•An opportunity to focus on our place in technology
He came in the spirit of technology and globalisation. Mark Zuckerberg is perhaps the youngest genius alive in the framing of what we today call the social media but the Facebook titan arrived Nigeria without airs.
He did not come to smooch with the high and mighty. He did not seek photo ops with the president, or the governor or the chief executives of the corporate high and mighty. He was not impressed with the chance to issue any rhetoric about his place in the world or the vainglory of his invention. He came to meet with the average Nigerian, and he was happy to select one of the most Nigerian of cuisines as his favourite food here. Jolof rice, that is.
Young men and women received the young man, and he was pictured not only interacting but also working on computers. His was not a charity visit, for sure. But he did not carry crass commercialism on his sleeves.
His visit was also significant on the level of entrepreneurship in technology. Zuckerberg rose because he enjoyed enabling conditions in a society and once his ideas were found to be viable, the world was his oyster. He found not a few kindred spirits during his visit. Hear him: “Here in Lagos, I want to not just sit down with members of this community, but sit down with developers and entrepreneurs. The reason for this is that I feel there is great energy here and I think the world needs to see this.”
He noted that the Nigerian economy is undergoing a seismic shift, and it is transmuting from a resource-based affair to knowledge-based. This dynamic is nothing new to Nigerians. The tragedy is that an American would have to visit and stir that spirit for it to make sense.
We have in different parts of Nigeria what we call computer village, and it has little to do with the work of government but individuals who have fired themselves to modest glory. They do with little and pine for the opportunity. They are often on their own.
Up till today, we are enslaved to the software developed from above, whether in government or in the social work or in the higher reaches of the corporate world, we do not buy our software. It is technological divide, and we are on the wrong end of the divide.
Some have done well, and Zuckerberg told of a Nigerian with a relentless zeal. He identified Blessing Obueh who failed to get a berth to train at the Facebook Foundation. She did not give up, he said.
“She showed up at the training, despite that her application was unsuccessful. She pleaded for a chance and we accepted. Now Blessing is working in a multinational engineering firm,” he narrated.
We have many Obuehs around us in Nigeria who have been suffocated by our capitalist abuse. We expect that his visit will open the eyes of many in high places to understand that technology is the enabler of the next economic boom, especially now that we are lamenting our entry into a new recession.
We speak of diversifying the economy but even agriculture that is resource-based will be impotent without technology.
It is also heartening that Zuckerberg’s visit will also bring a new appreciation for our indigenous languages as he has promised to introduce our languages to the world conversation. We have about seven million Nigerians on Facebook daily, and we are also on some of the new cutting-edge platforms like twitter, LinkedIn, whatsapp and instagram. Nigerians buzz in all of these platforms.
We cannot progress without taking advantage of them. Hence the young man’s visit.
