Innovation, Collaboration, and Policy: The Long-Term Impact of the Nigeria Startup Act with Oswald Guobadia

[00:00:00] You're listening to the Unlocking Africa podcast. We must look at where are we in the digital evolutionary path and see which of the different digital transformations we have not done and avoid big fraud for Africa.

[00:00:40] Stay tuned as we bring you inspiring people who are unlocking Africa's economic potential. You're listening to the Unlocking Africa podcast with your host, Terser Adamu. Welcome to the Unlocking Africa podcast where we find inspirational people who are doing

[00:01:01] inspirational things to unlock Africa's economic potential. Today, we have another special guest, Oswald Usarutin Guobadia, the former senior special assistant on digital transformation to the president of Nigeria and spearheaded the creation and execution of the Nigeria Startup Act. Welcome, welcome, welcome Oswald. How are you?

[00:01:27] Not bad. Thanks for having us. Good to be here. It's an absolute pleasure to have you on the podcast and looking forward to our conversation. Thank you. Before we get started, I'd like to start from the beginning so I was hoping you could introduce

[00:01:39] yourself and tell us a bit more about Oswald Usarutin Guobadia. Oh, thank you. Thank you for the opportunity. As you already said, my name is Oswald. You've also said that I used to work for the former president of Nigeria,

[00:01:53] Mohamed Uphari as a senior special assistant for digital transformation. Prior to that, I ran a company in Nigeria called DBH Africa, which is an infrastructure and technology company. Prior to that, I worked in the states as a vice president

[00:02:11] in technology at Goldman Sachs. I wouldn't go further than that. I've had a long career in technology. I've only skipped a few just to explain the career path. And I live in Nigeria and in Delaware, and I go between those two places. But right now,

[00:02:28] which is more exciting, I've just recently launched a new company, which is called Digital. And the purpose of Digital, it's basically a practice to support the digital journey and the digital evolution. And we've also released a white paper, but we'll talk more about that.

[00:02:43] Yes, fantastic. So you've given us great insights into your professional career and your new company, Digital. I was hoping you could share some of the key milestones in your is a 25 year journey as a technology and business transformational leader, particularly

[00:03:01] highlighting experiences that shaped the pivotal work that you did in terms of the Nigeria startup act. So I tend to tell people a lot of times that all work is good experience.

[00:03:14] What tends to happen is that you never know what skills you would need to utilize on your new thing you're doing. So as every gig you do, you better treat it as an educational experience

[00:03:24] and take whatever skill set you learn from that and put it on something I call a toolkit for the day you would need it again. And interestingly enough, some of these skills are not all from professional experiences. Some of them are from either

[00:03:37] professional organizations you're part of or even fund organizations you're part of that you may pick up relationships or certain skills to help you execute things in the future or your present,

[00:03:48] I would say. I would say that you know, career I really started from I tell the world time that I've gone from pulling cables to now doing policy. My very first job, which was a criticism

[00:03:59] for us Boston over 25 years ago was testing cables part of our huge project, which was migrating, setting up a new head office for investment bank and setting up that office for their use. So that was 25 week testing cables that did an album to become a network

[00:04:15] engineer when I learned a lot of the basics about technology from the ground up when you look at technology as a stack, looking at apps as the top of the stack at the bottom of the stack is

[00:04:24] connectivity and all the transmission type technologies that you need to learn. So as a network engineer, which I did for a number of years, did it go man and some consulting gigs that I did as well before Goldman and then I now progressed to become a project

[00:04:36] manager in a program manager where I managed a number of key projects across the globe for the after national institution Goldman. And then you know, it gets a bit more interesting. I'm moving to Nigeria. In Nigeria, I ran infrastructure for the United Bank for Africa.

[00:04:52] And it was an interesting time when they actually were doing their merger. So that afforded me a lot of opportunities to learn who the market players were, what the issues were in the infrastructure and the country being one of the bigger buyers in the country.

[00:05:04] I got to deal with all of the vendors and even impact how the vendors operated, got to participate in a lot of infrastructure stabilization projects around ATMs and general connectivity and bank security. And some of these things form the foundation for what we see today when we

[00:05:22] start thinking about banking security that's left of fintech and infrastructure stability that's left a number of things in the banking sector, so in the financial sector. So that's what been an interesting experience. And then I then moved on to start a consulting

[00:05:36] firm which was Prefinity and that got acquired by a company called DBH Solutions. And down the road we ended up developing a company called DBH Africa because we're not doing a number of projects or different parts of the continent. But DBH has done a number of infrastructure

[00:05:51] projects from building data centers to running cables from major data centers to building trading floors for most every bank that has a trading floor in Nigeria was built by DBH, even the CDN. So we've done a lot of major infrastructure projects in the workspace and DBH is just

[00:06:08] enough it was kind of a combination of all my experiences across my working career. So I was doing network projects, I was doing infrastructure projects with doing racial projects, a number of projects that were just infrastructure related.

[00:06:20] And then I got the call to work for Mr. President, the previous Mr. President, and that brought me into the policy side which was quite interesting, a lot of learning. But the understanding of being an entrepreneur and the understanding of having done technology

[00:06:34] sort of from the ground up approach and knowing the pains of being an entrepreneur led to the initiation of the startup act. One of the first things I did was I sat down with industry leaders on my appointment and one of the key things that were basically highlighted

[00:06:49] as a potential solution was they put in out a bill that will resolve a number of issues. So anybody look at the startup act, Nigeria startup act, you see that it was very much written from a entrepreneurial mindset about 99.9% of the provisions in that act were put together

[00:07:06] by the private sector to solve private sector issues. So it's pretty much a seed. They just plant seeds all over the document and in implementation of it, we'll be able to grow into impacted solutions to enable us have that environment that will allow startups to grow

[00:07:22] and thrive in Nigeria. Then the last part which is digital, interesting enough is the combination of all of it, right? So I've done policy, I've done infrastructure, the issues we need to resolve in Africa lie in that from infrastructure space and that whole

[00:07:36] digital space to the policy side of it. And that's what digital aims to solve for the pace and precision in developing our digital revolution impact. Fantastic, fantastic. I like what you said about all work is good experience and most notably is your work as the former

[00:07:53] senior special assistant on digital transformation. I know you mentioned that you got a call, but how did this opportunity actually come about? Yeah, it's good. You know, anybody who's read my book will read the chapter called 300 Missing Pages, right? So I have a book

[00:08:09] out there which talks about entrepreneurship on the continent and we always say that we must tell all of the stories. That's what your question is directly addressing. Yeah, I got a call. Amen.

[00:08:22] So it's actually a funny story. There was an appointment made for a new chief of staff in 2020, Professor Dan Barry. And when I saw the name, I'm like, wait a minute. This name

[00:08:33] is quite familiar to me as a friend of mine. But I didn't have his last name in my phone, I just had his name as Omar. And I called Omar and I said, Omar, is this your dad? And he said,

[00:08:42] yes. Now that, oh, fantastic. I said, you know, just make sure you get him good people is what I said to him, you know, this is a great opportunity to have some impact. It was in the

[00:08:51] heart of COVID. And, you know, I all I says, you know, I hope you support him, you know, in meeting the goals of this role, and also ensure you help him get good people.

[00:09:01] And that's how the call ended. It was sort of a congratulatory message. And then it couldn't have been two days later, Omar sends me a message and said, send me your resume. And two things played there that couldn't allow me to back away. I mean, there's several reasons

[00:09:15] to back away. One, you know, it's the heart of COVID. I'm in America with my family. Nobody really wanted to move. I'm talking this is June, July of August of 2020. Yes. I remember thinking, you know, he's asking for my resume. And there was two things that played

[00:09:31] out there. One was I always said that government asked me to help. I will. The reason why that was because I was very inquisitive as to what was happening within governance that affects

[00:09:41] the private sector. I wanted to go learn. I wanted the education of what exactly happens in governance and how governance impacts the private sector activities. So that was always something I was inquisitive about. So when he said bring your resume, that's what

[00:09:54] that meant to me. It's almost like it was Harvard or any of the top schools asking me to come sign up and become a fellow or to come for an education. So I sent my resume. And the second thing was,

[00:10:04] obviously, I already put my foot in my mouth by saying he'd better get good people. So inherently, he was telling me that I was that good person and that I should bring my resume. So obviously,

[00:10:14] he couldn't say no. I sent my resume and then about a month of evaluations and interviewing other people, I was successful and I was appointed into the role. The power of collaboration and connecting. You mentioned that you're inquisitive about governance. So if we look at the act,

[00:10:30] can you elaborate on the objectives and I guess the impact the act has had on Nigeria's tech ecosystem? I will start that question by saying happy anniversary of it becoming an act. Oh, yes.

[00:10:46] So, you know, he just hit me now that when you just asked that question that, you know, how far it's gone and how far it hasn't. So unfortunately, in this year's time, not too much of the act has been implemented. And that's probably due to the transition in

[00:10:59] the election period. We passed the act and then soon after the election started, we went into transition. And a great part of that has not happened. We had hoped that the fact that, you know, you have the government that stays and the government that leaves,

[00:11:12] that it being in the hands of the government that stays. And that's one of the strategic things that we did because what tends to happen with people in my role is that we do something

[00:11:22] amazing. We did it and we never quite handed it over. So when we leave, because I was very much the government that leaves, is that constitutionally motivated to leave because I made 29, that administration ends and I'm part of the former administration. So I exit. But it's

[00:11:36] the government that stays that never leaves. And the act was designed to work with the government that stays. So I think what is required now is that the benefactors of the act, who the act intends to benefit should request and demand that the new administration

[00:11:52] takes it on and implements it expeditiously. But what you will find if you look at the document that was released recently by the Ministry of Communications, Innovation and Digital Economy, you will find that one of the key things they intend to implement is the

[00:12:05] Nigerian Startup Act. It actually has a whole page to itself stating that this is important and this is something we must do. So we just need to hold them accountable to ensure that that

[00:12:13] happens. The act, as I've said earlier, is a seed. It really plants a seed and a number of key issues. If you read the act, I will give you five perspectives on which you should sort of look

[00:12:23] at the act from. If you read the act, you will see that it really intends to touch a number of things and intends to create a framework to ensure that a number of those things continue to monitor that becomes a short performance in those areas. So the

[00:12:41] five perspectives that I will give for most people to read the act, not most people, everybody to read the act is collaboration, engagement, incentives, linkages and support. Now when you read the act and you think away from these five perspectives, you will see that the act intends

[00:12:55] to increase the collaboration between this ecosystem and governance and governance. So there's a council that's developed in the act and the idea of this council is to bring governance closer to this sector intentionally and deliberately. The council

[00:13:10] is broken up into government, federal government at the very senior levels, Mr President, Mr Vice President, a number of key ministers and private sector people on an eight to six split so that there can be deliberation that happens on that level to ensure engagement with another perspective

[00:13:25] between governance and this sector. So the intention is that somebody in this sector can easily just reach into senior government and say, hey, this is the issue that's preventing growth. How can we deal with it? And there's an engagement model within the act that

[00:13:38] brings all the MDAs, which is the ministries, departments and agencies, brings them once again close to what we call the consultative forum where the conservative forum is made up of private sector folks where they can be engaged in about the issues and then those issues

[00:13:51] can now be tabled up into the council for deliberation and hopefully for a decision to be made and mandated. So that's what was really designed in the act, the biggest part of the act, where try to drive decision making and very close monitoring and evaluation

[00:14:07] of the activities within the ecosystem because we understand that the ecosystem is an opportunity for us to take a position in Africa because we have all the key ingredients. We have young people who are very intelligent and can be trained to do amazing things.

[00:14:21] We have a massive market where we can test ideas and sell ideas into and we also have a lot of problems. We never tend to stand problems and issues as a positive but it is. We have a lot of problems that can be solved with digital solutions. So

[00:14:36] if you put these things together and add policy together, we have to put into take a massive position globally. I had a conversation just today with somebody who was questioning me and asking me about how do we grow into the world? How do we

[00:14:48] grow globally? How do we grow into Africa? And after discussing different strategies on how to do that, I also brought to the attention that we haven't even grown within Nigeria. So Nigeria market is we haven't expanded into it yet because Nigeria market, we have digital

[00:15:02] literacy problems. We have digital inclusion problems and access problems which ultimately prevents us from getting the full market access. So if we say we have 200 million people, the market size is not 200 million. The market size is a tenth of that because

[00:15:17] until we start dealing with access issues, telephone issues, cheaper telephone issues, literacy issues, then we're not able to expand the market. So just to touch on the other three perspectives, incentives, the act has number of incentives to drive behavior, there's incentives

[00:15:29] for research, there's incentives for investment, there's incentives for annual investment, there's incentives to drive foreign direct investment and keeping it here. So another tax incentive to drive behavior is linkages that speaks to tying this particular

[00:15:43] ecosystem into the MDAs and the support where we support the supporters. So when you think of hubs, incubators, there's incentives in there to support the activities. So you touched upon the key considerations and points in the act. So reflecting on the

[00:15:56] implementation of the act, from your perspective, what were the key challenges you faced during its execution? So I would say one, I would say one of the key things I learned was unintended consequences, right? In the fact that the act has to be interpreted by other people

[00:16:15] and they may not particularly be really of the same mindset as the people who actually created the document. So it could be misinterpreted for different use, it could be misinterpreted for use that are not for the awe and for the narrow margin of people.

[00:16:29] So those are some things you need to worry about when you're creating public policy. How is it going to be interpreted and how is it going to be executed? So the implementation of the act probably saves about 3%. We've managed to set up the council,

[00:16:44] we've managed to put certain memos in places prior to the last administration leaving, certain memos in place to drive the implementation of the act. What's really left now is just turn on the engine and drive it and all because the act is

[00:16:57] almost self-implemented. The language of the act pretty much is very directive. It says things like the secretariat will do XYZ. So we need to now sit down with XYZ and the stakeholders

[00:17:07] of XYZ understand what that truly means and how we would drive it. The act for instance doesn't really sit in a lot of funds, it sits on about 10 billion which is almost not really impactful if you think

[00:17:18] about it because that's almost basically about 10 million dollars. It's seed funded but the idea behind the act is that the act will plug into other sources of funds. So if you're thinking

[00:17:26] about the I-DAS program the act has intention to plug into that. If you think about the NSIA that's managing the seed fund it was intentional in making the NSIA manager the seed fund

[00:17:36] because ultimately we believe the NSIA will look at that fund and go okay we need to add another 100 billion to this to be truly impactful in Nigeria. So the act, you know, implementation acts just need the engine turned on. And as I said the new administration has made

[00:17:48] indications that they believe it's important and they're going to drive it but I also believe that the private sector for folks who are the beneficiaries of it should ring that bell and shake the banters to ensure that it happens. As you mentioned collaborating with key

[00:18:02] stakeholders is crucial for the success of the act but it can also be a challenge. Could you elaborate on the strategies that you used to bring together diverse stakeholders and ensure their participation in the act? Great question so when we ran the process of the

[00:18:22] bill, developing the bill, we created something we call the Big Tent Approach. Now the Big Tent Approach I always do what I say is because the only way to explain is by talking about a circus right so the Big Tent Approach is basically a circus tent

[00:18:34] right although we ain't doing anything whimsical. We did have fun in front of the Big Tent but the Big Tent Approach has no doors it's pretty much open to everybody so everybody is welcome

[00:18:44] to join the Big Tent, everybody is welcome to be a poll holding up the purpose which is their roof of the tent and everybody is welcome to fully participate and own the process. So we read

[00:18:55] that and that's how we were able to move at a very accelerated speed because people had ownership even before it got to their desk. So you find somebody who sits in justice has been long pulled

[00:19:06] into the process to participate in the development of the actual language of the first draft. So by the time he gets to their desk they're more acquainted, they're very acquainted with what the document says and this was done with a number of minute policy makers so we took

[00:19:19] the approach that you know the ecosystem we keep talking about if you had put me to the mic before I joined government and asked me hey Oswald who's the ecosystem? I would say

[00:19:27] I am the ecosystem and everybody else like me is the ecosystem but on joining government one of the key learnings was the fact that the ecosystem is made up of practitioners and policy makers. So we the Big Tent you know literally had practitioners and policymakers co-creating

[00:19:43] this policy from the ground up and that's one of the key ways we got the document to be fully representative of a lot of ideas and also to be done as one of the expedited timeline. Now implementation will take the same approach right so once the implementation

[00:19:56] committees are set up it will ultimately have private sector folks and public sector folks you know forming committees around either thematic areas or around key provisions. So in the act I believe maybe provision number 36 or 35 you know it talks about

[00:20:11] the Nigerian Stock Exchange and giving incentive to list the Nigerian Stock Exchange which we believe is a very critical initiative and who would sit on that committee to implement that would likely be people from the Nigerian Stock Exchange, people from the sec, somebody who runs

[00:20:24] an investment house and maybe some other startups who have a conversation around what is required to make the Nigerian Stock Exchange attractive. Actually doesn't even say the Nigerian Stock Exchange it says exchanges that's language use but make the exchanges an attractive vehicle

[00:20:39] for seeking liquidation liquidity and also seeking an exit strategy as it's done with a NASDAQ in New York and a Joanne Sbrooks Stock Exchange or the London Stock Exchange in London. Brilliant thank you for sharing this so ownership was or is a crucial driver also crucial to a

[00:20:57] program such as this is the legacy and sustainable structure that it leaves so if we look specifically at the technology legacy of the act what positive legacy do you believe that it could

[00:21:13] leave? I would say that the positive legacy is the fact that it draws attention to that collaboration is critical to deriving the value that this ecosystem could put into the world. You know the rest of the world is moving very quickly in the digital strategy right

[00:21:30] the startup act is just one of many policies and I'm not going to overly address it it's just one of many policies that needs to be put in place to ensure that we are able to get on the

[00:21:41] right path in a digital evolution development path or the right track. The act itself plant seeds from the education side when you think of any UC to exploitation, to IP regiment, to trademark, to incentives for research, plugging research into our universities

[00:22:04] the idea of free trade zones FTZs the idea of incubators enabling them to do what they do and do it better and then one of the I wouldn't actually call it a spin-off but one of the key

[00:22:17] sub projects that are birthed from this is the idea of a state adoption which means that we'll now go to the sub national level and create the environment for this policy to thrive to create a local state adoption of the act which will create a

[00:22:33] program that will allow the activities, the conversations, the dialogue and the collaboration to happen at the state level. So a couple months ago, Ocean State announced that they would adopt the Nigerian startup act and in that same announcement the governor did something very

[00:22:50] interesting. He also made a very strong position about the right of way so he understood the relationship between a startup act and the right of way which speaks to access. So when you start thinking about the problem, you need infrastructure, you need access infrastructure

[00:23:06] even covers digital literacy because you have to look at infrastructure as the foundational things you have to have in place to ensure that we can be able to have a thriving digital economy. So that infrastructure will speak to access, access speaks to digital literacy,

[00:23:19] speaks to digital inclusion, speaks to connectivity, speaks to cheaper devices that you use to do the access. So these things have to be in place. So when you enter a state and you put these programs

[00:23:32] in place and you start thinking about how do you get all these things going to ensure that commerce has birthed out of the digital economy happens in this state then you start solving a lot

[00:23:42] of other problems that happen because of the lack of activities in states. You have to start looking at states need to compete on policy. We know we have states have infrastructure issues but I think we can use policy to drive the building of infrastructure in those states. So

[00:23:54] if you're starting on a state's competing on policy, this is what happens everywhere else in the world. If you look at America for instance and I use this example a lot so you may have heard it before, you ask yourself what's the difference between Silicon Valley,

[00:24:06] Miami and San Antonio? We cannot say this because there's resource differences as in people, human resources because somebody can go to Harvard and move to Miami. Fantastic idea, Miami is beautiful. People can go to Stanford and move to San Antonio. So there's a mobility

[00:24:19] in resources. So the human resources is quite available everywhere. We can't say it's infrastructure because infrastructure is available to almost the same extent in all these states. I mean there's some people who don't understand that America also has the digital inclusion problem that was

[00:24:33] discovered during COVID. There are certain people who just can afford access to the internet and they actually have a program to now solve that by giving states grants to now build internet access for poor people. So we solved this problem, digital problems can be

[00:24:43] solved and digital problems being solved, solve other problems. Now I would say that the difference between these four locations is policy. The policies that these states put together and put out is what attracts the different startups and companies. Amazon did not move

[00:24:59] their office to New York. They moved to North Carolina. Why? Because the policies in New York was not habitable to them and they didn't want it so they moved to a different state. Elon Musk wants to move his car company from California to Texas because the policy

[00:25:13] states in Nigeria should get to a point where they start to compete. States in Africa get to a country in Africa needs to get to a point where they're competing on policy. Instructure should be almost seen as something we must do, it is a must do,

[00:25:25] but policies what makes the difference? I agree. So you touched on something Kida which is the human resource issue. So if we look specifically at the human capital human resource legacy of the act, what positive legacy do you believe that is left in terms of

[00:25:42] creating a culture and pipeline of tech practitioners or professionals in Nigeria? Amongst other great questions, that's another one. So it's one of those things of the Americans say who's on first, right? And it's a running joke on when you start.

[00:25:58] So we have a problem you can't quite determine where you start. Do you go to education and start education? Do you go to jobs and starting jobs? You start in the middle of these. It's a multi-pronged problem and you must have a multi-pronged solution.

[00:26:13] And the act is just one aspect. The act is just one prong. I did not even count the prongs on this conversation but we could sit in the room and approach it. And like I said earlier,

[00:26:23] the white paper actually takes an attempt on an approach. The white paper beyond transmission to a digital evolution that we just released on the 1, sort of speaks to a number of the prongs.

[00:26:33] So the Niger Startup Act is just one pro. One Niger Startup Act wants to do is create the opportunity to make young people become job makers. So it gives them an opportunity for startups to

[00:26:45] start, which is the first thing. And then the next thing which is absolutely important is thrive. And when we really do a start and then a thrive, then ultimately they'll become job creators.

[00:26:57] That will now increase the number of jobs in the country. And then I think once you start thrive, now we want you to now dominate because we believe that African businesses can dominate globally. So we have a few beginning to make those kind of moves. I can see

[00:27:13] we've only believed that some of these unicorns will ultimately start their services outside the shores of Africa and the uniqueness of their market will make their product unique in that new market. Because that's what I mean when I say that Nigeria, one of the positives

[00:27:27] of Nigeria is that we have a massive market, a massive and diverse market, which means ultimately you can test an idea and get several feedback from the youth that you may make an idea for,

[00:27:40] I don't know, for delivering food. And then you will find out that idea is a fantastic idea for delivering blood in the war zone. That's what I envisioned from Africa because the place is so large and diverse. And our problems are very unique. And many,

[00:27:55] we're still doing some of the very early stage problems. But we now have a very unique mix of having third world problems. I know that's not gonna call that we just have emerging world

[00:28:03] problems, we should call it. We have emerging world problems. But we live in a time where we have very cutting edge, we're 30 years away from computers telling us what to do when we have general intelligence, AGI. So we have first emerging problems and very,

[00:28:21] very cutting edge emerging technology all coexisted at the same time, only in this market. That gives us a unique opportunity for making very, very unique solutions. That may end up solving different kinds of problems in other climates. So it's a very

[00:28:38] unique place to be. And then you add the fact that we have young people, a bunch of them, the rest of the world is aging out. We are refreshing, we are younger and younger and younger

[00:28:46] every year. So those stats are out there, 60% percent, under 25 and so forth, 1.3 billion people, it gets interesting. I mean, there's more stats now saying that Nigeria is going to be third largest country in about 30 years or so. So you can see where we're going.

[00:29:04] We are here now. And it's now we're supposed to put the train tracks down to ensure we get there. So that's why now is really important. That is why it's now is important for the collaboration. That's why now is important for execution.

[00:29:17] That's why now is the time when we need to start looking at the problems and executing the solutions to get us there. Fantastic. So it's clear that people are at the forefront of the act and those people tend to be entrepreneurs. So how did you

[00:29:31] balance the need for fostering innovation and encouraging that entrepreneurial spirit while also ensuring the regulatory frameworks and stability within the startup ecosystem? So that question takes me to another thing I quite say often. So I'm going to repeat it here because

[00:29:49] I think it covers it in a great way to explain it. So the issues that we tend to understand is the lack of collaboration. And I would mention lack of collaboration this way.

[00:30:00] I would say there's a lack of collaboration on all ends of it, right? So there's the not for instance, as a fact, there are two main parts within the ecosystem, right? And this is

[00:30:11] digital tech ecosystem. I'm sure this exists in other ecosystems, but you know how I can only speak to my ecosystem. Two main parts is their practitioners and their policy makers and the other contributors, you know, there's educators and there are lawyers

[00:30:28] and a number of other folks that are in this ecosystem. Now, what's key to note is that these two parts, they both also have a lack of collaboration within themselves. So in governance there's a lack of collaboration between policy makers to come up with a cohesive

[00:30:49] policy structure and regimen that spurs growth, right? And you will find that you'll find some of the issues there is around the formation of governance, right? How is government formed, right? We have a solution that looks yellow as our governance structure formed to deliver

[00:31:09] policies and regulations for yellow or is it formed based on historical, you know, precedence and maybe, you know, appointment and positions, you know, and whatever else you want to pick at. You know, that disengagement there in the mindset of this structure. If you think for instance that

[00:31:27] if you look at, for instance, Nigeria's example, right? So we talked about Nigerian focus, that's what the document does. You see Nigeria, I'm sure in other places as well, but we use Nigerian focus, that the technology activities of government, they have a vertical structure

[00:31:41] which is right next to other verticals. So in a company, the technology function is horizontal, is a group-shared service, is GSS, it cuts across every division, right? The technology delivery. But in Nigeria you have a ministry and agencies that are in a vertical structure and sort of reach

[00:32:01] out to touch other vertical structures and it's not quite efficient because it's just kind of a finger touch. It's just kind of reaching to their sides and shielding the other verticals and becomes a battleground of whose turf is it, can you, who owns the technology,

[00:32:16] should I be in there, you know, stay away from my turf type conversations. And this is global, right? So but we're using Nigerian focus. It's just that, you know, we kind of afford to have these kinds of disengagement type activities because we have real issues

[00:32:30] and real problems. So we shouldn't really be playing the games that are happening in countries where they have the basics already in place and you can almost be assured that there's a depth

[00:32:39] in resources. So if you're in a ministry and you're head of IT, I'm more than certain that your email infrastructure is going to be adequate as me in ministry of XYZ because I'm also a good

[00:32:49] technology professional. That's not the case. So we need a consolidation and a comprehensive, cohesive approach to addressing technology policy and infrastructure development in governance. So that's already the disagreement on the policymaker side. When you look at the practitioner side,

[00:33:06] there's also a disengagement in the practitioner. There's not enough collaboration between the players. I would say that if you go to America, for instance, and there's a policy about to be released that both Google and Facebook, Meta and Amazon don't like, they're not going to fight

[00:33:25] that battle separately in a singular form. They're going to form a go to K streets in DC. All of them will pay the lobby group, put some funds together and they'll work on the process to

[00:33:35] get in that policy. We designed a more collaborative to meet their needs. So that's already two sets of problems. Now the third problem, which is the big clincher is the fact that there's a lack

[00:33:46] of collaboration between the practitioner side and the policymaker. So what you have is that the practitioner will start a new idea, which is intent to disrupt a certain market and disruption is good because in disruption, something new is born. We love disruption and

[00:34:00] destructive practices create new things. You have to break a few eggs to make an omelet. And that's the idea. So disruption is going to happen and we encourage disruption. In fact, the whole Ninjastad Act is about encouraging disruption. Now where the problem starts,

[00:34:13] and that's one of the key things I say about the perspective of collaboration and engagement and what that fosters is that the policymaker does not see disruption. He has no clue of no disruption. He sees displacement. They both de-words but mean something absolutely different.

[00:34:27] Now in that displacement, the policymaker whose job is to protect what exists from a regulatory perspective and set standards and intention of the government through policies, sees displacement and is going to take action to fix that displacement. And if there's no conversation between the practitioner and the policymaker,

[00:34:48] what you will have is what you always get. Government is trying to destroy my business because that's going to be the outcome. The outcome is going to be that government is going to stop something that you and I from outside may look at and go,

[00:35:00] oh, that thing was actually a good idea. But government doesn't see the good idea because no conversation was had. Government just sees the displacement. So you can run this little framework or this little paradigm across a number of situations that you read

[00:35:11] about where government comes out, puts out a policy or a regulation to stop an activity. There was never the conversation around how the activity is going to add value in two years. Maybe the fact that activity is going to add value in two years

[00:35:24] means that we should take the pain of allowing that displacement to continue for two years and maybe find ways to manage the pain. So that conversation is what the Nigerian Startup Act intends to foster through that collaborative and engaging model that's in the first three

[00:35:38] or five pages of the act. Great insights. Although you've worked in government, it could be said that you are an entrepreneur. You've worked in the private sector. You've launched your own startups and businesses. What are the key lessons learned coming from the

[00:35:55] private sector and working in government? So, you know, when you come from private sector, one of the key things people always say is that when you come from the private sector and you come into government, it's quite difficult. I actually found it to be the opposite.

[00:36:10] I found that you sort of have to keep your pace. You don't go into government and change how you approach work. You go to government and try to impact government to yield the right outcomes.

[00:36:24] I would say that my experience with government, I got to work with very, very, very brilliant people in the civil service. There are certain rules that guide the how civil servants work. I think understanding those rules and understanding the motivation of a civil servant

[00:36:42] and the lack of, maybe not lack of, but of certain kinds of leadership to yield the right desirable results is also some of the things we need to look at. But I think a lot of people go into civil service thinking or going to public sector thinking

[00:36:56] that, oh, nobody knows what they're doing. You know, it's just rubbish, corrupt rubbish and all that. And I think people don't tend to forget that in the end of the day, there's really no difference between the private sector people and public sector people. I would say public

[00:37:09] sector people are probably sacrificing more. But I would say that there's really no difference because we're all just citizens, right? There's no imaginary line that you cross to go over. Somebody working in the civil service also has kids and families and there's a nephew and there's

[00:37:22] a niece and there's uncles and aunts. So we need to take a different approach on how we engage each other. And I think that's the starting point in developing the right policies, right? So what you will find in certain countries is a certain apathy between the private sector

[00:37:37] tours, the government public sector policymaker folks. In my opinion, that's just absolute time. And it's one of the bigger problems in driving collaborative engines to drive out progress. I wouldn't say recently anymore, but maybe a few months ago, I was on the panel in front

[00:37:54] of a bunch of young people who are all startup entrepreneurs or want to be startup entrepreneurs. And what I said today is that a lot of the policies that will likely disrupt, or should I say,

[00:38:06] yeah, stop your work based on your disruption and then there's a displacement to government are developed by other young people like you because it's not the head of the agency that sits there and types out the policy and does the research for the policy. It's usually

[00:38:19] some of the young person who probably was in university with you or in secondary school and I wonder why young people are not engaging other young people in the public sector and saying,

[00:38:29] hey, what are you guys working on? Hey, this is what I'm working on. So that collaborative conversation is supposed to be happening at very, very junior levels before they get to most senior levels and the policies cooked. I think that's not happening. That's part

[00:38:41] of the problem as well. Yeah, so you mentioned something quite key, which is the apathy from private sector to public sector. I guess that apathy can be driven from the challenges that they face from policy. So in your opinion, what are the key challenges that are emerging

[00:38:57] startups in Nigeria face and what would you say can be done at a policy level to support their growth and sustainability? So there are a number of issues. I mean, Nigeria is Ruka plus,

[00:39:12] plus, plus money plus, plus, plus, plus, but I think that's what makes us special, right? Because we might as well create value in this environment. It's a different environment to do business.

[00:39:22] There are a number of issues. I mean, if you look at FX fluctuations alone, that affects anybody. I mean, if you think about it, if you had a contract that you closed a year ago

[00:39:32] and you want to go to get payment now, you'll be at being devalued by almost a tenth, right? So there's a number of issues, but I think a lot of these issues can be addressed with

[00:39:43] more of a collaborative mindset in a sense that if we partner with government and government partners with the private sector to address problems and not look at it from a singular perspective, but more of a collaborative perspective, then we're more able to start

[00:39:57] solving these issues. There are certain sacrifices that need to happen. And if we don't look at these sacrifices from an individualistic perspective and looking from a collaborative, it's all of us and these are the things we need to sacrifice to actually

[00:40:10] develop a real economy. Then it's different. I think what's sense to happen is that there's a general feeling that it's just I who's going through this. So you're going to have a natural

[00:40:18] kick against it, but the truth of the matter is the change in PMS is everybody's problem. I have a car, I'm also in a boat. I am affected by the price increases. Everybody gets to go

[00:40:31] through it, but I don't say that lightly to say that people are not operating at different levels of the economy and of course you don't have enough cushion to take the impact. And that's where the social structures start to go into place,

[00:40:43] that the supposed social structure systems is to help people. Then you don't go, why can we help people? Because if you have social structures in place and help those that need to help, then you start looking at solutions that are not in place. So we have

[00:40:56] something called an N, and then the NIN, which over the last couple of years has been more focused on enumeration as opposed to services it can provide. Do we know who the

[00:41:06] poor are in our environment and how can we actually get aid to them? Or do we say something that is intelligent that is okay if you're going to buy petrol, use your NIN at the petrol station.

[00:41:15] And once you put your NIN in, if you are one of the people we believe, don't have enough resources I should say, resourcefully challenged I should say, that means you get a discount on the pump.

[00:41:24] You know these are the solutions that are easily done that can easily have impact tomorrow on lives. And that solution, you'll find that after we've made it so much better in Nigeria, we can now implement it across the continent Africa and then you find that

[00:41:38] it's also a solution that can be used across the globe. These solutions are being packaged and sold by other countries. I mean I was at a conference in Zimbabwe a few months ago

[00:41:46] and there was a guy there who is a Kenyan but he's speaking for the country of Estonia. So Estonia is not trying to export his small country Estonia, who has done a lot of amazing digital transformation projects, they're only very advanced position in the digital

[00:42:01] trans evolution path towards development. They're now trying to sell those solutions to the rest of the world. So it's only right that Nigeria gets its back together that we now start exporting digital solutions and we now start importing work into Nigeria for Nigerian youth to execute

[00:42:16] locally and earn effects locally because when you look at the issue going back to effect fluctuation, you know the economics of it is that we don't have enough production to support our currency. And it just goes around a big circle and you're not saying

[00:42:30] where do you start? Well you start by starting and that's what the Nigerian Startup Act intended to do, give us a position to start. And a number of other policies need to go in place which I believe the new administration will focus on around innovation, around digital literacy,

[00:42:44] around digital inclusion. These are key things that need to be done to drive this economy. Fantastic. You've shared some great challenges, some innovative solutions and policies that drive new trends. So if we look past the current trends and into the future of say Nigeria in the

[00:43:02] next five years, what lasting or continuous impact do you believe the act will have on Nigeria's tech ecosystem and digital economy? I would say on the implementation the act is

[00:43:16] going to drive a number of areas. If you just think about it, once again I got to go back to the collaboration and engagement model. And I'll run an example through it so you can see,

[00:43:26] so you can get a sense of because I think the act is almost self-keeling, right? It's almost self-driving. So there's one issue going around Africa right now which is entrepreneurial visas, entrepreneurial immigration. Founders in Kenya are wondering how they come to Nigeria and just

[00:43:41] sit here for six months because they want to do a market study or they want to hire somebody from South Africa. Nigerian founder wants to hire a developer from Kenya or South Africa

[00:43:50] called Ethiopia or Tunisia or Algeria. What is that process and how do we eliminate the paperwork at the time and the issues and the laws around immigration for entrepreneurs in the digital space? So if Nigeria wanted to do one, let's say the consultative forum which is the private

[00:44:07] sector folks put together a package and say look this is going to be the potential impact of opening doors to fellow Africans to come here to develop ideas and sit here and we'll

[00:44:18] support them is it shows the impact of the economy. All they need to do is they ultimately just speak to the secretariat through the secretary that can engage the immigration department. It could quite possible that the immigration department will see that it makes a lot of

[00:44:34] sense and put together a policy that drives entrepreneurial visas and then seek approval from the minister who then seeks approval from Mr. President and ultimately this policy goes in place. Now in a situation where the immigration agency doesn't see the need for this there's a

[00:44:52] recourse called the private sector folks they can ultimately table this to the council and presented the council and if you remember I stated the council has Mr. President, Mr. Vice President, a number of key ministers and agencies sitting on the council you could think

[00:45:05] of it as a mini-president executive council and that can be presented to them as we need entrepreneurial visas and once presented and it makes sense the likelihood of Mr. President approving and then releasing a mandate to the secretary which would be sent to the immigration

[00:45:22] department is quite high and that just shows you that right there which in fact if the immigration department had agreed to it it's probably a longer path than presented to the council so basically what that's done is creating an opportunity for secretly ideas that can

[00:45:37] help the ecosystem grow get quicker approval and support from government because government believes that this ecosystem is important to the growth of Nigeria. I agree. Yeah so painting that just shows you just take then and plant that seed in a number of different areas right so if you

[00:45:51] take every provision and see what that provision tends to do if I say to you I'm going to give you tax incentives to research your startup and you're focused on fintech but if you open a

[00:46:00] department you just raise 20 million dollars and you take it you put 500 000 dollars in a department which you call research and you now start researching how fintech and help help tech be better and document management system into the patient management system or whatever I'm just

[00:46:14] making this up right now right there you're going to get tax incentives right on your raise because you're not doing research so now we've planted a seed of creating research and just

[00:46:23] imagine if you now take that and plug it into the NUC now your research is not sitting in your small office but you're taking your planting that research into usuka and you now have a multi-departmental research thing that you're funded by 500 000 dollars we're going to incentivize

[00:46:37] that with taxes so that's what the entire document is doing then if you imagine startups have been sold so you sold the startup imagine that startup had gone through the Nigerian stock exchange first or

[00:46:47] the just the exchange is first and then more Nigerians invested their money in the 10 000 there are 500 000 there are 1 million there and it's now sold the impact of that sale would spread beyond the angel and series a investors to more Nigerians who invest in the stock exchange

[00:47:05] and believe in the idea and have gone through a more democratized spread of the opportunity so i've invested in that company before it was sold so that's what the acting tends to do

[00:47:15] I myself i'll tell you that on my version actually since it's on my device i've already started editing and looking at things that i believe could be better right i nsa 2.0

[00:47:24] because you know we could always improve on this so the next act will escalate the intentions of the first act but we must implement it first right so there are several areas that see it and it touches

[00:47:35] so many areas if you look at the fact there's a there's a monetary and evaluation dashboard which sits in a dashboard that'll be sitting in front of the council which means mr president

[00:47:45] so we can easily say that oh i put in a patent request in January and it's now June and i don't have it so the startups that make requests through the portal because the portal

[00:47:55] which is probably engaging model we can now track their their issues we can track that they went to cac in december and it's now february and they don't have an answer and then when you take the

[00:48:05] the ease of doing business act that was passed towards the end of the initial previous administration you will find that some of the provisions there actually support the Nigerian sort of acting just makes it really really really really i wanted to say violent but really really

[00:48:17] efficient and and very very on the point in the sense that there's a provision that says that if we apply for something and it goes beyond a number of days it's approved but in a paper form you can't

[00:48:27] really determine or contract that properly but once you start going through a portal that tracks it then those rules will be able to apply to ensure that this ecosystem gets what it needs from a

[00:48:36] proper perspective fantastic fantastic if we go from the future of Nigeria in the next five years if we look closer to home where do you see yourself in five years time what work will you be

[00:48:49] doing to contribute to Nigeria or Africa's tech ecosystem i mean like like i've said i mean i've started a company called digital and this practice of digital the main practice is to support this digital journey in the white paper beyond transformation to a digital evolution

[00:49:07] one of the key points we're making is that digital transformation is a trendish activity that what we must look at is the digital evolutionary path for Africa we must look at where are we in

[00:49:20] the digital evolutionary path and see which of the different digital transformations we have not done and avoid leapfrogging because what tends to happen is that you know let's say the fact

[00:49:30] okay i'll give an example i mean this is if you look at if you look at music right music has you have the LP album you have the a track you have a cassette you have a cd and then you have

[00:49:43] streaming right each of these things are all digital transformation when we won the LP and they brought the a track wow that was a digital transformation moment in fact when the LP album became a laser wow digital transformation that was amazing remember my uncle had a laser

[00:49:57] player and it was it was vertical instead of being horizontal we went to cassettes from a track smaller that was digital transformation because the definition digital transformation is using technology to change enable make easier how we work and play and live so the cassette is

[00:50:12] smaller to put in your pocket that was digital transformation when we went to cd's wow you know the walkman became the cd man and so it got a little bigger but we appreciate it

[00:50:21] because now you have more songs with better quality and we enjoyed it the cd was great now when i play i'm actually album collector when i play my albums and then i go to streaming

[00:50:31] that i can tell the difference i put on a cassette there i'm like oh god how do we listen to this because i still have my cassette now i'm a cassette player and same thing we see these

[00:50:38] streaming is so much better so much quality of music you can hold on limited music but now it's not in any case of even if you think about going from the first ipod to now ipod were

[00:50:47] limited by to number of music you carry to now you just have all the music you want a lexer oops i don't want to do anything um a lexer play xyz and it it it goes and plays it right

[00:51:00] lexer start i love that technology in full effect exactly exactly quote of the week as people we often have quotes mantras african proverbs or affirmations that keep us going when times are

[00:51:14] hard or when times are good do you have one that you can share with us today uh mine is sort of the same good or bad i always say that prepared people always seem lucky

[00:51:28] that's the process of remaining prepared is what presents you as ready for the opportunity and when the opportunity comes you know to the outside world is always going to seem like oh

[00:51:38] such a lucky guy or such a lucky girl but is that constant act of being prepared that sets you up for that fantastic arzwood what a great note to finish today's conversation thank you for sharing your insights in terms of innovation collaboration digital empowerment and in terms

[00:51:55] of the work that you've done with the nigerian startup act which serves as a shining example for aspiring entrepreneurs and policy makers alike it's been an absolute pleasure having you on the podcast mine too has been great fantastic i've enjoyed our conversation we will speak soon

[00:52:12] same here talk to you soon thanks for having me thank you to everyone who has listened and stay tuned to the podcast if you've enjoyed this episode please subscribe share or tell a friend

[00:52:23] about it you can also rate review us in apple podcast or wherever you download your podcast thank you and see you next week for the unlocking africa podcast