By Chinenye Anuforo [email protected]
The Chief Executive Officer of Liquid Intelligent Technologies Nigeria, Mr. Wole Abu, on the sideline of the annual Telecoms Executives and Regulators Forum (TERF) 2023 organised by the Association of Telecoms Companies of Nigeria (ATCON) in Lagos speaks on the need for ubiquitous broadband penetration and other industry issues. Excepts…
Do you think Nigeria has positioned herself to be part of the global telecoms growth in terms of internet connectivity and broadband penetration?
Yes – this was majorly spurred by the Nigeria Communication Commission (NCC) Act. Before that, not much was happening but with the Act, we saw the entrance of global players and from 2000 – 2001 it’s never been the same. The policy opened the market and deregulated the telecom industry, and the next step was to attract investors, which has been happening. There is no global player in the communication industry today, that is not represented in Nigeria. From Asia to America to Europe, to even African players are all here in Nigeria. So, that tells you that they recognized that there is a market and endless opportunities in Nigeria.
We discussed SMEs today at the forum. So, what is Liquid Intelligent doing for SMEs in Nigeria?
First and foremost, all SMEs require access to markets. Today, the online market is the digital economy and it’s a huge market. So, if you are not online, it means that you are excluded from huge market. I will give you an example, somebody who is selling from home and just taking pictures of products, putting them on a platform like Instagram, is reaching every possible subset of Nigerians or anybody in the world who is using Instagram from her phone. If another person is running a shop on a street with the same products without access to the internet, the person is only addressing the few people who walk into that shop. This makes it clear that online access is crucial to driving business in both sectors, and Liquid offers many services and products that can benefit SMEs and e-commerce. We are a one-stop-shop that can service all your needs, starting with broadband packages and expanded network coverage delivered through our extensive fibre network.
How can Liquid Intelligent Technologies change the narrative in terms of internet connection?
The connectivity infrastructure in Nigeria today is steadily growing. From a regional perspective, you are looking at subsea cable like the Equiano sea cable, which is one of the many big consortiums that Liquid is a part of, and that puts us in the middle of regional development. Liquid also has the largest independent fibre deployment on the continent – over 110,000km of fibre network stretching right across Africa. Liquid has also brought connectivity to remote areas of Africa through satellite technology. By deploying advanced satellite networks, we are not only working to bridge the digital divide, but we are also empowering people through reliable internet access, telecommunications, and data services in previously unreachable regions.
Liquid’s vision is a digitally connected Africa that leaves no African behind. We know that there are still many people who have no access to the internet, and so we have to deal with the issue of access first and we can do it through more collaborations. We have done the biggest and hardest part of it, which is bringing in the capacity into the country, building a data centre, a tier-3 data center in the country by setting up a cloud distribution system that gives people access to cutting edge tools on our platform. We intend to do a little bit more in terms of spreading our services up country to the more hard to reach places by collaborating with some other companies who have that type of reach.
Will you say it is all rosy to set up your business in Nigeria and be profitable?
Nigeria is a great country with a unique economy that needs to be understood. We have done our due diligence to understand its economy and know how to navigate by managing risks very well. Liquid knew the terrain when we set up our business in Nigeria. We are still investing and know we will make a profit because it is a long-term game. If you look at Nigeria today, there are a couple of big telecom companies struggling with profitability and sustainability. But there are also companies – and Liquid is one of them – that are growing in leaps and bounds in the same area.
It all comes down to how you manage all the risks around the business. Like any other business, if you manage it well, you will make a profit. If you do not manage it well, then you will go out of business. Liquid has a very robust management structure, good governance, and the right ingredients to make it successful and profitable in Nigeria. We are doing well.
What should we expect from the company in the next few years?
We are a digital transformation powerhouse. We have a range of services including solutions that make businesses easy. Once you have a device, you need applications on it and once you have an application, you need a stable internet. We have provided a stable Internet, provided the solutions. What we will do is that, we keep on rolling out more solutions, more packages that serve different people. What we guarantee clearly is to do our job, we will get you to the internet. We will let you use it safely. That’s why we do connectivity. We do cloud and we do Cybersecurity. Those are the three things we do that make us different from everybody else. So, if you are on our network, you are secure because we can provide that for you. It’s not enough to provide just access to the internet. You need to make it safe for people to use, that’s what we’re doing and will continue to do.