Oracle has certified her as an Oracle Specialist. She is also recognized as an Oracle Global HR Cloud Implementation Specialist. She is a tech oracle, and she has led and managed many big cloud projects. With multiple degrees covering IT, electronics and business management, she connects the dots between tech and business. On Monday, Gbolaro Oshun will lead Tekedia mini-MBA’s Business Growth and Disruptive Innovation – Cloud Computing session. Contents go live in the Board at 12 noon Lagos time.

I know you will not argue with this statement. “The value of everything is originally equal to zero.” The best way to understand this concept is to explain it with the first law of the 3 laws of value in 3S Rules.

The first law of value states that the value of anything is originally at a raw state to be harnessed. What does this mean? It means that a child that will be a doctor in the future has zero medical knowledge when he was an infant. It means that when a chair and table were trees, their value was zero. In fact, the monetary value (GDP) of countries grew from zero upwards.

This is to point out that value is a function and a creation of man. The wealth of nations measured as GDP were built by men from Zero level. The men that build the wealth of nations are called entrepreneurs. The purpose of this article is to show you how Jeff Bezos is building the wealth of the USA through Amazon and how you can apply it to your nations. 

Building the Wealth of Nations – The Example of Jeff Bezos of Amazon

The man Jeff Bezos was not known not until he founded Amazon. That means there was nothing like Amazon until Jeff Bezos created it. When you imagine the enormous impact of this company to the United States and the entire world you will be amazed. This is how men build the wealth of nations.

What did Jeff Bezos do differently? How did he build a company that is now worth $1tn in market capitalization and become the richest man. Here are the three Things he did differently.

• The Entrepreneurial Opportunity:

Jeff Bezos was a very intelligent young man who graduated from Princeton University where he studied computer science. He left there to work for DE Shaw where he rose to become a senior and a valuable staff.

One of those days he discovered a number on the internet that changed his career trajectory forever. He found that the internet was growing by 2300% monthly. This was an important discovery for him, which he analysed to mean that in the nearest future people will start shopping online. This was an insight and an entrepreneurial opportunity.

But there was one challenge. What decision should he make?

• The Entrepreneurial Decision

He has two careers before him that he needs to make a decision on. Should he continue as an employee in DE Shaw where he was doing well or should he resign and focus on the entrepreneurial opportunity at that time present?  What would be your decision if you were to be in Jeff Bezos’ shoes?

The men who build the wealth of the nation are risk takers. They always go against the tide to experiment business opportunities.Jeff decided to resign from his paying job at DE Shaw where he was doing well. But there were many challenges he would face with such a decision. There will be no paycheck anymore and other associated problems.

• The Entrepreneurial Result:

Jeff decided to explore his internet-discovered idea. That decision gave birth to the Amazon company which was a pioneer of the e-commerce industry. In May 1994,  Amazon was launched, and three years after that it was listed on the NASDAQ due to the success of the business idea.

This decision made him the richest man in the world and his company is currently one of the leading companies on valuation.

This is how this entrepreneur has built the wealth of his great nation, the United States of America. For you to be among the entrepreneurs that will build the wealth of your nation, you must be willing to make an unfavourable decision that Jeff made.

How Amazon Improved America

• It creates employment opportunities

The establishment or the founding of Amazon has created thousands of  direct and indirect jobs. One of the macroeconomic goals of every nation is to achieve a low rate of unemployment. This is exactly the impact of Amazon. According to Statista Amazon has 789,000 employees in 2019. 

• It increases the governmental revenue

The operation of this company in the United States has automatically increased the government revenue of the nation. Payment of income tax, corporate tax, etc to the federal and state government will help the government to meet its obligations to the citizens.

Here is the report fromAmazon Blog about Amazon’s 2019 Tax payment;

1. Over $1 billion in federal income tax expense.
2. More than $2.4 billion in other federal taxes, including payroll taxes and customs duties.
3. More than $1.6 billion in state and local taxes, including payroll taxes, property taxes, state income taxes, and gross receipts taxes.

• It raises the standard of living

Employment creation simply means more people working and earning. It means as they earn, their standard of living will rise due to the increase of their disposable income. Will you work for amazon if employed?  I guess your answer will be yes because of better conditions of work when you work with the company.

Jeff Bezos is estimated to be worth about $121.1 billion. This makes him the fifth richest country in Africa if he were to be a nation in the continent.

We need African entrepreneurs to do what Jeff Bezos did in building the wealth of his nation. Will you take up this challenge? 

OPEC, an organization of some oil producing nations, plans to cut oil output to boost price; crude oil price has fallen by around 20% in 2020. But where they fail to get the prices under control, Nigeria’s national budget would be under stress since the benchmark oil price used in the budget was $57 per barrel. (Current oil price, at $45, is well below $57 per barrel.) This is a double whammy: simultaneous drop in oil price and volume.

In Nigeria’s history, whenever that happens at scale over say 6 months, the naira pays the price. Why? The foreign reserves which the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) uses to defend naira’s value, in the global currency market, become depleted, since the lower price and volume mean lesser money is being made by the nation.

Nigeria opened 2020 with $43.1 billion in its foreign reserve. Today, that number has dropped to $38.6 billion. Typically, CBN fights until it hits $30 billion, by them it releases the magic armour – devaluation. Devaluation is a crunch time call: we cannot continue defending the naira to the point where our “bank balance” goes to zero. Yes, a time will come when we will have to leave naira to lose value, necessary to keep balance in that bank account.

Of course while U.S. is cutting rates, my fear is that Nigeria could look at currency devaluation if suddenly global crude oil demand stalls and the nation has local bills to pay; it does have a lot. Oh yes, you can do money doubling: bring in a few dollars and have more Naira to pay your naira-denominated debt obligations. This virus poses severe risks to our economy because it can distort all the business scenarios if exchange rates begin to shift, rapidly.

Nigerians have just 120 days before we read that the central bank is devaluing naira if covid-19 continues . So, if you have a prophet, imam or pastor who can pray for coronavirus to disappear, now is the time to contact them. If not, there would be massive dislocation in coming months. This coronavirus could attack currencies of developing economies in ways that would be ugly.

Update: The CBN has a note, below.