By Chinenye Anuforo
Bade Adesemowo is a Nigerian technology entrepreneur, investor, and business leader. He is the Co-founder and Chief Technology Officer of Social Lender, a financial technology that enables users get access to financial services based on their social reputation. He is also a partner at Bincom, a leading information communications technology (ICT) consulting and solutions company in Nigeria. He has over 20 years of experience in the Tech industry with expertise in Software and Best Use of Technology.
In this interview with Daily Sun, he spoke about the operations of Bincom Dev Center and other tech related issues.
How has it been being a trainer in the tech sector?
It’s been very good. We’ve been training for many years now as an organization. We had a challenge when we tried to hire people in Nigeria starting with developers. We had a challenge with those developers not being able to add value to the organization on day one. And so, what the company decided to do back then, the mother company of Bincom Dev Center, was to start training people almost like a training school. Before we hire these people, they have to go through our training program and we’ve done hundreds of thousands of people along those times over the last 10 years or so through what we call Bincom Academy. And so, when Bincom Dev Center became its own business, we were able to take all of those learnings into a talent development package. We’ve done many 1,000s of individuals at the moment in the Nigerian and global tech ecosystem. There is no top tech company in Nigeria that you will probably visit, that you wouldn’t have an alumni of Bincom Dev Center, being part of that organization, probably doing very well and helping them achieve their objectives.
Can you tell us about Bincom Dev Center?
Bincom Dev Center is a talent development platform. What we do within the platform is to help people achieve their best possible potential in the field of technology. So, we are not just a training center, there are quite a number of those. What we do differently is to combine three key pillars, learn skills, gain experience, and then gain exposure in the field of technology. So, that’s what we do differently, where we help people to do those three things. For “Learn Skills”, to be able to learn the right skills sacross knowledge tracks, some technical knowledge tracks like software development, data science, business knowledge tracks like product management, digital marketing, and so on. So, we do that, but we don’t just stop at them learning the skills. We also help them to learn by gaining real life experience with real life customers. We have a combination of work being done. And then we also help them with exposure because we know that those three combinations done in the right way helps people to be globally attractive. So, that is what the Bincom Dev Center does. Recently, we introduced the eMigr8 tech visa platform that focuses on tech enabled visa opportunities from different parts of the world where many parts of the world are looking for tech professionals who are globally attractive and they want them to come to their jurisdiction for them to work, livr, and earn income, bringing their innovation to that jurisdiction. So, we are talking about the UK, the US, Canada, France, and several other EU countries in the world. We are helping people by coaching them to get access to these visa opportunities, because they qualify once they are e globally attractive. That’s what we do at Bincom Dev Center.
What impact have you been able to make with Bicom Dev Center?
To the ecosystem the impact is we have been able to produce highly attractive tech talents who have been able to start adding their own value to the organizations they work with, which by extension is adding value to the economy. And so because we’ve been able to help these people become highly trained, bringing them in from the newbielevel, in the field of technology to the point when they become beginner level in terms of their skills to the point when they become intermediate level, in terms of their experience, we’ve been able to bring these people in and train them. So, what then happens is that when they go to their next role, which they’ve been able to land faster, they shine because they were part of Bincom Dev Center and they went through our program, that organization is also seeking a lot of value. And we see a lot of our alumni winning awards and performance awards and all of that in the organization in which they now belong.
What are your expectations from Bincom in the next 3 years?
One of the things Bincom has done recently is that we’ve actually been on this campaign of going global. Bincom Dev Center started in Nigeria, but then we’ve been gradually taking the same learning, the same concept, the same platform globally. We’ve been taking it internationally with a second headquarters in the UK, we’re using that to expand to the entire world. And so now increasingly, we have a lot more alumni coming through the program from different parts of the world, the UK, Kenya, South Africa and so on. And so, with that trajectory, we expect that you will start seeing our name on the global stage in terms of tech talent development, and also in terms of tech talent visa opportunities.
Can you explain more about the tech talent visa opportunities you mentioned earlier?
Many forward-thinking countries of the world have realize that talents is the new oil. In the 70s, many countries of the world were competing on how they could get the right natural mineral particularly crude oil. But now, many of those countries, what they are doing is that, they are trying to ensure that they attract the right talent to come through their economy. This is a global phenomenon. This is not just an African thing or Asia, and so on. It is global. Every forward thinking country of the world has created visa opportunities to allow the best of the bests, the globally attractive people of the world to move to their economy. They’re asking them to come! Bring your family, bring your work, bring your innovation, bring your ideas and come reside in our economy. Now, I am talking specifically about countries like the UK who has provided a visa called the UK global talent visa. The US has provided the visa called the US O1 visa, which is a visa for individual with high potential. In Canada we’ve got Canada Startup visa and so on. All of these these opportunities have one common denominator, which is that if you are globally attractive as a tech talent, then you would qualify for that visa and you can move to that country. Now, this is what we are helping people to discover through the eMigr8 tech visa platform. We hand-hold them and coach them so that they will qualify for those opportunities.
Based on what you said, is it not encouraging our best talents to leave the country?
That’s an interesting question and it’s a good question. Nigeria needs to export talents. We don’t have an option with that our population is a lot and one of the things that we need to do is to be exporting talent. Nigeria will not be the first country doing that, if we check all over the world in the ICT sector today, you will find Indians are like 40% if not more, in the IT sector globally. Nigeria has a place to play in that phenomenon and in that scenario, but we need to compete internationally in terms of being globally attractive. These people have to have the right skills. They have to have the right experience and they have to have the right exposure because most organizations are not looking for people that they will train. They’re looking for people that can add value. But, how does that help Nigeria as a country,? It helps the country because these individuals becomes the best possible version of themselves. They can come back in the future and mentor more people who would also become the best possible versions of themselves. Also, what happens is that you are creating a pathway for many more people to become globally attractive as well.
The world is a global village. One of the things that we need to do is to make sure that when we are dealing with these individuals, and for each one of these people, we are ensuring that they can be the best version of themselves. They are not competing with their colleagues in Yaba. They are competing with their colleagues from Silicon Valley, from London, from Singapore and so on. These individual must ensure that they achieved the best that they can, because that’s the only way.
What led you to launch the eMigr8 service and what has the response been?
So, what led us to start this was because we realized that many people did not see the opportunities that we were seeing. We were talking to people that worked with us within our own organization, and people that we trained. We are saying to them, did you know that this same talent that you do have, if you iron it out a bit more, you would compete on a global scale? And what many people one of the things they say is, oh, they’re looking for exceptional talent, It cannot be me. They immediately write themselves off. Sometimes because of the way they’ve been brought up. Sometimes because of the way the economy has dealt with them and so on. They immediately write themselves out. But the truth is that with just a month of coaching, maybe three months, maybe six months, they are able to qualify because they were already in the right trajectory. That’s why we started the platform, because there was information out there that people were simply not getting. And in some cases, people were writing themselves off before they could even give themselves an opportunity to try.
Abuse of personal data is on the rise in Nigeria, as a trainer, how will you advise data generation and processing officers on the need to protect data in their custody?
The first thing that needs to happen is that we need to ensure that we train these individuals, because first problem is the knowledge gap, the global policies like the general data protection regulation (GDPR) and in Nigeria, we’ve got the Nigeria Data Protection Regulation (NPDR) which are data protection policies. Ask the average person that handles data. They don’t know what our policy says. They are not even aware that that policy exists. And that’s where we need to start. We need to start with that training to just ensure that these people understand what’s the value of the data is, what their responsibility is as a data controller, or a data processor depending on where they are playing. But then, ensure that they are aware of what the challenges would be and the sanctions if they misuse the data. That education is first of all lacking. With that education, we then bring appreciation of the fact that if I’m holding personal data of anyone, including as simple as email address, email addresses is personal identifiable data is few people don’t know that. If am handling that data, I must handle it carefully, because my organization can get sanctioned 4% of their revenue, or in some cases $4 million. Many people don’t know that. Start with education, ensure that anyone in data clearly understands their requirements and their responsibility. And then, we can take it from that.
Most Nigerians are still ignorant about the sensitivity of their data. How can this be addressed?
I believe that the education is still the piece that would bring everything together. The more people are aware of the value of their data, the more people are aware of how their data can be used for good or for evil. The more people are aware of what their data can be used for, or not used for, the more people would decide and intelligently so whether or not I want my data to be used. Aa very simple example that many of us do today is that when you go to a website, a lot of times the website will give you a terms and condition to say do you accept or do you reject that we want to use cookies and tracking and so on? Many people don’t look at it twice. Many people don’t read what it says they just say yes. They just say yes. But the truth is that yes, that you’re saying, you’re actually giving away a lot of information that you don’t absolutely have to. By regulation all over the world, they’ve said that you don’t absolutely have to give out all those information anymore. So, the data provider needs to give them options and people just need to be aware to know the risks they are facing by not paying attention.
What are your thoughts on the future of the Nigerian tech sector?
Oh, it’s really big. Nigerian tech sector has been growing faster than the rest of its peers in Africa and the sky is still the limit because we still haven’t actually gone over the surface of things. We are still focused on Lagos market, where the Nigeria is really big. We still are focusing on technology that is for the banked people of Nigeria for example, I work in the field of financial technology too. So, I am talking about that. Whereas right now in Nigeria, we have over 100 million adults, but then the BVN that CBN has at the moment is less than 60 million. So, we’ve got about 40% of Nigerians who currently do not have BVN not to talk about them being financially included. Now, that’s a huge number that we are not even dealing with at the moment. And this is just a survey. Also in terms of globally, there’s a lot that is available in terms of opportunities. We’ve seen a lot of funding come into the Nigerian technology sector, and we believe that it’s going to continue growing astronomically.
What is your opinion of so many database in Nigeria without harmonisation?
It is a challenge that the entire economy is clear on.What has happened over the years is that we’ve been collecting different data. With driving licence, the national identity which will have been the central database, then the banks had to come together because the problems do exist with the BVN. And then we have several of that disjointed databases as well at the moment in Nigeria. The good news, however, is the fact that we have now been harmonising gradually, we’ve been harmonising all of these databases. You should notice at the moment in Nigeria for you to be able to get a passport, you need to have an NIN, national identity number. The national identity number should be the centralized data. We’ve done a couple of projects in my company in terms of harmonisation of the SIM registration with the national identity registration, all of these collecting biometrics of users, and then all of them seemingly disjointed, but there’s still a lot of work to do, because unfortunately, different standards exist and some of these data was collected with a different standard. And so, they do not match in some cases. But, we have identified it as a country as a challenge. The current minister is also doing a lot of work along those lines. That is the Minister of digital economy, because we need to harmonize that data, we need to know each individual Nigerian, and understand that individual Nigerian. So that, they can be the best that they can be in terms of being able to be offered services, and for them to offer services to the world as well.
Is Nigeria ready for AI?
We don’t have a choice is the answer. We do not have a choice. We had better be ready or we lose out big time. What has happened is that AI has become a leveler in terms of the playing ground again. It has become a leveler in the sense that even if your country missed out in terms of the internet revolution of the 90s for the changes in terms of industrial revolution of the 80s and so on, with AI at the moment, your country would have a new level playing ground to compete. What we should be doing as an economy is to figure out how we can be on the forefront of these new emerging technologies. Not for us to say yes, because there’s poverty in the land, because people have no eaten. We will not focus on this. Even if it is just 1% of our resource that we focus on it, we are better off because believe it or not, it will change the world. And so it’s best for us as a country to have a national strategy for us to be at the forefront of this new technology, which has become a leveler. Every country is competing for being in the forefront. Why don’t we also join?