That said, the success of ecosystems that are these successful are the result of more than a cluster of buildings in a fancy park. At the end of the day it will boil down to how the culture will connect with the environment to foster an environment where we all focused on helping each other create value.

As someone who has lived and worked in North America’s most active technology startup ecosystems, I have always found the privilege of watching early stage technology develop into globally scalable technology solutions that changes the lives of millions of people very fascinating.

Indeed, there is nothing like watching passionate founders create million dollar companies from scrap metal in the case of hardware or 1’s and 0’s in the case of software. Few things compare to music fuelled all nighters at the office discussing new strategies for world domination, hammering away at a demo just in time for the big pitch the following morning or having that heart to heart conversation you’re your co-founders about where your train wreck of a company is actually going.

Despite the smiles and the enthusiastic grandstanding, the most exciting part of the entire experience is that no one really knows what they are doing. We are all mostly just making it up as we go along and this is where the skill of an entrepreneur and the benevolence of experienced mentors and veterans come into play in making sure nascent technology startups are moving along the right path as they try to create value out of little or nothing. More often than not this kind of exchange can only happen in confined spaces with high concentration of industry veterans all focused on the same things.

This is why I am quite excited about one of the new initiatives of the CoCreation Hub Nigeria Project that shows it is taking technology innovation and entrepreneurship in Nigeria very seriously. This project that I believe will yield wild returns if properly managed is the i-HQ project. The i-HQ Project aims to build a n innovation city around the Herbert Macauley Way in Yaba where academics, businesses and government can form a cohesive technology cluster somewhat cheekily named Silicon Lagoon.

I am particularly pleased about this project especially because this is the area where I spent most of my childhood. Quite clearly, not only do I have a thing for technology, I happen to always be located in or around technology ecosystems.

No doubt, right now, the plan seems a little ambitious (and perhaps a bit ambiguous) but I have seen this kind of barn raising and community building efforts do  wonders for other places not unlike Nigeria.

Here in Waterloo, ON where I live and work, I spend most of my waking hours in a large 150 year old 30,000 square foot building called the Tannery building Bookneto. It used to be a leather factory but today it has become home to some of the most interesting global technology companies in the world. Many of these companies, some of whom you might recognize, like Desire2Learn, RIM, Agfa, OpenText and Google have hundreds of employees spending all their waking hours in this building and maintaining technologies that has incredible impact on millions of people all over the world and collectively generating more than $30 billion in revenue.

In connecting the dots backwards, it seems really easy to understand why this technology ecosystem was at all possible. The Waterloo area is famous for its amazing engineering talent from the University of Waterloo (the birthplace of the Blackberry) and a culture that prizes practical experience gained through work experience over abstract theory and classroom instruction.

This is why I think the genius of the ecosystem that iHQ is trying to build is that it involves higher institutions like LASU, Yaba Tech and Unilag. Few things predict success for these kinds of ecosystem than a steady stream of raw talent that is stuck right in the middle of all the innovation.

That said, the success of ecosystems that are these successful are the result of more than a cluster of buildings in a fancy park. At the end of the day it will boil down to how the culture will connect with the environment to foster an environment where we all focused on helping each other create value.

If this nascent ecosystem will survive besides its nice buildings, broadband and grand plans, it will need to be more vocal about calling out and shaming bad actors and putting away childish things.

The issues with Nigeria’s current technology ecosystem are numerous; sharkish employers who treat their employees like discarded tissue when times get hard, VC’s who take advantage of naïve founders, a culture that denies people the rewards of the intellectual value they create, and an unhealthy fear of failure but with a community built with the strong foundations of intergenerational solidarity, shared wisdom, and a genuine desire to help each other create something world changing, nothing is possible.
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* This piece has been updated.
 

Op-ed pieces and contributions are the opinions of the writers only and do not represent the opinions of Y!/YNaija.