“Amazon is committed to partner with the Indian government to advance the vision of an Aatmanirbhar Bharat. We have pledged to invest US $1 billion to digitize 10 million small and medium businesses, help Indian businesses sell worldwide thereby enabling US $10B in cumulative exports, and create an additional 1MM jobs by 2025.” said Amit Agarwal, Amazon’s global senior vice president of Amazon India
India is having a moment with technology companies congregating in the Asian country. From Google to Facebook, Qualcomm to Amazon, American big technology companies have invested massively in India. But that did not come by an accident.
Yes, the Indian government has executed a world-class playbook, and the world has responded: ‘The Indian government calls its campaign to encourage local investment and growth in India-based enterprises, “Aatmanirbhar Bharat,” which translates to “self-reliant India” and has become a cornerstone of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s economic policy since its official introduction last year’.
There is a lesson here for Nigeria: unless you have a clear vision which the world can key into, the help you need will not come. India has Aatmanirbhar Bharat and it has brought the world of technology to the nation, Nigeria should pick that playbook and develop a vision which can be sold locally and internationally. Now is the time.
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Nigeria cannot pick the playbook because we neither know how to craft nor execute a vision. What we do regularly is to say that we want foreign investment, but we haven’t cared to also know what foreign investors want; so it’s always a one-way traffic: what we want, that’s a selfish disposition.
There’s a maxim that goes thus, ‘give them what they want, and in return you get what you want.” It’s evergreen, it always works. What effort has Nigeria made to figure out what those she’s curting or trying to entice want? And what is she willing to give in order to get what she wants?
If you care about human capital development and employment, are you willing to sacrifice tax and protectionist regime? You must be willing to ‘lose’ initially, in order to gain much more subsequently. What do we need so badly and what trade-off are we willing to make in exchange? It’s not just about what you want, but also what the other party wants.
First is to have clarity on what you want, then you find out what those you want to be your partners want, from there you decide on what you are ready to do, in order to get what you want. So simple? Certainly not when you are poor and greedy at the same time.