Multinational enterprise software company Sage as described mobility as the growth engine of the Nigerian economy. It noted that mobility is enabling enterprises in Nigeria to be more flexible, efficient and responsive.

Magnus Nmonwu, Regional Director for Sage West Africa said that Nigeria is quickly adopting mobile internet just as it embraced mobile voice services when GSM services were launched in the country more than a decade ago.

With the increasing affinity for mobile internet, Nmonwu said the way Nigeria does business is undergoing significant transformation. “It is empowering enterprises to be more flexible, responsive and efficient than ever before. Nigeria is adopting the mobile Internet as quickly and enthusiastically as it did mobile voice services some years ago. Mobility is the growth engine of the Nigerian economy. It is helping people to enhance their lives and to improve their standard of living, while enabling enterprises to transform how they operate.”

Sage predicted that the situation in Nigeria will improve when sub-US$50 smartphones become widely available, when telecom infrastructure is enhanced and affordable cloud applications
become available.

“Many of our customers and employees today walk around with smart devices that give them access to apps and information wherever they are,” says Nmonwu. “For example, Facebook’s statistics show that 7.1 million Nigerians access its platform every day. And 100% of its monthly users access Facebook on a mobile smart phone.”

He said organisations are already tapping into this behaviour and they now have new ways to interact with employees, suppliers, customers and other stakeholders. “This ranges from mobile marketing, advertising and e-commerce for consumers to mobilising business applications such as the enterprise resource planning (ERP) solutions,” he said.

Describing Nigeria’s future as mobile, Nmonwu encouraged organisations in Nigeria to adopt mobile business processes and apps to meet the expectations of employees and customers.

“Today’s consumer and employee wants to interact with companies using accessible, easy to use mobile services and apps,” he said. “Enterprises thus need to start mobile security and device management, so that they can support mobile employees. Today’s consumer wants service on demand from a handset and today’s employee wants to be productive wherever he or she is, at any time or in any location. With this, we expect to see a great deal of investment into mobile technology in West Africa over the next year or two.”