Time for Everything – Invest in Your Career

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June 27, 2018

career management, career investment Nigeria

As the wise man Solomon wrote many years ago, there is time for everything. You must know when to invest in your career and when to monetize your skills. Getting an extra degree is not a distraction. Getting a certification is not a distraction. Learning something new should never be a distraction. Always make sure you have a strategy with resilience to decouple your future from the decision of any man/woman.

Fresh graduates, planning for the deep future may make you look stupid before peers who may not see beyond tomorrow. That first job is not for buying cars and expensive jewelry. It is to re-invest and INSURE your career with skills.

Accumulation of capabilities is a continuum and catalytic in modern career planning. The nature of labour is changing (I discussed that extensively in the European Commission two weeks ago); you must adjust. If you have not noticed it, know that more than 80% of non-public workers in Nigeria see dwindling wages after 15 years. The banking sector, oil & gas and increasingly telecoms are brutal on this: they cut workers and those workers never recover to earn as much as their old wages.

Ask yourself: what would happen if after 15 years, this bank does not want me? If you pay attention, if 600 people join our banking sector in a set, via entry level, less than 30 would remain from that cohort after 15 years. The other 570 people are out in a pyramid-like topology with 40% gone within 5 years, another 30% within 10 years, etc.

Fresh graduates, there is time for everything – PLAN that Career. And accumulate capabilities right now to insure those careers. Nigeria’s economy is relatively small with minimal space for labour mobility. You need to be strategic to manage the situation, and it begins today. Have options – there is always something if you plan it well.

I have come to see that what matters, in career advancement, is pursuit of excellence in what you do. Sure, there are areas that make finding opportunities easier, in our modern global economy. But the fact remains that anybody can be anything. Your life tenacity matters more than what degree you have in the bag. It is dangerous to have self-pity because of your degree or the school you attended. Looking into the future and finding energy to advance your life is what will drive you into abundance in your career.

There is abundance in Africa, across our cities with their hidden acres of diamonds. You will not notice if you are always looking up. Sometimes, careers advance when you look a little bit downward. Good luck.

Never make your career management a game of chess especially in Nigeria!

Why Nigerian Government Cannot Fully Privatize Power, Yet

By

Ndubuisi Ekekwe

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June 26, 2018

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privatize power Nigeria — Mr. B. Fashola, Nigeria's minister supervising electricity sector

In a conversation on fixing Nigeria’s electricity, many have proposed that government should do what it did on telecoms: fully privatize power. The thinking is that full privatization will fix the industry. That is what we read on newspapers.

Interestingly, I do not really think so. I believe in market forces but any government that allows full market forces to work on the electricity sector in Africa will see riots on the streets.

As I noted this morning on a piece on Tekedia, if you allow full market forces, the discos can send their full supplies to say 30 companies in Nigeria. Those companies would gladly pay upfront! Dangote Group can absorb 20% of our present national capacity and shut down its power assets. Magically, discos will become profitable because marginal cost of serving all those millions who never pay will go. They would focus on 30 customers pending when gencos add capacities.

So, instead of having 10 customers to bring $1 million, the discos have to look for 200,000 customers for the same revenue. And those 200,000 customers may not even want to pay. But those that can pay are not interested in the services offered by discos because they are generating their own power. For me, this is one of the biggest challenges in the industry: discos do not serve the customers they need to boost revenue and drive investments. They are left with the masses who command higher marginal cost making it tougher for them to break-even.

But because government will not allow them, they cannot serve only the best customers who have money to pay with possibility of making them profitable. So, instead of selling 20% of national capacity to Dangote, they would be banned from selling more than say 0.01% even though Dangote can absorb 20% and pay upfront.

In telecoms, that restriction does not apply due to the nature of the product. If you think any government will sign-off full privatization, always remember that discos can decide to sell only to the most profitable clients who technically can absorb the present national capacities. But with partial privatization, they remain regulated to balance the game with their supplies from gencos/transmission companies. There is a reason they are called utilities – you have one disco in your house to supply you electricity unlike telecom services where you can easily have as many sim cards as you want.

Simply, electricity is not an ordinary product. It is only an ordinary product when the nation can generate full 100% capacity to serve all types of demand (residential, commercial, and industrial). But when that is not the case, government cannot allow FULL PRIVATIZATION as discos will shut down lines to families and focus on commercial and industrial customers who have the money to pay, and possibly upfront.

Sure, you may reason they would be regulated to balance the demand. If that is the thinking, that is not full privatization as market forces really demand that you move products to those with capacities to pay and save you money. Where government stops discos from doing just that, the whole argument breaks. When government does that, it is trying to protect homes and families. Discos can make money and be fine if you give them the same level of autonomy the telcos have to sell to who they want to sell. But doing so will result to riots on the streets!

LinkedIn Summary of this Piece

Many have written that govt should do full privatization (F.P) in our electricity sector. A handy comparison is the telecom sector.

In this piece, I argue that govt is right on not allowing F.P. to the extent that it cannot dictate who the discos sell to. Until Nigeria gets to full equilibrium (supply at parity with demand), our electricity product cannot be seen as an ORDINARY product.

Unlike what most newspapers are writing, if govt allows full privatization, discos can send all available power to about 30 companies in Nigeria who will willingly pay upfront! Those firms can absorb our present capacity. Then none for homes and small offices.

That kind of situations does not exist in telecoms: no govt tells MTN, Glo and Airtel how to balance allocation of sim cards. But in power, govt cannot allow Ikeja disco to send 100% of its capacity to the Ogba factories even though they can pay upfront.

Market forces work but if you allow that in our power sector today, there would be riots. Govt is not stupid; it is very complex. Any disco can be profitable by next week if you allow full privatization (100% private capital, 100% decision on customer base). Why deal with 20 million customers when Dangote Group can absorb 20% of total capacity?

How to Make an Integrated Circuit

By

Ndubuisi Ekekwe

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June 26, 2018

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I wrote this piece – Integrated Circuit Design – around 2007 when I was in the Johns Hopkins University during my Engineering doctoral program. It was originally written for the Association for Computing Machinery. They had requested a general overview of microprocessor making phases for entry-level students in the ACM Magazine. They wanted me to think of gaming and entertainment hardware. Here is the piece (extremely non-technical). I also included a photo of an optical waveguide which I fabricated to move photons (over electrons) for faster on-chip communication. If you want to make a career in making microchips, you would be required to master some of the phases as noted.

The development of highly efficient and effective entertainment hardware has been fuelled by the enormous advancement in the semiconductor industry. With continuous efforts of chip designers to develop innovative techniques to make chips smaller, robust and cheaper, gamers would continue to enjoy thrilling entertainment experience. Understanding this crucial aspect of hardware development could be intriguing for all stakeholders in the entertainment technology, especially those that use these chips to control different functions ranging from vision to automatic control. In simple general ways, the processes involved in making digital chips have been presented in this discussion.

Download the piece here (PDF)

The Biggest Challenge before Electricity Companies in Nigeria

By

Ndubuisi Ekekwe

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June 26, 2018

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I got a call from a Nigerian politician who wanted some insights to shape his political messaging. I am apolitical; I work for all parties but for no one. This one was on power. I explained to the client that fixing Nigeria’s power would be hard. I used basic accounting and marginal cost to explain that no business thrives when the best potential customers are not interested in the services offered by the sector.

The very fact that most of the major electricity commercial customers are mini-power generators would remain a big challenge for most discos (distribution companies) in Nigeria. Yes, if companies like BUA and Dangote Group are generating their electricity needs, discos are largely disintermediated [we do not use that a lot in the analog world but if GE can supply power plants to Dangote Group, Dangote Group would not need power from discos].

So, instead of having 10 customers to bring $1 million, the discos have to look for 200,000 customers for the same revenue. And those 200,000 customers may not even want to pay. But those that can pay are not interested in the services offered by discos because they are generating their own power. For me, this is one of the biggest challenges in the industry: discos do not serve the customers they need to boost revenue and drive investments. They are left with the masses who command higher marginal cost making it tougher for them to break-even.

For this to change, the discos must first have to thrive, showing consistency and reliability before some of these big manufacturers would disinvest their power assets, and move their plants to be powered by national grid. If government does not look at the paralysis posed by the non-participation of the 5% top manufacturers to the revenue base of discos, nothing much will change. Becoming profitable without these top 5% customers would be hard.

The Paralysis

If you look at the numbers, it is extremely troubling: every major business in Nigeria generates its own power. From Dangote Group to makers of Indomie Noodles, these companies are mini-power companies. In short, Dangote Group produces about a fourth of Nigeria’s total distributed power. From Nigerian Breweries to Unilever, you would be shocked that some of our leading manufacturers are not even connected to the national grid.

Power generation: Dangote Group generates at least 1,300MW of power mainly for its business operations (Nigeria’s total distribution capacity is around 4,000MW). He did note though that he sells power to the government of Senegal.

So, as government provides N37bn grant for prepaid meter supply to discos, the discos should thank government. Government has to do what it has to do to help. But that will not amount to much.

The federal government of Nigeria said it has taken advantage of the new Meter Asset Provider (MAP) regulations to give a grant of N37 billion to a private sector operator to supply meters to interested Distribution Companies (DisCos).

The Minister of Power, Works and Housing, Babatunde Fashola, disclosed this at the 28th monthly meeting of power stakeholders in Kaduna.

The minister, who did not mention the name of the company, said the federal government provided the fund based on the demand for meters, given the increasing power generation, transmission and distribution in the country.

All Together

The SMEs need power to run the economy. But discos would need the help of some of the big manufacturers who typically are the cheapest to serve and usually most profitable to link into the network. But for this to happen, those major players would expect the discos to demonstrate reliability before they commit to national grid. If we do not manage this interface, what would happen is to expect discos to become profitable by serving the masses (typically expensive due to higher marginal cost). Most times, that does not happen. The business of power utilities is hard: only two utilities are profitable in Africa.

Yes, market forces can re-balance this when other companies that can tap into a reliable national grid to offer competitive products which are obviously cheaper due to lower power costs arise. When that happens, the companies which generate their own power may be challenged to abandon that practice and then connect to national grid. They would make those decisions based on market forces and nothing more.

United Nations Unveils YAS Entrepreneurship Platform for Young Africans

By

Tekedia Editors

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June 26, 2018

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If you can, register for YAS (Youth for Africa and SDGs); it is from the United Nations. Accenture is managing it which makes it even more awesome. From a copyright-free email sent to Tekedia, this is the announcement.

The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) today launched a Pan-African Entrepreneurship Portal-Platform, facilitated by Accenture. The YAS! (Youth for Africa and SDGs) Portal-Platform is designed for young African entrepreneurs with the intent of cultivating an ecosystem that will promote mentorship, funding, information-sharing and networking.

According to UNDP Special Advisor for Private Sector, Tomas Sales, “YAS! is a much needed Pan African digital mechanism for youth entrepreneurs to access opportunities and contribute to the positive transformation of the continent through the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The SDGs are directedto ending poverty, protecting the planet and ensuring that people everywhere enjoy peace and prosperity.” The Portal-Platform will be activated in East, West and Southern Africa.

The YAS! Portal-Platform was created to support the development and growth of youth entrepreneurship on the continent by providing four pillars of support categorized as Learning, Ecosystem Mapping, Challenges and Opportunities. Specifically, the objectives of YAS! are to:

Help entrepreneurs begin their journey by providing answers on the key concepts relevant to enterprise development. The Portal-Platform will provide support services to young African entrepreneurs such as business plan development.
Develop an ecosystem map for corporates and entrepreneurs, which will locate different entrepreneurial service providers across the continent.
Afford young African entrepreneurs the opportunity to acquire more knowledge about funding and specific information on how to implement innovations. Awarding funds to African youth is part of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to end poverty.
Function as a knowledge hub for virtual online master classes.
Act as a match-making support system for potential capital providers and suitable grant candidates through mentorship events, networking and pitch events at country level.

“YAS! will better serve the private sector with innovation, supplier diversification and talent on the African continent and in parallel accelerate the growth of the entrepreneurship eco-system,” notes Sandiso Sibisi, Accenture Africa’s Open Innovation Lead.

Attracting new entrepreneurs/start-ups, academics, venture capitalist, government and large multinational corporations is critical in establishing a successful platform. The YAS! Portal – Platform will be implemented on two levels, first for entrepreneurs and start-ups that want to create a profile on the platform and second, for private sector, donors, venture capitalist or incubators seeking start-ups already participating in an incubator or acceleration programme or those requiring financing. Young African entrepreneurs are welcome to register on the YAS! Portal-Platform by visiting www.YASDG.com.

Time for Everything – Invest in Your Career

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