INTRODUCTION

1. TRANSFORMING THE NIGERIAN EDUCATION SECTOR: A CASE FOR IT LOCAL CONTENT IN SYSTEMS, PRODUCTS AND SERVICES  BY OLUSEYI ADISAManaging Director/CEO SALES AND DISTRIBUTION SOLUTIONS LIMITEDATeNigeria 2011(November 20-22, 2012)

2. INTRODUCTION • The future of any country is totally dependent on the quality of education made available to the citizenry. • With the strong relationship between effective educational policy and IT, it is difficult to separate the effect of the government education policies from the expected impact of IT on education. • In view of the intense competition in the global market, organizations will depend on cutting edge technologies and skills to remain relevant, the implication of this is the return of more adults to school resulting in student population increase. • Everhart and Chamber believes that this dramatic increase in the student population may force most educational institutions to deliver at least half of all instructions online. (Friedman, Morrison, 1999)

3. INTRODUCTION CONTD • I want to believe that the understanding of the above brought about some activities that could be seen as plans towards preparing Nigeria for the 21st century such as: • The initiative “WE CAN” (We Educate for Character, Aptitude and our NEEDS), the “Nigeria 10-year Strategic plan for Education” which looked at policy, cost and financial assumptions and their implementations. (Gwan-Chol Chang, 2007). • Educational Management Information System (EMIS): A short case Study of Nigeria, published in 2006 by InfoDev, reflects the effects of challenges of government’s commitment to open accountability and understanding the importance of EMIS in decision making process on the socioeconomic growth of Nigeria. • Nigeria had also considered having an Education vision, within the components of vision 2020 that will position Nigeria among the 20 top world economies. • Going through the content of the work done in the 3 initiatives highlighted above, it is obvious we know what to do, how to do it, how much we need to invest do get it done etc, but do we have the will as a people to actually implement towards achieving the set goals and targets?

4. WHAT IS LOCAL CONTENT • From my perspective, this means the development of local skills, technology transfer, use of local manpower and local manufacturing. • According to Abdul WaheedKhan (Assistant Director-General for Communication and Information, UNESCO), “an expression and communication of a community’s locally generated owned and adapted knowledge and experience that is relevant to the community’s situation”. • The word local content in Nigeria became popular as a result of agitation and concerns of the oil producing communities in Nigeria’s oil rich Niger Delta, this resulted in the initiation of Local Content Policy for Nigeria by the administration of former President OlusegunObasanjo but the bill eventually got signed into law on the 22nd April, 2010 by President Goodluck Jonathan as Acting President, with the creation of a Local Content Monitoring Board. With section 1, 12 and 13 of the Act, the local content limited to the oil sector of the economy only. • The objective of the policy is to increase local capacity and participation in the petroleum industry, this is obviously a good initiative but for the fact that most of the materials or products and skills that would be supplied or deployed would not be local in true sense of it. • This leaves a very big question, what are we doing about the foundation for a local content policy?

5. IT AND EDUCATION • Education is an act or experience that has a formative effect on the mind, character or physical ability of an individual. From another perspective, it could be defined as the process by which the society deliberately transmits its accumulated knowledge, skills and values from one generation to another. • In view of the importance of this word ‘education’ United Nations International covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights of 1966 guarantees the right to education under its Article 13 which states: The States Parties to the present Covenant recognize the right of everyone to education. They agree that education shall be directed to the full development of the human personality and the sense of its dignity and shall strengthen the respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms. They further agree that education shall enable all persons to participate effectively in a free society, promote understanding, tolerance and friendship among all nations and all racial, ethnic or religious groups and further the activities of the United Nations for the maintenance of peace. • In order to promote participation in a free society, information technology, the driving force of the free society of the 21st century cannot be neglected in the development of the educational sector in Nigeria • From our daily experiences at our work places, our wards registering or checking for their results online and social media, achieving banking transactions with your phones, laptops etc, it is obvious that IT has added values to our lives. In as much as we know that the above fact will not be enough to show that IT has any effect on education, it is unfortunate that we do not have at this moment locally done researches that have international acceptability.

6. IT AND EDUCATION The reason is not far fetch, with less than 1% of our children at the different levels of education having personal computer systems, most schools without functional computer systems and power, most teachers not computer literate, most government decision makers, VCs, Rectors, Principals, Proprietors not seeing the importance of IT to education in Nigeria, how do we have a platform or data to be able to do a research on this topic? As at today we can classify our universities into the following categories as a result of ownership: • Federal Universities 36 • State Universities 36 • Private Universities 45 • At a closer look at our universities using the website site as the first level of interaction with the university, you will find that most do not have websites, some can only boast of un-updated websites but the good news is that we still have some already working into the future by having interactive websites • If we do not have a good Nigeria reference for a good argument on the effect of IT on education, a look at education in India will be viable reference point for this discussion. India represents a picture of a developing country with a consistent ambition to create a sound foundation for her future, as at today, India is seen as the home for software development. A lot had gone into this great achievement but will make reference to two of many strategies India had initiated that had made their manpower well sorted for across the globe: • India has a multilingual web portal on primary education with rich multimedia content for children and families to make use of for educational purposes. (www.w3.org/international/multilingualweb/madrid/slides/lata.pdf) • India development Gateway is a national initiative that seeks to facilitate rural empowerment through provision of responsive information, products and services in local language. (www.indg.in/India). • We believe the India experience is a result of the will, purposeful leadership and minimal corruption within the leaders or decision makers in the early india.

7. IT AND EDUCATION CONTD ) Further to analyzing the IT effect on education, we need to refer to examples of developing country scenario using England, Wales and North Ireland that has information and communication technology (ICT) in the national curriculum. In authenticating the perceived effects of IT on education, a look at some researches done in Europe by Machin; 2006, OECD; 2004, Underwood; 2005, Ramboll Management; 2006, Kessel; 2005, Epirica; 2006, showed the following as effects on students and teachers: • Motivation and skills • Independent learning • Impact on teachers • Teaching.

8. IT PRODUCTS IN EDUCATION Over the past few years, many systems and software companies have identified the market potential in education, in view of this knowledge a lot of investment had gone into researching and production of educational products for billions of students worldwide. The IT products could be classified into software and hardware, with many visible brands such as Apple, Microsoft, Acer, Sony, Zenox, Omatek, Compaq, HP etc playing key roles. Examples of Educational software products: • Educational Internet Portals, Online Libraries, Adobe tools, Office suites, music, Animation and modeling, AntiVirus and security, Application Training, Business and Productivity, CAD and industrial designs, Operating system and servers • Our educational policy is expected to create a blueprint that will stand as a tripod to encourage Nigerians to create and design products and services for our educational needs e.g: • A multilingual web portal for all Nigerian schools • A database of curriculum of relevant books • A management information database system on researches • Softwares developed in our languages for easier interaction. • An online school specifically developed along Nigeria curriculum e.g e-learning for kids (www.e-learning forkids.org) • A target set for minimum acceptable percentage of a computer per student population ratio.

9. Examples of Educational hardware products:

10. IT SERVICES IN EDUCATION • The importance of IT is better appreciated when you are in position to interact with a system and you achieve your set goals in an easier and more convenient way, I want you to visualize having a manual database of 1 million records and another 1 million that is in an excel spread sheet and you are required to sort e.g by names or age. • With the need to continually improve the way we do things and the effect of globalization, lots of services are available and the development of new ones are on-going but are we part of the development? • I will use this platform to highlight some of the IT services presently available: • Online Education • e-Learning • e-Payment • e-Registration • e-Records • e-Projects • e-Tutorial etc • With the following services and many more, getting more value from our education system will be assured and will result in better graduates from our educational system as highlighted on effect of IT on education. • The implication will result in foreign students at least from the West Africa coast coming to study in Nigeria resulting in increase in foreign exchange inflow into our economy.

11. IT SYSTEMS IN EDUCATION • System is a group of interacting, interrelated, or interdependent elements forming a complex whole, for an IT system. The following could be used to form a system, internet, web portal, network security (firewalls), database and user systems or laptops. • In designing a system, the following are key issues that must be considered in respect of the capacity, performance, and availability of the components of IT systems: Database management system, secured network, enterprise servers, broadband internet and end-user computers. • The following can be used as examples of IT systems, Student Management Information System, Nigerian Universities Information Management System, Nigerian Educational Content Information Management System etc

12. OPPORTUNITIES FOR LOCAL CONTENT IN THE EDUCATION SYSTEM • As at today we have no Student Information Management System which had resulted in inaccurate or no data on the number of students studying a particular course in a University, number that dropped out of school etc, I believe Nigerians can develop any of this information systems e.g Student Information Management System for Nigeria, various customized softwares that could improve knowledge transfer, production of educational materials locally etc. • This will for example bring about a greater level of creativity in the areas of developing locally educational tools, softwares and solutions for our educational system. I believe, this will eventually translate to a better quality output from our educational system, leading to easier availability and access to educational tools by the poor and public educational system. • On the economy, the bill we will have a continuous increase in manufacturing concerns for educational products in Nigeria leading to increase in employment opportunities for Nigerians and also adding value to the Naira because of decrease in the demand for Dollar from the education sector of the economy e.g creating ICT products for millions of students in secondary schools will create at least 200,000 jobs.

13. OPPORTUNITIES FOR LOCAL CONTENT IN THE EDUCATION SYSTEM (Contd) • With a population in excess of 160 million Nigerians and a big African market, there cannot be a better time than now to consider abill that will empower the creativity of Nigerians in the educational sector. • Some Nigerian organizations are presently into the assembly of system components but their strategies had consistently made their brands not competitive and visible in the market place. This I believe is not in the interest of the future of the brands and I believe that with the right policies from the government, this trend will change. • In closing this very important part of this presentation, with a population in excess of 160 million, with about 70% within the age bracket of people still in need for academic quest and an educational system that had been deprived of all the basic requirements for quality education from independence, how do we achieve vision 2020 if we do not change our strategies and look inward to develop our educational system. All I see is a virgin market yet to be tapped and with just the right policies, we will surely create an educational success similar to that achieved in the telecommunication sector.

14. REASONS FOR THE ALMOST NON EXISTENCE OF LOCAL CONTENT IT INFRASTRUCTURE IN OUR EDUCATION SYSTEM • Non existence of ‘real’ development plan for Nigeria, this is obvious, considering the fact that the bedrock of any nation is a vibrant educational structure which is presently not available in Nigeria. • Our policies have not really looked at the need to develop local content but dependence on imports. • Our value system is the foundation to our present state as a country. • Corruption. • Our policies have over the years encouraged the importance of certificates instead of proficiency. • We have not learnt from some countries like India, Malaysia, Finland and South Korea that have been very ambitious and focused and have great results to show for their vision. • Non existence of policies that will make Nigeria a base for IT manufacturers and developers. • Erratic power supply. • Years of neglect of education by the different levels of government.

15. STRATEGIES TO GROWING IT LOCAL CONTENT IN EDUCATION • Our teachers should be treated with more respect in the area of their conditions of engagement. • We should have a visible and dynamic educational plan which I believe is the foundation for our future, this should be activated with an IT local content bill signed. • To qualify for any political position, a higher limit in educational achievement must be set. • The government needs to deploy policies that will create an enabling environment that will encourage investment in the education industry. • Government should increase the education budget. • Government should invest in policies that will create a special scholarship platform where intelligent students could get financial support to attend good IT universities around the world. • Government and the society should work on our value system • Government should sincerely fight corruption all areas of the Nigeria society • All teachers at all levels of our education should be computer literate • IT laboratories should be in all levels of our educational structure • Special IT institutions and systems should be established • IT related financial packages to assist students and parents e.g laptops on lease for students.

16. CONCLUSION • We have a vision as a people to be among the biggest economies in the world by the year 2020, this means among other strategies, Nigeria must have an IT local content bill for the country. • With a look at some examples of some nations where IT local content in education had created employment and value to the quality and status of the educational system, India and Finland stands as good example, where they have a locally developed multilingual web portal for educational use, a gateway of a national initiative and an introduction of a smart-phone compatible interactive software that has increased the level of interaction between students and teachers in India and Finland respectively. • We have over 120 million Nigerians at one state of education or the other, with badly equipped public schools, sparingly equipped private schools, a local content policy will encourage the manufacturing of local produced IT educational products by already established concerns or foreign concerns investing in the educational industry. • I am sure we will create massive employment opportunities with the signing of a local content policy on IT. • As at today, most educational database acquisition processes are done manually and this has resulted in lack of accurate educational data in Nigeria, I want to use this medium to appeal to our decision makers in the education sector to immediately deploy a Student Management Information System that can provide a one-stop source for all information about schools, curriculum, projects and students in Nigeria etc. • With this treated as a template to show the effect of IT on our economy with the resulting enhanced employment opportunities for Nigerians, the government will be convinced of the need to have a local content policy bill on IT signed for Nigeria. • Nigeria is blessed with everything and we need to deploy our blessings on fertile grounds so that the harvest will be great. • In closing, I will advice the brand Nigeria team to look for a replacement for the “Local” word in the “Local Content” because of the expected effect on the perception on the outputs, products and services from this initiative. • The future starts today!!