Ethiopia has a tremendous opportunity to become a leader in specific segments of technology such as FinTech not only to transform the financial sector, but also to improve access to finances for small businesses thereby building a viable middle class, says Ethiopian native Ethiopian- American professor of Computer Science Abdi Ahmed.
In his exclusive interview with The Ethiopian Herald, Abdi says that in Ethiopia, “we have a huge opportunity to transform the nation by concentrating on technology and becoming an incubation center for technical talent.”
“I believe Ethiopian students of technology are equipped with what I call undisciplined talent: the students are naturally bright in grasping technical ideas, but conceptually they did not receive structured academic training. This, in part, is due to 27 years of “mass production” without regard to quality. I have seen so many third or fourth year software engineering students who couldn’t write or explain basic HTML code, not because they couldn’t understand it, but because, I think, they didn’t have a structured environment that was conducive to learning. Now that we have a new government that is committed to overhauling the educational system, I’m sure under the leadership of Professor Berhanu Nega, the department will restructure the entire educational system.”
There is a huge opportunity to become technology incubation; technical talent center, Abdi further noted, also equates the comparatives in the computer advancement in India and Ethiopia. Technological advances are keys to economic development. A case in point is India. About 20 years ago, India decided to capitalize on its human technical talent, to do so require two things: Always available electricity and high speed internet access. This, in turn, allowed large American corporations to outsource their technical support services and software development projects to India, creating the largest middle class professionals anywhere in the world, states the Ethiopian-American who is also founder of an award winning IT Consulting and Software Engineering firm called Netserve Systems Inc whose clients include Honda, Toyota, Uber, Best Buy and Disney.
Abdi recommends for the policy and decision makers in Ethiopia that there is a need to liberalize the utility and financial sectors. By utility it is to mean that electricity and telecommunications. Large American corporations have already exhausted India in terms of cost-savings and are looking for other options that have “always-on” electricity and reliable broadband connection. Ethiopia offers English-speaking technical talent that, with some basic training, can fill that void. But we need robust infrastructure to attract American corporations and become the alternative to India. “Top executives from two large clients of mine have personally expressed to me their interest in exploring Ethiopia as a technical support hub, but were dismayed to learn about our current port infrastructure.”
Indeed Ethiopia is lagging behind other East African countries in adopting digitized services such as e-commerce and e-money. This is, in part, because of the lack of robust and consistent availability of telecommunications and electricity coupled with the hesitancy on the part of the Ethiopian consumer. That hesitancy can be attributed to neglect by the financial industry of its consumer base. Ethiopian financial institutions don’t have much of a competition and therefore the need to innovate isn’t a top priority for them. In the IT world, we have an expression: be change-ready or death-ready.
“I remember reading an article not long ago when 4G & LTE was implemented in Somali region, quoting the CEO of Ethio telecom saying that the Somali region’s daily transactions of digital money are over 6 million Birr more than the rest of Ethiopia combined. This is testimony to what can be done all over Ethiopia if the policymakers undertake concerted effort in liberalizing financial institutions and in building reliable technical infrastructure.”
Ethiopia has an amazing opportunity to lead Africa in technology if it managed to train the young generation and students properly and build a better technical infrastructure. Luring large foreign corporations will be fairly an easy task if we have good infrastructure coupled with liberalized financial institutions, according to Abdi.
Abdi Ahmed, a native of Ethiopia, migrated to the United States in 1983 where he studied Computer Science. The Same year, while doing his undergraduate work, he was landed on a job with Apple Computer as a programmer where he participated in the development of key design features of the Macintosh Computer. In 1991, Abdi joind the Orange County Retirement System (OCERS) as a consultant where he designed and developed an automated systems that maintained over a billion dollar in assets and collected millions of dollars in retirement contributions from various municipal employees.
Over the years, Abdi developed a multimillion dollar states of the art technology solution for various departments of the County of Orange including Social Services Agency Superior Court, and Planning and Development.
Abdi Ahmed is also an adjacent professor of Computer Science at Chapman University and Santa Ana Collge where he has been teaching since 1999.
BY HAFTU GEBREZGABIHER
THE ETHIOPIAN HERALD FRIDAY 3 JUNE 2022
