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By Maduka Nweke
Experts in the electrical energy space in Nigeria have agreed that development of technology has also helped in property development. They consented to the notion that solar has become a suitable alternative to electricity supply from government.
Mr. Kunle Osu, a property agent believes that aside from being provided by private sector, the prices of solar panels can range anywhere between N50,000 to N150,000 in Nigeria, depending on the size, power capacity and type of solar panel you are buying.
Okafor Chiazoka, who sells solar panels said, there are miles of difference between energy supplied by electricity and the one supplied through solar. “These are effects of technology even though people have resisted changing to the new technology. Although there is little resistance to this change, there are many lessons to be learned. Even self-described tech enthusiasts who have embraced technology for a couple of decades agree that technology is sometimes a double-edged sword. According to one thoughtful broker associate I spoke with, reliance on technology can lead to problems in a “people-oriented” business, and “losing touch with customers” is a real fear,” he said.
For David Obodoeze, an interior decorator, countless businesses and models have been disrupted by technology and the speed of these disruptions is growing exponentially. “The current pandemic has exacerbated this phenomenon as each disruption usually happens slowly over time as people get more comfortable with the tech. New realities are forcing the workforce to utilize and quickly iterate and adapt to new technology in order to have any semblance of productivity. Technology is quickly emerging and shaping the future of real estate, and our coping with the pandemic is fueling the mass adoption of many new technologies.
“Awareness and forward-thinking will be vital in strategy and the approach to certain aspects of the ever-evolving real estate environment. This is very clear in the disruption of the taxi industry. The “Uber effect” shows how quickly an industry can be changed by technology that is quickly adopted. The taxi industry was upended by ride-sharing platforms as they could not compete due to the cost of taxi medallions. It was easy at first for taxi executives to ignore these ride-sharing apps as they strongly held the market share of this industry. But once ride-sharing took hold and was widely adopted, holding a taxi medallion had lost an immense amount of value,”he said.
Also speaking on the way technology helps in property development, Chief Imeh Udoma, a retired banker, said that solar energy has in many ways helped in creating options to power generation in Nigeria.
According to him, one often-mentioned criticism of solar is that the energy and resources that go into producing solar panels make it less environmentally friendly than people think.
“Although this was once true, manufacturing processes have been improved so that this is no longer the case. Some critics have also pointed to the fact that some photovoltaic technology (like thin films) requires rare earth metals to operate, but most mainstream PV modules do not use rare earth metals at all — and some PV designs even incorporate organic material for even greater sustainability,” he noted. He further stated that, one of the greatest (and often unmentioned) advantages of solar energy is that solar panels are relatively easy to maintain. “It is important to place them in an area with high solar exposure, but after that, little more than an annual professional cleaning is needed to keep them running at peak performance,”he explained.
