Global tech companies continue to target emerging markets and Nigeria remains a region of growing significance.

Cisco is one of the major tech companies with active physical presence in the country. In this exclusive interview, Olakunle Oloruntimehin, General Manager Cisco Nigeria, puts the country's tech ecosystem into sharp perspective.

Paul Adepoju: What separates Cisco from other major tech multinationals operating in Nigeria?

Olakunle Oloruntimehin: We do not enter countries for our own profit. We are also passionate about increasing social inclusion as a driver for sustainable economic growth. We take a lot of pride in our CSR approach and contributions to capacity building, in close partnership with the government and other private entities. We have 167 Cisco Network Academies where we trained 21,529 students of which 46% of that number are female. We have some of these academies in prisons and Internally Displaced Persons (IDP) camps in Nigeria. We use these academies as a conduit to provide basic to advanced ICT skills to students in Nigeria. We also have a widely recognised certification process with majority of the IT managers in Nigeria having one or more Cisco certifications.

Paul Adepoju: What is your perspective of Nigeria's tech ecosystem?

Olakunle Oloruntimehin: The technology ecosystem is evolving and with the current levels of diversity it will be useful for the different regulating entities to have a coherent and recognisable framework for consistent development. If you take the levels of technology penetration versus annual GDP growth, there is a direct correlation between technology growth and GDP growth. Although Nigeria did not move overall in the NRI rankings, staying in 119th position, this fact masks significant heterogeneity in terms of moves in individual dimensions of networked readiness—in particular, a six-spot move up in Readiness (to 117th) and a ten-spot move down in Impacts (to 114th).

According to the WEF, Global Information Technology Report 2016, which Cisco sponsors, the political and regulatory environment are perceived to be improving on several fronts, while at the same time the business and innovation environment are perceived as deteriorating. Government usage and engagement is perceived to have dropped significantly over the course of the last year, yet this may change under the new government that came to power in 2015. Overall, conditions for ICT impacts seem to have deteriorated: both economic and social impacts record a decline. A policy priority with far-reaching benefits in other areas should be to address the country's skills gap (134th).

Paul Adepoju: What can the local tech industry contribute towards the global ICT ecosystem?

Olakunle Oloruntimehin: Services due to the favorable demographics, geography, English language skills, tertiary education as well as general IT skills and knowledge. There is ample scope for outsourcing and collaboration around software development, technology design and business/technology process improvements.

Paul Adepoju: In a recent opinion post you called attention to cybercrimes in the financial sector. Why do you think the finance sector in the country is uniquely exposed to cybercrime?

Olakunle Oloruntimehin: The FSI industry is taking a lead around digitisation in Nigeria with the use of technology to improve customer experience, extend channels of reaching the customer and with the digitisation opportunity comes the risk of cybercrime as FSI operations become more visible to the Internet. There is ample incentive for criminals because of access to financial instruments either directly or otherwise.

Paul Adepoju: What are Cisco's plans for Nigeria?

Olakunle Oloruntimehin: Cisco's plan for Nigeria is focused on three key pillars: 1. Digitisation through the visibility, investment protection and optimisation we provide to our incumbent customers around the large Cisco installed base we have in Nigeria. 2. Security: as there is need to provide consistent and sustainable support to our customers around this as it is a clear and present danger for all our customers. 3. Capacity building and social inclusion by leveraging our Cisco Networking Academies as well as upgrading our current Cisco certifications to make same more relevant and updated.

Paul Adepoju: What is your company doing in the areas of artificial intelligence, cloud and cognitive computing?

Olakunle Oloruntimehin: We have a cloud approach which focuses on enabling private and public clouds to be able to drive the right levels of asset utilisation, efficiencies and ease of control. We promote the 'hybrid cloud' approach using the different benefits of private clouds, public clouds, orchestration, automation etc. On AI and cognitive computing, we are doing a lot of work with partners around how we can leverage innovations. One of the partners we are doing this with is the research and development we are doing with Apple and the integration of our technologies in an integral manner into our platforms etc.

Paul Adepoju: What do you think would critically define the future of tech in Nigeria?

Olakunle Oloruntimehin: Social and digital inclusion through strong partnerships with government.