A Profile of Nigeria's Software Industry

This paper reports a survey of Nigeria's software industry – an industry that has been disappointingly neglected to date in work on software in developing countries, despite Nigeria's size and both economic and political importance. The survey found there are more than 100 firms active in the industry, principally clustered around the South-West of the country and virtually all private-owned. Most firms are small enterprises (11-50 staff) and most professional staff have at least a first degree. Customers are drawn almost exclusively from the private sector and from the domestic market: software exports are few and far between. The majority of work focuses on providing services – such as installation, customisation and training – related to imported packages, and there are signs of decline in development of locally-written software. Strategic analysis of the industry according to Heeks' quadrant model shows that Nigeria needs to bolster such local development work. For this to happen, firms must target market segments with some degree of protection from imports. They must also strengthen their software development practices, something that will be partly dependent on improvements in the provision of software education by local universities.