the conversation. We cannot begin to have that conversation without being prepared; we need to understand what the opportunities are, what we are seeing in different parts of the world in the same industry.

If you think about it from the private and public sectors, they are ultimately not different in what we are trying to achieve. The CEO on the board of the private company is looking for new products and new services, he is aware of the possible digital disruption, that there is survivability but it is ultimately about profit and growth, products and services. The public sector is about scope, growth because of the urbanization that is happening with regard to people moving to cities. What the person on the board or the person in government really cares about is delivering services, delivering the CEO’s agenda strategy around that growth.

There was an alarming report recently that Nigeria dropped in the network readiness ranking. With the position of Nigeria in Africa being one of the fastest growing economies, how do you think we can ever conveniently adjust to the era of IoE if we keep dropping in the ranking?

Can we just keep in mind that when we talk about the ranking of a country, it’s basically talking about relative ranking to other countries. Nigeria has made progress under the previous government but there are other countries progressing faster, which is the key point of the networking index. The statistics is at least 18 months but we remember the statistics had 35% growth in ICT, which at the time was five percent to six percent of the GDP growing at 3.5% a year. There is a huge amount of growth going on in Nigeria, most of it is around the basic mobile subscriptions, mainly voice, some data and there is still so much work to do and we are anxiously waiting to see what the new government has in store.