KreateNG 2nd Year Anniversary: Coding is the real juju that Africans need to learn today – Akin-Olugbade

As Kreateng Africa, a Lagos-based digital innovation company marks its second year anniversary, Africans have been challenged to learn coding as the next Juju – or black magic to build products that can change lives.

Dr. Adesegun A. Akin-Olugbade, OON, the Founder and Principal Partner of Luwaji Nominees,  while delivering KreateNG Anniversary Virtual Lecture on 9th November 2021 said, “Today, coding, using tech-based stacks to build products that can change the lives of ourselves and others, and create valuable real-world-impacting applications – literally from thin air – from nothing – just by typing out what are essentially strings of “ones” and “zeros” – this is the real juju that Africans need to learn today.

“This is the actual and literal magic we need to practice, to build on the powerful historical and current entrepreneurial zeal and zest of Nigeria and drag us all together into the modern age.”

The Adedayo Okunfolami led company is into assisting businesses in achieving exponential growth and operational efficiency through enterprise software solutions, creative design and branding, digital marketing, and co-working space.

Dr. Adesegun A. Akin-Olugbade who was represented by Mr. Akinbo Akin-Olugbade, the co-founder of Kawai Technologies, a multidisciplinary logistics, engineering, and procurement company that works across Nigeria,  acknowledged the increasing investments across other sectors like education, agriculture, healthcare, logistics, and travel, but that creating brilliant and useful products though would be only one half of the solution, while savvy companies that wanted to survive and exist in the long term needed to know how to effectively and efficiently sell those products and services, matching the consumer and end-user with these products and services – an easier said than done task – especially in challenging economies like Nigeria.

“But every problem presents the opportunity for a solution, and the best companies will be those that find those solutions and therefore grow to become the new market leaders and trusted brands of our future,” he said.

“KreateNG has started addressing some of these problems with innovative solutions such as Motocare, Assistdispatch, CallOrder, Gooschooled, Awacash, and Kreateng Bootcamp, showing that some amongst us are ready to address the challenges of our past and get busy creating the solutions for our future. Yes, I am sure you all saw what I did just there!”

For KreateNG, Akin-Olugbade, a former General Counsel and Senior Director at the African Development Bank (AfDB) and the first Chief Legal Officer and Head of the Legal Services Department of the African Export-import Bank (Afreximbank) said it had been two years of tinkering, of testing, of taking up bold challenges; of creating impactful services and products, two years of passion, ambition, new ideas, and growth.

“It has been two years of learning, of unlearning, of relearning. It has been two years of believing, and two years of commitment to a self-imposed mandate to build solutions for their clients, and therefore for our society,” he said.

“KreatNG is an important cog lubricating the wheels of a larger Nigerian tech sector; a sector that in recent years has dominated news cycles with stories of technology and fintech flag bearers of the current generation such as Andela, Flutterwave, Paystack as well as many other companies making a genuine difference – providing jobs and opportunities for thousands of people and helping to grow our fledgling economy. Technology provides limitless upside potential to Nigeria and Africa through technological advancements and the need to continually position ourselves in readiness for the future. Africa has repeatedly been labeled the next major growth market, and there are many reasons for this optimism.

“For one, we have some of the youngest population demographics in the world, which promises to grow into a major consumption market over the next couple of decades; and secondly, the increasing smartphone penetration, paired with a more focused regulatory drive to increase financial inclusion and cashless payments, combine to create the perfect recipe for a thriving fintech sector, a sector in which companies like KreateNG are leveraging on these societal changes to build products and platforms to allow Nigerians key into these new-age opportunities.

“In contrast to conventional societal stratifications and classes that have existed for generations in the “old economy”, and the multitude of policies that have been developed and deployed over the years to address widening social imbalances, ICT has very much leveled the playing field both for creators of these technologies and the ever-teeming populations of users. Mobile technologies and services have generated millions of direct jobs (both formal and informal) and contributed billions of dollars of economic value in terms of GDP and taxation. Digitization has also resolved many information asymmetry problems in the financial system and labor markets, thus increasing efficiency and security in environments like ours where information flow is critical for economic growth and job creation.”

For Nigeria, Akin-Olugbade said the focus today should be getting more people on the digital train, as the state of Nigeria and Africa as a whole will depend on it over the next few decades.

“Microsoft changed how work is done across the entire world. Meta as a company has connected the entire world in an unprecedented way. You can today transfer money from anywhere in the world to someone else anywhere else in the world in minutes with just a few clicks of an app on a phone without having to physically interface with or speak to anyone – no middleman, no standing in line at a bank. You can today make payments for any service over the internet in five minutes. This was all impossible barely a little more than a decade ago. This Tech Revolution is characterized by the fusion of the digital, biological, and physical worlds, as well as the growing utilization of new technologies such as artificial intelligence, cloud computing, robotics, 3D printing, the Internet of Things, and advanced wireless technologies, among others, which have together ushered in a new era of economic disruption with still uncertain socio-economic consequences for Africa.

“This new wave of technologically influenced change is likely to have an even more profound and revolutionary impact on the world, and as Africa has been left behind during the past industrial revolutions, we cannot afford to be left behind this time. Those currently disconnected from these advancements are at risk of being left behind, and we, therefore, need to do more. We need to dig more, study more, learn more, innovate more, practice more, advance more, and break down more barriers of exclusion, ultimately ensuring that many more of our people get on this wave and grow Nigeria and Africa.

While congratulating KreateNG on the second exemplary year of service to the industry, he said “and now that you have your sea-worthy legs about you, the next phase is to bring superior skills and services to the market to make the company KreateNG synonymous with the best-in-class software and digital services.”