The use of ICT to drive economic development has become the order of the day across the world. From agriculture to commerce, the world is moving at a fast pace, especially with the use of technology in advancing these sectors and solving problems. For Murphy Usifo, a young IT guru, the passion for solving problems drove him into abandoning his initial dream of being a petroleum engineer. He believe that the IT world is the prime place to be if the Nigerian nation must catch up with the rest of the world.
When Murphy Usifo gained admission into University of Benin for his Bachelors degree, his dream was probably to be a petroleum engineer. But his journey to Chevron Nigeria for his internship change his orientation and probably perspective of what career part he wanted to pursue. His internship exposed him to the idea of adding value to the society by helping to solve problems. While working at Chevron as an intern, he came across the six sigma which is basically a process of helping companies to save cost. Osifo said this ignited his passion for solving problems.
He said, “During my internship, I realized that I didn’t want to practice petroleum engineering. My boss always tells me that for you to become successful in life, you must be able to add value to the society and so, I started thinking of how to add value to the society while in school and when I am out f school. So, I started doing my research and found product design which is basically how to solve problems, be it social or business problems using designs. She always harped on the need to add value. She signed me up on Excel, a course called six sigma and I started looking at Chevron to see the problem I can solve. They had problems with auditing and because it was annual, getting a work order was difficult. I started thinking of how to make it digital and make auditing easier, saving cost and time. I took my knowledge from excel and six sigma and made it digital in such a way that you can be in any of the four campuses of the company, get a work order, monitor it and close it out. Till today, they are still using it. So, I was thinking of how to solve problems and I started researching. I like design because it is very visual. I like to do something and see it. Solving problem visually is very interesting and very fulfilling as well and because you know how to solve problems, business will flow well.”
But despite such efforts, the petroleum industry in the country has been bedevilled by numerous problem. Why can’t such problem be solved? He said “You cannot solve a problem as a third party in the oil and gas industry and you can’t solve it as a consultant. There are always issues around how they share data and they are always very big in keeping their data secured. Usually, full time staff are the ones allowed to benefit and solve these problems. The reason I could not solve much problem while there was because I was an intern”.
Though still relatively young in the industry, Usifo has worked for the US government, designing an app that unbound soya farming in the country. He said “In 2022, I had a contract with the US government to design an app to unbundle soya. It was basically to educate soya farmers. What it does is that as a tech person with no knowledge of soya farming, I can come on the app and learn how soya farming works and the different facilities needed to do that. You can then begin to have an idea of how your farm will be. If I plant this amount of crops for this length of time, this how the export will be and what the profit will be like. It basically takes you through what soya farming is all about. Between 2022 and 2024 when we lunched that app, they have seen about 10 billion increases in volume of export from that app.”
But can the same app help farming in Nigeria? He answered in the affirmative, yet quick to add that the politics involved in doing business in Nigeria has the potentials of either slowing down or aborting the process.
According to him, “the problem with building apps for the Nigerian government is that there is a lot of lobbying involved. However, I have noticed that the experience between different governments is actually broken and because of this, we have to do things manually right from collecting your passport, applying for CAC among others.”
Another problem with building apps in Nigeria, Usifo said, has to do with the Nigerian colour of green which he said is not consistent. He said: “We have our Nigerian green which is our colour. But if you go through the different websites, you noticed that the experience is very broken and the green is different across different apps. In 2022, I had a mentorship programme with about 400 designers and we wanted to do something for the government that will allow anybody building for the government to take that as a standard for building websites and web app for the Nigerian government. Since we launched that, we have two websites that have been built using that product. Bosun Tijani, the current minister for Communication mentioned building something similar. I reached out to him to do something similar through collaboration, but there has been no feedback yet from his side on how to go forward on that.”
Explaining the problem with the Nigerian green, he said “for Nigeria, there are so many types of green and you are not sure which is the official green. We don’t have a set of standards on how to build websites or apps yet.”
Usifo also believes that these problems can be addressed if the little challenges in the process is addressed. “For example, I pitched to the Ministry of Works in 2021. What we were trying to do is to digitalise the process of documentation. Right now, if you are looking for a file, you find out that because of the manual way things are done, I have to start looking for my file manually. We are trying to make that digital and also make auditing easy for the ministry. As an external auditor, if I want to audit the ministry, search for a particular product data, see what has been done and you can start your auditing there. But that did not fall through. We also pitched to the Nigeria Police Force in 2021 to improve one of their websites. But because there are too many processes and politics involved, it is very difficult for these things to get adopted. We can also design an app that will make policing easy, make crime reporting easier make documentation easier and make public accountability easier.”
Asked if he can develop an app either for the federal government or state governments in Nigeria to help improve farming in the country, he said “the app I would want to develop for the federal government will be that for farmer education. We noticed that those engaged in rice and other farming in the country are not educationally advanced like the soya farmers in the US. We are in a stage where designing an app for farmers in Nigeria will not scale. Many of them don’t even know how to do mobile banking not to talk of installing an app that has to do with farm simulation. So, if I am to design an app, I will probably design for the government and for Agric extension workers. It will be for the extension workers to unbound the farmers and teach them how to use pesticide and other farm input. It can be a central marketplace where they can find produce buyers. Instead of going to the farm to sell their produce, they can just go there to search for them who can come to the farm to buy. It can also be a means of investment. How that will work is that, I can have money to invest in farming and don’t know how to farm. But you are into farming and don’t have the money. You come there and we reach an agreement on the sharing formular of the profit when I give you the money to farm. There are lot of ways it can affect agriculture, but like I said, it will be for the extension workers and government to track the number of farmers we have in Nigeria.”
But of what benefit will this be to the Nigerian youth who today believes that embarking on mass exodus to other countries is the solution. He said “I am youth consumer or youth working on a product? If I am a consumer, I am big on investment and I don’t think that earning salaries monthly is going to make me wealthy. Being wealthy comes from creating things and I am interested in investing in farming, but I don’t want to farm. I can go on that app to look for a farmer who is interested in taking my money and agree on how to split the profit depending on what they are planting. If you want to do financial investment, it’s a very good opportunity. By doing that, you will encourage wealth creation, more export and cost of food may go down. There might also be those interested in physically farming. The app can help them discuss with the real farmers on how to buy land. Those who want to be getting direct supply from the farmers can also come on the app.”
On migration of Nigerians, he said, it’s very difficult to ask people not to migrate. But if you come into tech, there are so many opportunities for you. With product design, you learn how to write codes, be a copy writer, learn digital skill, you can work from anywhere and you are able to give value to the society. The thing about design, writing codes and copy writing is about adding value and solving problems. If you are a designer, you are basically solving problems because you have to do research, you have to do testing. If you are a youth and want to go into ICT, I think this is the best time. Right now, we have this wave of artificial intelligence and apps being built on a block chain. There is this code AI wave. Everybody wants to have their AI blog. WhatsApp has its AI blog, Instagram and other platforms. If you want to be part of that, you have to learn how to design code conversation. Apps are being built on a block chain to secure your data be it your financial data or biodata. I can invest in the US stock right from here and these are things that we didn’t have access to in the last ten years. Right now, these things have been made easier and designers are the ones designing these products, they are the ones building these things. So, if you really want to make impact on the society and you don’t want to use your degree, you would want to be doing this. In the last four years, I have taught over 600 people”.
Usifo believes that with the advent of AI, the future of ICT is very bright. he said “The positive aspect of artificial intelligence outweighs the negative for now. As long as AI does not acquire its own intelligence, I think we should be fine. There are several applications across industry. From an investment perspective, I can just ask AI, I have X amount of money to invest, how can I go about it and give me the best return in the next two years. It can recommend stocks and I don’t need to have an additional knowledge. If I have a set of cloths to wear and I don’t know how to style myself, I can take a picture of the cloths and ask AI how best to style myself. As designers, we are the ones that decide how to convert these applications. There is what you call conversation design. We design how these apps respond to you without being bias. I think AI is going to be like a partner on how to do your things better. That is why you see things like prompt engineering coming into play. The last time I saw prompt engineering here, it was like 200,000 dollars here. They know how to converse with machines to make sure that they are giving you the right response. I have a friend who is building apps every week. What he does is to tell the app that I want to build an app to make sure that votes cannot be tampered with and AI is going to give him a code that he will do that for him, so, you don’t even need to know how to write codes. You just need to know how to write good prompts. With the revolution in AI, anybody can become a builder. I can say, help me build an app that can help me track my blood pressure and these things can be done in less than a day. Right now, you can build an app for literally everything and this cut across every sector. So, that is where the future is. Almost everybody seems to be learning designs across demographics. In my family, almost everybody is a designer. The fact is that with design, you are able to provide value on a global stage and not only in Nigeria. It does not matter who you are or where you are”.
Asked if he believes that the current Minister of communication can help revolutionalise the sector, he said “I think he can make this achievable. He is forward thinking. Nobody has mentioned this before until I saw his tweet and seeing him doing that means that he’s actually thinking of how to make things work and to create a standard on how websites should be designed in Nigeria. I think his past experience has helped him a lot and he has made some good policies since his appointment.”
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