As Nigeria’s ICT Industry continues to experience rapid growth, indigenous technology giant, SystemSpecs, has urged the private sector to ramp up manpower development to meet the industry’s huge demand.

According to the Managing Director of SystemSpecs, John Obaro, while the current positive developments within the ICT sector have created huge opportunities for the sector, there are still major challenges with manpower development.

Obaro, who was represented by Chief Security Information Officer, SystemSpecs, Ugy Ngele, said this at the Nigeria Computer Society’s Information Technology Business Forum themed, “Enhancing the Technical and Entrepreneurship Capabilities of Information Technology Companies and Startups in Nigeria.”

He noted that the scarcity of manpower in the tech industry is a major challenge. This is caused on one hand, by inadequate training from the school system, and on the other hand, it is caused by a consistent brain drain due to high demand for ICT talents.

“The schools are not churning out the level of intellectual products that should power the opportunities springing up. There is a challenge of the education curriculum. There is also the challenge of manpower emigrating, because the IT capabilities are scarce and when demand is higher than supply, prices will rise,” Ngele lamented.

Ngele noted that providing human capital to power the vision of Nigerian companies has become a serious challenge, alongside increased electronic fraud. The tech expert posited that the private sector cannot depend on the government to drive profound positive changes in the industry.

“In terms of what could be done, I think a few of the companies are doing it already. In any of the changes we really want to drive, we can't depend on the government; the private sector has to find a way to go to the schools and drive those changes,” he said.

Ngele gave examples of what SystemSpecs, a leading financial and human resource technology solutions company, is doing to develop and retain talents. Amongst such initiatives are technology-themed competitions in schools, training to stimulate interests and harvest raw tech talents, and employment of budding tech potentials.

Nevertheless, the tech expert held an optimistic view of the situation, stating that only organisations with the right mechanisms to harvest and develop these talents will be able to maximise the current opportunities in the industry.

“Looking forward, if we took on the proper change management and put the right processes in place, I think we would be happy about the difference we would experience,” Ngele said.