Expert Advocates Adoption Of Need-Assessment Approach To Stimulate Home-Grown Innovation
Victor Kalu, Managing Director, Zend Technology Company Limited
The Managing Director/Chief Executive Officer, Zend Technology Company Limited, Victor Kalu has advocated for the adoption of a peoples’-need-assessment approach in the Nigeria’s Information and Communication Technology (ICT) sector to stimulate home-grown innovation in financial infrastructure to enhance the nation’s economic growth.
Kalu made the call in his presentation titled “Stimulating Home-Grown Innovation In Financial Infrastructure Development For Economic Growth,” at the 2024 Finance and Business Online Publishers (FiBOP) Capacity Building Workshop in Lagos recently.
He said that some innovations in financial infrastructure development failed because those in that space are not paying close attention to the dynamic needs of the people.
Kalu tasked innovators and developers of financial infrastructure on the need for them to always carry out peoples’-need assessment to ascertain the needs of the people before attempting to provide solutions.
“Any innovation in financial infrastructure that does not pay very close attention to the needs of people through what we call people-centric is not going to succeed.
“For you to develop home-grown solution that would solve peoples’ problem, you have to do a people-need assessment.
You can’t build technological solution without assessing the actual need of the people. It is not by sitting in your office, it’s not by using your own experience. You can’t say because you have many years experience because of that you can develop technology, because peoples’ needs are dynamic, needs to keep changing, therefore you have to have assessment and that is why as journalists you have a job to do.
“You have to go out there; do research to project this kind of need of the people in financial technology so that those that are building solutions and innovations can solve the needs of the people.
“There is a need for people to be put together as a study-group to go out and do proper research – industry-focused research where you unearth the needs of the people.
“It is very important that we do actual need analysis of the people to be able to build technology solution for them.
“Secondly, there is need for digital education. Many technologies today have failed because people are not able to use them. For example, you build a solution for market women to use. No amount of awareness is going to help them to use it if they don’t know how to use technology.
“One of the reasons Micro Pension Plan failed is that the people the product was targeted did not have NIN and BVN and they couldn’t enrol. So if you roll out technology and the people you are building it for do not have what is required of them, how are you going to onboard them? It is difficult to do. This is why a lot of technology even on the side of the Federal government has failed.
“We are involved in revenue collection. In informal sector, we pioneer revenue collection. How can you collect tax from a market woman when there is not data or information about her?
“For the greater population of the Nigerian population to consume financial services, they need to be empowered with the right digital education; they need to be empowered with the right identity enablers and trends,” Kalu explained.
On Product development, he called for the promotion of home-grown products and services, noting that not only will it enhance technological advancement but will contribute significantly to the nation’s economy.
“There is a need for those responsible for product development and innovation to promote home-grown product and services.
“Today, with the best brain we have in Information and Communication Technology (ICT), how many of our products are home-grown? They are not because we lack adequate research and development in the financial technology infrastructure development space.
“We need the government to establish the Research and Development (R&D) for ICT,” he emphasized.
