Last month, just around the time Nigeria officially slipped into a recession, my dear friend Akanimoh thought it would be a good idea to talk about The Role of Entrepreneurship in Diversifying Nigeria’s Economy – just as well that the conversation theme for the month was Entrepreuenship. It was an absolute delight to have two gentlemen from the pre-millennial generation, but very progressive and passionate about the African’ youth, come on the Show to share their perspectives.
The gentlemen were, Andrew S. Nevin PhD– PwC West Africa’s Financial Services Leader & Chief Economist and Oswald Osaretin Guobadia who prefers to be identified as an Entrepreneur and more excitedly, the Co-author of, in my opinion, one of the most riveting books on Entrepreneurship on the continent, ‘In Pursuit – Journeys in African Entrepreneurship’.
The idea was to get the first-hand perspective of an entrepreneur who, figuratively speaking, had “been there and done that” with a contrasting or corroborating technical view of a consultant.
When asked about the tendency of entrepreneurship being typically seen as a last resort in the country. Oswald noted that Nigeria tends to deviate from the norm because of systemic challenges, which further creates room for innovation and inadvertently, opportunities for entrepreneurship. So ultimately, it doesn’t matter if it’s engaged in as a Plan B, as long as something innovative is engaged in to create value for society. Andrew on the other hand highlighted the fact that Nigerians are essentially forced into entrepreneurship because of unemployment, and as such, believes the focus should actually shift from entrepreneurship to building large companies that will create structures and employment where people gain skills and context to become entrepreneurs if they choose to.
Following Andrew’s point about corporations and in light of economic diversification, I decided to ask about the notion that “SMEs are meant to be a backbone of the economy but in Africa, they tend to be the ground big corporations walk on” citing from Oswald’s co-authored book – In Pursuit. He reiterated that based on personal experience and stories heard, big corporations in Nigeria are not keen on developing the ecosystem and they tend to treat smaller companies badly.
In terms of what diversification may look like for Nigeria and the role entrepreneurship plays. Andrew believes there is a lot of room for the development of businesses which, however, needs to happen at the State level and not at the National level. He added that the government also needs to stay neutral to foster growth and stop trying to do too many things at the same time, while for revenue sources, they need to be better organised with an understanding that every sector needs to be grown.
Touching on the subject of export, both gentlemen agreed that services are an easier starting point over the export of physical goods, given the infrastructural impediments that don’t enable industrialisation.
After my conversation with Andrew and Oswald, one thing was clear for me –while indeed entrepreneurship could play a key role in the diversification of the Nigerian economy, there are fundamental changes that need to take place from both the government and large corporates side to foster the development of the ecosystem.
It truly was an exciting conversation and you are encouraged to listen to the full conversation here.