Abstract

The challenges of the Nigeria software industry and its potentials for sustainable growth were investigated in this research. Findings revealed three major challenges of the software industry as low patronage of locally developed software by government and private organizations; poor government policies to encourage sustainable growth of the industry and low innovative index of locally developed software as affirmed respectively by 79%, 78% and 81% of respondents via questionnaire. Research findings also revealed that developers’ skillsets have greatly improved over the years through trainings and international certification programs which have impacted positively on the quality of developed software following increased adoption of quality assurance practices by most developers. However, 81% of the respondents reported that most locally developed software are not innovative – that is, lacking novelty values and not developed to address modern ecosystem challenges rather they have functions similar to software already deployed in public and private sectors, hence not patronized. It’s important that developers focus more on international certification and development of qualitative and innovative software like the well celebrated Remita, eGOS and others to enhance sustainable growth. Furthermore, national strategy and government policies are urgently needed to encourage patronage of qualitative and innovative software.

References

• Akiyode-Lawanson, J. 2019. The Challenges of Software Development in Nigeria; BusinessDay Newspaper; https://businessday.ng/technology/article/the-challenges-of-software-development-in-nigeria Retrieved on: June 10, 2020
• Ekanem, B. A. 2015. Assessment of Components Stability for Modernization Using Software Maturity Index, International Journal of Scientific Research and Engineering Studies (IJSRES) 2(12) www.ijsres.com Retrieved on: March 16, 2020
• Tathagata, R. 2019. The Rise of Software Developers in Nigeria; MarketingEdgehttps://marketingedge.com.ng/the-rise-of-software- developers-in-nigeria/ Retrieved on: July 10, 2020
• WIPO 2019. Global Innovation Index 2019: WIPO, New York. www.wipo.int/global_innovation_index/en/2019 Retrieved on: July 10, 2020
• Soriyan, A. and Heeks, R. 2004. A Profile of Nigeria’s Software Industry; Manchester, UK. https://hummedia.manchester.ac.uk/institutes/gdi/publications/workingpapers/di/di_wp21.pdf Retrieved on: July 10, 2020
• Olalekan, A. S. 2005. Conducting Empirical Software Engineering Research in Nigeria: the posing problems. Proceedings of the 27th International Conference on Software Engineering. ACM, New York, pp. 633-634 https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/1062455.1062576 Retrieved on: July 10, 2020
• Akinola, S. O., Osofisan, A. O., Akinkumi, B. O. 2009. Industry Perception of the software Inspection Process: Nigeria Software Industry a Case Study. African Journal of Computer and ICT; 2(2).
• Ume, A. and Chukwurah, J. 2012. Underscoring Software Engineering Ethics in Nigeria’s fast Growing Information and Communications Technology. Asian Trans on Computers; http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.675.6051&rep=rep1&type=pdf Retrieved on: June 10, 2020
• Uzodinma, P. O. 2015. The Challenges of Software Engineering in Nigeria, the way forward; ResearchGate. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/277353930_The_challenges_of_software_engineers_in_nigeria_the_way_forward Retrieved on: 10th June, 2020
• Ekanem, B. A. and Woherem, E. 2016. Legacy Components Stability Assessment and Ranking Using Software Maturity Index, International Journal of Computer Application (IJCA), Foundation of Computer Science, USA. https://www.ijcaonline.org/archives/volume134/number13/23976-2016908157 Retrieved on: 10th June, 2020
• Sowunmi, O. Y., Misra, S., Ferdnandez-Sanz, L., Crawford, B. and Soto, R. 2016. An Empirical Evaluation of Software Quality Assurance Practices and Challenges in Nigeria; SpringerLink https://link.springer.com/article/10.1186/s40064-016-3575-5 Retrieved on: 10th June, 2020
• Ogunfuwa, I. 2019. Nigeria’s Software Industry in need of Government boos; Punch Nigeria. https://punchng.com/nigerias-software-industry-in-need-of-government-boost Retrieved on: 6th September, 2020
• Okigbo, P. 2016. Pricing, Biggest Challenge facing Local Software Developers; Vanguard Nigeria. https://www.vanguardngr.com/2016/04/pricing-biggest-challenge-facing-local-software-developers-ispon-president Retrieved on: 6th September, 2020
• Oberoi, A. 2019. Rapid Mobile App Development using Reusable, Component-based Architecture. https://guardian.ng/technology/local-software-development-as-new-engine-of-growth/ Retrieved on: July 10, 2020
• Oberoi, A. 2019. Rapid Mobile App Development using Reusable, Component-based Architecture. https://insights.daffodilsw.com/blog/rapid-mobile-app-development-using-reusable-component-based-architecture Retrieved on: 6th September, 2020.
• Ekanem, B. A. and Woherem, E. 2019. Measuring Application Stability Using Software Stability Assessment Technique. In: Arai K., Kapoor S., Bhatia R. (eds) Intelligent Computing. SAI 2018. Advances in Intelligent Systems and Computing, vol. 857. Springer, Cham. https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-030-01177-2_32 Retrieved on: July 10, 2020