Bosun Tijani, CEO/Co-founder of the Co-creation Hub, an incubator for technology start-up companies in Lagos, tells TOBI AWORINDE about planning Facebook CEO, Mark Zuckerberg’s first visit to Nigeria
When did you discover your passion for mentoring young entrepreneurs?
My passion is not mentoring
entrepreneurs. My interest is in finding ways to make technology work
for us as a society and the reason why I am passionate about that is, I
believe that as a society in Nigeria, and Africa as a whole, for us to
move forward, we have to invest in our ability to create the future we
want to see. That literally means we need to imbibe the culture of
building solutions. If we have bad roads, we need to imbibe the culture
of understanding how to build roads that will last, not necessarily
“importing” companies that will do it for us. If our education is bad,
we need to be able to create a better education system. That is my
interest. But fortunately, technology is one tool that enables and
provides opportunities for us to do things at scale. We are a large
country and if we use technology smartly, we can reach much more people
within the country and also build exciting scalable solutions that last.
That is why I have decided to do what I do, which is to find ways in
which technology can be useful and one of those ways would be to find
smart people.
If my interest is in building technology
solutions, obviously, I have to find smart and creative people that
will build those solutions. So, find them, support them, invest in them
and expose them to people who can help make their ventures grow—that’s
the first thing. The second most important thing is also working with
civil society organisations; these are organisations that are passionate
about solving social problems. It is important that we work with them
and empower them to also use technology in exciting ways. The last one
is that if everything I have said is ever going to work, we need
talent—we need people who are talented. We need people who can build the
technology, so I am also interested in how do we find and train such
people so that they can then become the future we want to see? That is
what I do and what is what I am passionate about.
When did you start CcHUB?
We founded CcHUB in 2010, but the
innovation centre opened in September 2011. I still have the book in
which I started jotting the idea and I met with my co-founder, Femi
Longe. We were both privileged to be in London—we studied in Nigeria and
got the opportunity to go abroad for internship through a student
organisation. We stayed in touch, met and shared ideas. He was working
in social innovations; I was working in innovation consulting. We
started thinking of how we could help support creative people in
Nigeria. We started writing ideas down two to three years before
launching in 2010.
How do you involve the government, knowing that a lot of this is its responsibility?
Some of it; it’s not the sole
responsibility of government. Government should be responsible; we have
to work with government to provide the right enabling environment to
make all these things work, but to a large extent, it is the
responsibility of private sector organisations. Government has no
business being in business; government’s role is not to run businesses
and if government’s role is not to run businesses, government can’t
understand how to support businesses. But what government can do is
provide the enabling environment, put in the right infrastructure, and
ensure that it is easy to do business in the country.
Government can do all that by working
with private sector organisations to understand their needs, understand
what enabling environment and infrastructure they can put in place that
would help the business do well. What policies can they put in place
that would make sure that businesses are not being spaced and businesses
are creating jobs and generating wealth for the nation? That is the
role of government. For civil society organisations, we have to go out
there to look for them, because they are exciting organisations that
take on the responsibility to do social good. In every society, you need
them. They are not necessarily meant to replace government, but they
are meant to support the work that government is meant to be doing.
What do you think about all
the excitement that has come about as a result of Facebook founder, Mark
Zuckerberg’s visit to Nigeria?
Who would not be excited? This man is
worth about, how much, between $53 and $55bn. That is a lot of money. He
is worth much more than our budget. He is, probably, the sixth or
seventh richest man in the world, walking the streets of Yaba, right
here in Nigeria. I think for a country like Nigeria, with all the bad
press that we get and the cynicism around the name Nigeria, that was a
huge surprise for everybody. It is unbelievable to a lot of people that
Mark actually chose to come to Nigeria. It gives us hope that there is
something unique about this place. But unfortunately, we are not taking
advantage of it. Again, think about it, do you know that he came in on
the day Nigeria was proclaimed to be entering the worst recession in 29
years? What sort of coincidence is that? When the world is telling us
that we are going down, one of the richest people in the world came and
he was telling us, “You have a lot of good in you and you can go up.” It
is a message.
How much went into keeping his visit a secret?
It was challenging. We were literally
warned not to (say anything); if there was a leak, he would turn back,
he wouldn’t come. The sixth or seventh richest man in the world; it was a
security threat. We didn’t know on time that he was the one that was
coming; we knew a CEO or executive was coming from Facebook. Then few
weeks before his arrival, we were informed that he was coming.
What were some of your expectations of regarding his visit?
I had absolutely no expectations. I
didn’t know what to expect. Of course, everyone was stunned to see Mark.
People were confused. But he was a cool guy, reasonable, mingled with
everybody and took selfies.
Did he comment on the energy and culture of Lagos?
I think he was really stunned at the
entrepreneurial spirit of Nigerians. He said from the moment (the plane)
landed, people were different and the way people just wanted to do
things, he could tell that a lot of people here are serious-minded
entrepreneurs. He sees the opportunities, not only the fact that we have
a big market; we have people who are talented, people who are dreamers
and for him, that is a major part of our future and one of the things
that will determine how far we go as a people.
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