A few weeks ago Mark Zuckerberg came Nigeria sightseeing and checking up on his investments (Andela and the millions of the ‘un-facebooked’ citizens of Nigeria).
It was a good opportunity to showcase tech solutions being built here via Cc-Hub and his meetings with entrepreneurs. He even got to see a Demo Day at the Presidential Villa. Some have said not many of the things he saw were awesome.
People say what they say. The thing is to not be one of those always pointing out where others fall short. There are a few tech products I believe would solve a problem at the consumer and enterprise level in Nigeria. This isn’t based on some structured research, just observations of solutions I have needed in running my business, being a dad and just being ‘Alive While Nigerian’
Here are just a few that I have been thinking about:
- We need a payment portal for the Federal Inland Revenue service. Lol. Yeah I mean the tax man. It is appalling that in 2016 a company has to write a cheque and send it to the bank to pay their tax. A simple platform that allows you create your business profile (include your RC number, generate a Tax Identification Number if you don’t have one) pay your taxes with Paystack to the FIRS bank accounts and even add a social plug in that can tweet a thank you or post a Thank You for paying your tax to Twitter or Facebook. All the major encryption work needed is available , plug in tools etc. individuals should also be able to set up profiles and pay their taxes if a similar platform was built for state governments for instance. If this platform can also generate an authentic statement showing tax compliance you would be surprised how much revenue collection would go up. The challenge is people are stressed by how to pay tax and get government off their back. Note this may not solve the problem of people not paying the accurate amount but as a % of money not being received I think revenue collection will go up. I don’t want to go to the bank or go to the tax mans office. I want to get this done remotely. Can someone talk to someone who can build this for tax bodies?
2. We need an online retail store to buy Toys. I’m not kidding. I don’t believe any of the existing platforms pay the kind of attention needed for the opportunity this segment presents. I’m not talking about just any toys… toys of characters Nigerian children with TV access are being cultivated to adore on DSTV — Barney, Dora the Explorer, Jake and the Neverland pirates, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles etc. If you have kids who watch a little bit too much TV I’m sure you get the drift. Why not a brick and motor store to sell such here? My personal insight is that I prefer things I buy to be brought to me in the office so I can take it home to delight my boys. Will anyone sort this out for me? God bless you as you do so.
3. I would pay for a device that lets me gauge the purity of fuel I buy for my generator. Literally like a a thermometer looking thing I can dip in a keg of fuel and know if it’s been diluted or not. It sounds like something that already exists somewhere else on the planet but I think it would be needed here. If it can also be used to check the purity of water that would be a game changer.
This is clearly not an exhaustive list but we need solutions that solve real problems. If you have any product ideas for the Nigerian tech community please drop as a comment.
Op–ed pieces and contributions are the opinions of the writers only and do not represent the opinions of Y!/YNaija
Idiare Atimomo is the Co-Founder, Up In The Sky Ltd and CEO Tharros Associates. He can be reached on Twitter @id49ja. This article was first written HERE
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