The positioning has started: every telecom operator is bragging about the wonders of 5G. From Barcelona to Bauchi, the message is the same: 5G is going to change the world, offering faster connectivity. Sure, the technology would do just that. But in my beautiful Nigeria, is that really the issue? In my opinion, the most important challenge before telcos in Nigeria and most parts of Africa is not 5G but affordability of the services.

Yes, if going 5G increases the cost of services, telcos would lose more customers. In other words, even if they improve speed and other auxiliary features, without reducing cost, through 5G, they would not see a lot of traction in their businesses. I have a case ready: when 9Mobile (yes, Etisalat Nigeria) was at its peak, it had the best network quality. But that did not bring many users because it had the most expensive service in the nation.

So, 9Mobile was the “4.5G network” [ahead of the lower level networks in the country] but that did not help it because few could afford the services. If we follow the same analogy, investing in 5G while necessary should not be expected to reverse market issues anchored on the limited purchasing power of the consumers.

The world has about 3.5 billion people which are yet to get online. Africa hosts about 20% of those global citizens. To get online in Africa, the path is largely via smartphone. But instead of the penetration rate of smartphone increasing, it is dropping: in 2017, market share of feature phones [the cheap Nokia old phones] moved from 55.4% to 61% while smartphone dropped from 44.6% to 39% when compared to 2016 numbers. In other words, people dropped their smartphones and went back to feature phones. With feature phones, you do not need 5G networks, you just need a network (2G would do) to do sms and make calls. Our situation is different from what they have in places like U.S. where smartphone business is going through a maturity phase.

The retail apocalypse hit Best Buy’s line of small mobile phone stores. The retailer said it would close all 250 of its tiny outlets. “The mobile phone business has matured, margins have compressed and the cost of operations in our mobile standalone stores is higher than in our big box stores,” CEO Hubert Joly wrote to employees. (Fortune newsletter)

My point is that our major problem is affordability since that is what would drive our march to immersive connectivity. 5G would be a waste and a distraction to most Africans if the hype does not bring down cost. Most cannot even afford 4G; the 5G would be pointless. The key thing is to find ways to make services affordable. And that includes reducing taxes, providing electricity, and other enabling infrastructure. Possibly with those, services will become more affordable.

Forget AI and big data [for now], those would happen. But many things would need to be in place before we delve deep into them in Africa, at scale. Yes, we need to start keeping records before we can make real progress on AI. Our participation would remain rudimentary and peripheral. It is hopeless to think you can deploy AI in any serious sector in Nigeria when even the government does not know all the people it pays monthly salaries. Simply, there is no data to power your AI because no one keeps data.  The same problem is repeated across sectors and markets. Where the gold-opportunities would emerge in the next 3-5 years would be blockchain/cryptocurrency.

Sure, you can connect AI and big data to blockchain/cryptocurrency [they are cousins and the same]. The difference, though, is that blockchain/cryptocurrency would move at the speed of a cheetah while AI/big data would be at the speed of a tortoise, in Africa. I expect banks in three years to start hiring like crazy people with skills in blockchain/cryptocurrency. Kenya will prove blockchain by 2020 and once that is done, other countries will pick the trend [remember mobile money!]

You cannot be wrong for having the capabilities. Take it from me: blockchain/cryptocurrency would be the hottest field in Nigeria in five years. Our technology adoption typically lags global average in Nigeria. By five years, many things would be in sync.

The Capabilities You Need:

• Knowledge of cryptocurrency/blockchain and up-to-date market
• Mining bitcoins [that skill can be extended to other coins]
• Coding on languages: Go, C, C++ , JAVA, Python.
• Understanding of algorithms, data structures, cryptography and data security, and decentralized technologies.
• Understanding of ledgers, consensus methods, threat analytics, anomaly detection, and performance management.
• Understanding of distributed storage & dB like RDBMS, NoSQL, and Hadoop
• Blockchain frameworks and applications

Call yourself Blockchain/Cryptocurrency Developer, it would be all glory.

Comment from LinkedIn Feed

[OO] Odigie your point is well understood but we’re looking at the bigger picture here. Definitely Telcos has data, Banking sector as data. It would be difficult for a startup to have a benchmark algorithms for implememting AI related solutions due to unavailability of data. The point from Ndubuisi Ekekwe post where I made my comments is that AI solutions can be much feasible in large technology companies because vast majority of businesses don’t keep data. So he’s much of predicting that the focus in 3 years in human resources would be skewed to Blockchain technologies. Definitely AI solutions would be available but we’re not yet at that position for AI. Moreso, large companies with data can’t fully utilize the power of AI if its not to a minimum, publicly available. Go through lots of Hackathon related to AI or competition, companies sponsors such to better their algorithms and understand the data they have. Example is Yelp, spotify, Amazon, Netflix. So in Nigeria, we’ve got no data to power AI for social good.

You have your clients across the continent. The game of social media marketing has changed. With many companies that depend heavily on Facebook traffic closing, now is the time to reach out to your clients and offer new strategies. I have a template you can customize. We have used a similar one here.

Dear Partner,

You are aware that Facebook has changed its algorithm, prioritizing posts from family and friends over those from companies. The social media giant is favoring contents that drive interaction over those for static or passive consumption. The implication is that most posts you share on your official business page on Facebook would be seen by lesser people. If the posts do not appear on users’ feeds, people would not see them, and you would get minimal traction for your business.

As your strategist, we want you to take action immediately and redesign how you can continue to reach your current and potential customers on social media. To our knowledge, Twitter cannot implement a similar strategy since there is no way to segregate between business and personal accounts at the moment. So, Twitter is a good tool to drive your business promotion. Just like Facebook, Snapchat has also implemented a similar algorithm which makes business-related contents do poorly in the ecosystem. LinkedIn, largely human-anchored and generally business-oriented, has never been a great platform to drive engagements from business official pages.

In other words, the chance that you can optimize earned social media without using your own personal accounts looks increasingly diminished.  Of course, if you have the budget, you can always buy adverts on these platforms. However, the problem is that most times, when the adverts stop, everything stops. Organic traffic remains the best strategy to build and introduce your brand in your networks. As your strategist, we do recommend that the leader of this organization commits to use his/her personal social media accounts to help the business.

As that is done, we also recommend the following: Invest in a Newsletter. With social media entities creating confusion, it makes sense to invest in newsletter if you want to reach customers. MailChimp is a good one. We do not recommend Podcasts and Alexa at this time; Newsletter remains an alternative way to fix this challenge from Facebook.

Companies which have traditionally depended on Facebook traffic are already collapsing. We need to plan to avoid the fate of LittleThings which was decimated by a change in algorithm.

 Then Facebook made another big change to its algorithm, one that was supposed to prioritize content from friends and family over news publishers. Speiser said this cut LittleThings’ influencer and organic traffic (which was its most valuable traffic) by 75 percent.

“No previous algorithm update ever came close to this level of decimation,” he wrote. “The position it put us in was beyond dire. The businesses looking to acquire LittleThings got spooked and promptly exited the sale process, leaving us in jeopardy of our bank debt convenants and ultimately bringing an expedited end to our incredible story.”

We would be expecting to know when we can visit or Skype to explain these changes extensively. It is always an honor to be serving this firm; we appreciate the opportunity. Our digital team has produced tools to help and we would be waiting to help the firm.

Your Strategist,

Nd