Àgbà búra bí èwé ò bá ṣe é rí

One of my employees recently resigned without giving notice; She worked at Lendsqr for 18 months before serving me breakfast. She was fantastic in her first year with us but struggled terribly in her last six months. 

She just woke up one day and left. 

It was so sudden and I was livid! It felt like liquid rage was coursing through my veins. Luckily, common sense prevailed if not I could have ended up with a stroke 🤣.

But then, I kept thinking about her. This employee was genuinely excellent. So, what went wrong? 

I was extremely upset and disappointed and in that state, my mind immediately reached for the Gen Zs and millennials are lazy narrative:“Young people today aren’t serious!” “They’re entitled!” “Something must be wrong with them!”  In my time …

… and that’s when a Yoruba saying hit me: “Àgbà búra bí èwé ò bá ṣe é rí”—elder, swear if you were never young (and a little foolish). It stopped me in my tracks. There was nothing different “in my time”. I was young once and I was foolish. Very foolish.

Big-ups to those who survived the storm that was my youth

I’ve worked in financial services since chicken had teeth and I have a decent enough reputation. Everybody knows I keep my word. If I make you a promise, you can take it to the bank. It’s not motivated by some noble ideal; I’m just too proud and allergic to getting sh*t from anyone to imagine that I could give a promise and not keep it. 

I’m very dedicated to my work and when I started out in banking this paid off. It took me only six and a half years to move from entry level to a senior manager even though I didn’t have a godfather paving the way for me. This was no small feat. I know my stuff and people know that I do but the truth is, this wasn’t always the case and even when it appeared like this, it wasn’t the full story. 

There’s another side to me that most people don’t know.

I started out as an NYSC intern in Standard Trust bank and I gave them hell—I was unruly, disrespectful, and even appeared before the disciplinary committee after which I was given a final warning. Obviously,  I was not retained after my service year ended. I’m sure they were ecstatic to finally be rid of me. I was happy to go as well but I was even happier to leave them with a flaming bag of sh*t to clean up as a parting “gift”. Before I left, I deleted the CSS of the intranet I built when I was leaving. Oops 🙈

I was 24 years old, and it should be clear to you by now that I had no common sense.

This wasn’t the only time I showed myself. I was on a roll for about another decade. Back-to-back hits (well, misses, now that I look back on how terrible I was to others):

While waiting for a proper job after my National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) year, I got a job working at a cyber cafe. I can’t remember what the last straw for my employer was then but one day he just got so mad and fired me. 

I took this foolishness into my marriage as well. My ex-wife is an amazing woman and I tell this to my kids all the time. I did some really stupid things I’ll forever be sorry for but that’s not for me to write about here. 

Fast forward to my more senior role in SystemSpecs; I was so annoying! But maybe they endured me because I was good at my job. Evidently, I left.

My point is that when I think about this young lady who left me by the side of the road  without the courtesy of giving notice, I remember my own level of wisdom and behavior at her age and I know that placed side by side with her, she’s a saint compared to who I was. 

Brilliance is no reason to be an a**hole, neither is stupidity

Being great at your job doesn’t make up for your being a terrible human being. It’s a hard truth, but some of the people you’ll work with will be downright stupid. Maybe they’ll change, maybe they won’t. But here’s the thing, we’ve all been there. At some point, we were absolute idiots ourselves. Some people (not me) might have even started out good and lost their way; others started out as complete screw-ups (yes, like me) and turned it around.

I’m not a Christian, but there’s truth in that message “let he who is without sin cast the first stone”. If Jesus were a Yoruba man, specifically from Ilesha in Osun state, he probably might have framed that message with a bit more oomph, like the title of this piece. Maybe Jesus needs steez?

Therefore, my dear congregation, let’s be more forgiving to people, especially young people still figuring their sh*t out. There was a time when I couldn’t stand people who left Lendsqr but now, I could even take some of them back (of course, terms and conditions apply; like swearing before Ògún that they would behave themselves). I think people can change, or at least, grow up and become less foolish. 

Despite my discipline, focus, and professionalism today, I’ll admit I was incredibly stupid as a young man—more stupid than most people I know. So yes, I think young people should be given chances to redeem themselves when, not if, but definitely when they mess up

However! Let’s not confuse this with giving people a license to be idiots or take on jobs they’re not prepared for.

To the good people who’ve left Lendsqr, if you can prove that your head is now okay, the door isn’t entirely closed. This message isn’t for all of you though. There are still some people I wouldn’t take back even if God Himself put a gun to my head.

Why? 

Because while youthful stupidity might be temporary, a rotten core is forever. And I’m nobody’s savior.

Nigeria’s 200m+ population is a scam

Nigerians recently got a massive shock about something that some of us in the industry already knew to be true for years: Glo’s subscriber numbers were always nothing but a mirage.

Quite a number of us had always suspected Glo’s touted customer base to be ghosts or ogbanje subscribers. But this only became glaring when the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) enforced its rule that a phone line would only be considered to be active only if it’s been used within the last three months. After this, Glo’s numbers fell from the sky. Their reported active subscribers dropped from 62.1 million to 19.1 million. 

Crazy, right? Absolutely. It had everyone wondering what the hell happened.

But for those of us who’ve been in the industry long enough, it wasn’t exactly surprising. Glo’s numbers never seemed to add up and it was easy to see they weren’t being truthful. It was probably easiest for those in banking to uncover this ruse faster than others—phone numbers tied to banking services for SMS alerts, or even alerts for other everyday services, are usually people’s most important  numbers. And for those who get to see things from the inside, when you analyze the breakdown, most of those numbers customers provide are MTN numbers, followed by Airtel, then some Glo, and if you look with a microscope, you’ll find a few 9mobile customers.

Funny enough, six or seven years ago, you’d probably have seen more 9mobile (they were called Etisalat at the time) numbers than Glo. But this was before 9mobile (Etisalat) ran into some FX trouble and the Arabian owners dug themselves into a gilded 6-foot grave. When we pair the NCC’s directive with Isa Pantami’s enforcement of the National Identification Number (NIN) policy (every phone line needs to be linked to the user’s NIN in order to remain active), Glo’s drop was inescapable. With 156 million active lines in Nigeria today, and many Nigerians owning more than one phone line, the truth about telcos’ inflated subscriber figures is out in the open now.

But the thing is that nobody cares what caused Glo’s numbers to decline so dramatically. That’s not the real story here. The real story is that this scandal is part of a larger pattern of exaggeration when it comes to numbers in Nigeria: how rich a guy is; a girl’s body count; and the population of Nigeria.

Glo’s scandal merely mirrors the bigger issue; that just like Glo, Nigeria’s population figures have also been bloated for the longest time.

In Nigeria, the numbers will look you in the eye and tell you the dirtiest lies ever. Don’t be deceived. 

Nigeria 2006 census results (by geo-political zone)

Geo-political ZonesPopulation (million)Percentage of Population
North-Central 20.314.51%
North-East18.913.52%
North-West35.925.58%
South-East16.311.68%
South-South21.014.99%
South-West27.719.74%
Northern Zones75.253.60%
Southern Zones65.146.40%

Nigeria total projected population (2006 – 2022)

YearsProjected population
2006140,431,790
2007144,636,162
2008148,987,688 
2009153,408,431 
2010157,898,421 
2011162,450,998
2012167,054,454
2013171,704,412
2014176,438,990 
2015181,248,792
2016186,121,277 
2017191,053,912
2018196,042,933
2019201,135,262
2020206,283,338
2021211,493,324
2022216,783,381

Sources: 

National Population Commission, National Bureau of Statistics, Demographic Statistics Bulletin 2022, Dataphyte

There are only 138 million people in Nigeria!

About five/six years ago, Prof. Olayinka David-West introduced me to Tunde Akin Moses and Chidinma Okaniru who were both MBA students at Lagos Business School (LBS), to conduct an intriguing research project to take a closer look at Nigeria’s population numbers and find a plausible figure for the total population in the country. The conclusion of our research was that despite what the official figures claimed, Nigeria’s population shouldn’t have exceeded 138 million at that time.

The major red flag was the year-on-year consistency of regional population ratios. Nigeria hasn’t conducted a census since 2006, yet the figures follow a predictable pattern. Compare this with other countries which conduct censuses every 10 years or, even better, rely on accurate records of births and deaths to track their populations. Nigeria, however, seems to keep projecting numbers without accounting for the significant demographic and economic shifts.

Just pause for a moment and think about the changes over the last few decades: significant urbanization over the last 40 years, increased rural-urban migration as people continue to seek access to better service coverage and economic opportunities, and young people emigrating in droves, AKA japa.

The population projections we rely on are based on the 2006 census which was probably an exaggeration. Even then, there were suspicions and the Governor of Lagos State at that time, Bola Ahmed Tinubu, openly challenged the census results, commissioning one for Lagos, which estimated 17.1 million people—roughly the same as the reported population for Kano. How??

Let’s do some quick population maths

Today, we have about 156 million reported active phone numbers, so let’s break that down. Many Nigerians own more than one SIM card, so if we assume an average of 1.5 numbers per person, we’re looking at around 100 million individuals using phones. SIM cards are so cheap and accessible that almost everyone has a phone line.

If we estimate that nearly every Nigerian aged 13 and above has a phone, that gives us around 100 million adults and another 10–20 million children and with a buffer, Nigeria’s population should logically fall somewhere around 130 million. So where did we get this 200+ million we keep reciting? These aren’t definitive numbers, these are my conclusions based on observable trends and logic, not a blind acceptance of official claims. I stand to be corrected but you can read more about how I arrived at this figure before you come for me.

The reality is that Nigeria’s population might not be as large as we’ve been told, and the telco data provides a new lens to scrutinize these figures. 

Why inflate population figures …

Especially when it makes our GDP per capita look worse? 

The short answer is: incentives. Let me break it down:

Allocation of resources and national benefits

In Nigeria, population figures are tied to the distribution of national resources. The number of local governments, House of Representatives seats, and even federal revenue allocation are linked to population size per region. A region with a higher reported population typically receives more funding for infrastructure, healthcare, education, and other essential services, so they may inflate their figures to secure a larger share of the national moi-moi.

Financial incentives

Beyond resource allocation, there’s a financial motivation for inflating population figures. At its core, this is about influence and control. Larger populations mean more political power, which translates into more opportunities to direct financial benefits toward a region or group. Politicians and policymakers from areas with inflated populations can use these numbers to lobby for more projects, grants, etc.

Influence on election outcomes

Elections in Nigeria rely heavily on population figures to determine the distribution of polling units, voter registration, and voting power. Regions with inflated numbers can justify a larger number of registered voters and secure more polling units, making it easier to influence election outcomes.

Attractiveness to international organizations for funding and aid

On the international stage, a larger population creates the impression of a country with significant needs, making it more attractive to international organizations that offer funding, aid, or loans. The governments and agencies can use these higher figures to negotiate for larger financial packages, claiming these are necessary to support the growing population.

Each of these incentives creates a system where inflated population figures are actively pursued and instead of addressing the country’s real demographic needs, the numbers are propped up to serve political agendas.

Nigeria is worse off as the giant of Africa: Let’s shrink to grow

Contrary to what those at the helm of affairs believe, we’d actually be better off if Nigeria’s population turned out to be smaller than what we’ve been led to believe. Here’s why:

For starters, some of our vanity metrics would improve. Per capita GDP, for instance, would likely double. Of course, this won’t immediately make our lives better, but it would significantly enhance Nigeria’s economic outlook; which could open up new opportunities for us.

A smaller population figure also means fewer resources are needed to support everyone and a better chance at improving the overall quality of life.

Right now, Nigeria’s actual population is probably around 60% of the reported numbers. A proper census will reveal the truth and help us to make more informed decisions as a nation. Accurate data is critical for planning, and policy formulation that genuinely address our needs.

For this to happen, we’d need a well-executed population census, ideally built on top of the successful  (surprise!) National ID—maybe Tinubu will decide to fund one next year. Who knows?

And when we do discover that the numbers are false, I don’t think anyone should be punished even though they lied. What’s done is done. Let’s just focus on building a better country. 

But irrespective of this long story, what I know for sure is that Nigeria’s population numbers, as they stand today, are a scam. 

I’ll be waiting for anyone who wants to tell me differently.

I automated the hell out of my boring back-office with n8n

Organizations don’t succeed because of the little things they do well; but they often fail if they don’t do such things well.. These are the minor hygiene tasks that though doing them well doesn’t necessarily do any good, but not doing them comes with significant repercussions; sometimes existential. Try skipping washing your hands for a week. You’d probably land in the hospital.

When the Bible was talking about the little foxes that spoiled the vine, trust me, it was about these tiny annoying stuff.

This becomes a catch-22 for companies, especially medium to large ones. How could they focus on what’s important without getting lost in tactical processes that don’t guarantee success even if we do them well?

Automation to the rescue!

I remember sending an email to my team a couple of years ago where I said that tactical work done with lack of automation can bring out the worst in the best of the best.

Speaking about myself, everybody knows I have the sh*ttiest, most incredibly stupid memory in the world. Half of the time when I wake up in the morning, I can’t remember my own name. I literally have a document by my bed that reminds me my name is Adedeji 🥹.

However, one of the ways I’ve solved my problem is that I figured out that I could use a digital crutch  to remind me of all my pending tasks. For this, Todoist has been pretty incredible.

This has helped me extremely as I use it to set reminders to check on my siblings, check on some elders who haven’t yet kicked the bucket, reach out to those seniors to me and even reach out to some customers and some of my employees. I know fully well that If I don’t set these reminders, I won’t be able to do these things. 

Basically, without some form of automation, I’d have been messed up.

I also noticed when I started Lendsqr that there are some incredibly great guys working with me, yet I get so upset with them because packets are getting dropped. The funniest thing is that they weren’t dropping the large, extremely important packets, but the much smaller ones like sending reports and checking system performance.  

That was when I told myself, you know what, any organization that doesn’t have a way of automating its tactical stuff will never go anywhere because they would keep dropping the “hygiene” tasks that are not so large but are highly important.

This brought me back to when I was at FCMB (I’ve worked in a million banks) and we implemented this back office automation application called Integrify. I worked on this with some amazing people and I’m always excited when I remember the bank is still using that till today. That was one of the best projects I ever worked on.

I tried to do this with every single bank or institution I ever worked in since that time like UBA and Fidelity Bank, but the cost  was always high, and no one really cared.

But I understood what it meant to be efficient, and so when I started Lendsqr, and saw the same problem, where the best people were getting dinged by customers and sometimes, me for dropping some packets, it just occurred to me that we couldn’t and wouldn’t win if there were no automations, especially for the tactical tasks.

So the question was, how would we do this?

There were a few things we worked on, such as running jobs in the database to send emails and tons of Metabase results, but that wasn’t enough for what I wanted to achieve.

We knew something had to be done.

We kept experimenting until one of us, Frogman, found n8n, an open source automation software, which we deployed and that has been one of the best things we’ve ever done.

n8n is like Zapier, though not as fancy and popular. It’s an open source software that helps you automate tasks, with plugins for almost every kind of task you wish to carry out. Fortunately, some smarty pant drank my Koolaid and joined my team so I nailed the automation initiative to her cross, to bear.

We then went on a tear and automated as many things that could move from the HR process, to Sales, Product Support, and Finance processes – It’s absolutely amazing. 

N8n was so much fun that when Bland AI was launched, we used n8n to automate our introductory calls to our customers. We also used it to remind some of the  loan defaulters at Irorun. Those usually swear for us and then never paid. Nigerian borrowers are something else 😪 

We also use it for Sales to notify my team instantly whenever a non-Nigerian lender signs so we can reach out immediately and engage on WhatsApp.

System Performance

One of the worst things that could happen to a company is having things breaking in the background and no one is aware of this. Not every customer would escalate to the team. You might just come back to realize you’ve been using your own hand to chase customers away.

At Lendsqr, we’ve had our fair share of this, finding out certain things are breaking and sending our customers away without our knowledge. While there are reports that can be sent constantly by team members, there’s just so much the team can report on. This is where n8n comes in again. We have automations that notify us when customers are complaining, when certain system metrics are lower than they should be. We automatically test our systems and report specifically on each of them to prevent stories that touch the heart.

These are just some of the examples of the use cases we have set up.

In summary, n8n is one of the best things we’ve ever done as a company and I’m looking to keep finding better ways to improve organization efficiency and provide the best experience for our customers.

SANEF is the holy grail of financial inclusion in Nigeria

Financial inclusion has always been a bone to grind in Nigeria since as far as anyone could remember. However, the big push began in Nigeria in 2012 when Nigeria developed its National Financial Inclusion Strategy (NFIS) with the aim of enhancing easy access to a broad range of financial services for Nigerians that meet their needs at an affordable cost. 

This strategy followed the alarming findings of the EFInA Access to Financial Services in Nigeria 2010 Survey, which revealed that 46.3% of the adult population in Nigeria was financially excluded with no access to formal or informal services. The survey also revealed that bank proximity was of greater concern to the rural population, 78.8% of whom were unbanked.

The vast swaths of Nigerians disenfranchised from financial services were undoubtedly concerning for key stakeholders but by 2018, the percentage of the unbanked adult population had risen to 63% from 30% in 2010. Significant, but not quite there yet. The financial inclusion movement has been on an upward trajectory, however, in the last six years, we’ve seen something truly incredible. 

Agents and Mobile Money Operators have transformed financial inclusion efforts in Nigeria and the financial ecosystem in its entirety, for good. Agency banking has been instrumental in financially including the informal sector and rural areas faster and more effectively than the brick-and-mortar branches could have done. Agent networks have been more successful in penetrating the rural communities, essentially taking banks to the people who were unable or unwilling to come to them. The latest evidence of this decisive success is Moniepoint’s newly attained unicorn status on the back of servicing the financially excluded via its agent network.

I can argue that this success can be accrued to Nigerian banks and their sometimes, reclusive invention, Shared Agent Network Expansion Facilities (SANEF).

Who is SANEF?

SANEF was created by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) and deposit money banks (DMBs); funded with the money from the 10% of Profit After Tax (PAT) that CBN mandates banks to put into an SME fund. It first started as a project in February 2018 was then formally incorporated and launched in January 2019 with Ronke Kuye, who transformed GTBank into a digital powerhouse, appointed to run it. They were already making significant moves in 2018 and I predicted that SANEF would become a surprising success. 

My digital babalawo saw it coming!

SANEF was set up to do one thing: expand the agent network to bring financial services closer to every Nigerian to increase financial access across Nigeria and set a common standard for stakeholders to be able to get this done. This is what they set out to do and they have been incredibly successful. SANEF was the driving force of the standardization of agency networks in Nigeria and they helped all the super agents to be able to connect to NIBSS and banks so agency banking could thrive like it is today.

From their inception in January 2019 to August 2024, they grew the number of agents from 83,560 to 1.92 million, with agents present in each geopolitical zone and all 774 Local Government Areas and over 3.5 billion transactions completed via agent locations in that time. From this, we have seen over 19.3 million accounts and over 20 million wallets opened at agent locations and an impressive 57.3% increase in the number of registered Bank Verification Numbers (BVNs). The agent/100,000 adult population ratio also grew from 62 to 1,810.

The explosive coverage facilitated by SANEF over the last few years validates that a significant proportion of excluded and underserved Nigerians were ready to consume financial products and services; all they needed was access.

Agency banking: the financial innovation Nigeria desperately needed

We have seen the transformation leaders in this ecosystem like Moniepoint, Opay and MTN’s MoMo have ushered in, alongside heavy hitters in SANEF’s network like PalmPay,Nomba, Fairmoney MFB, LAPO MFB, etc. It is a long list of super agents doing great stuff. These are manifestations of the work SANEF is doing, plugging the personal banking and microlending gaps that traditional banking could not hack for the formally and financially excluded.

I remember when Palmpay first entered the scene and it almost seemed like you could find a small group of Palmpay agents at every corner. If you take an Uber or Bolt ride and request for the driver’s number, almost 9 out of 10 times, they give you an Opay account number. This is the same thing with neighbourhood supermarkets and corner shops; you pull out your card to pay and it is almost always met with a Moniepoint POS.

It is also important to note that most of this was achieved with very little fancy marketing. These players created services seemingly so basic but super great, paired that with ease and access and now the numbers speak for themselves—super agents now make up 43.3% of the market.

These numbers are impressive but not all that surprising. Super agents, in collaboration with SANEF have been able to successfully execute a sustainable method for Nigeria’s financial inclusion drive; bringing financial services to the last mile customers and empowering them with access to banking and credit facilities within their immediate environment. No more travelling long distances just to wait in long queues at the few physical branches around.

This drive has been instrumental to advancing the spread of financial services, giving people easy access to money and credit for sustenance and productive activities. This improved inclusion is essential to tackling poverty, promoting economic growth and enhancing social welfare of the Nigerian populace; all of which align with the move towards achieving the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

Although the end user enjoys the most visible benefits of this strategy, financial institutions are not left out. The agency banking model offers a more cost-effective method of delivering services. Agents are a cheaper, faster and more easily accessible channel for banks as opposed to setting up physical branches. Acquiring more customers at lower costs also bodes well for their revenue figures. 

Additionally, the impact on the overall economy cannot be missed. The boots on the ground needed to continue this work means more business and employment opportunities for those who set up agency banking businesses in their communities. I am also an aggressive advocate for credit and more people being able to access credit to take care of their needs and do business, strengthens our economy and puts us on a path to prosperity. 

Unfortunately, a lot of bad things happen on Agent networks

While agency banking is a great tool for driving financial inclusion in Nigeria, this strategy is not without its fair share of human tragedies. Naturally, the use of third-parties to facilitate financial transactions exposes the institutions and end users to certain risks. Agents are typically non-bank employees with little to no experience within the formal financial systems and just enough training to operate the tools they need to deliver basic financial services. So, the expected standards of confidentiality and responsible and ethical handling of customers’ financial data are constantly threatened. Some of the consequences of this we have seen include the agent network being used as the last mile for fraud and theft, including BVN fraud.

We also cannot leave out that the major driving force for agency banking is having boots on the ground, and like all other human beings, agents can be ruthless. This was confirmed on a large scale during the Naira cash shortage earlier in 2023. Agents took advantage of this crisis to shaft Nigerians by charging exorbitant withdrawal fees that went as high as over 30%. This was the worst of it, but such exploitation still happens daily with agents who discriminate charges based on location or customer profile; charging arbitrary and unpredictable fees for transactions. 

However, with constant education, engagements and monitoring, which make up a significant part of the work SANEF is doing, we can expect the relevant culture and ethics from the formal financial sector to gradually become a part of how agents conduct their businesses within the ecosystem. 

The future of agency banking with SANEF

The journey ahead will be characterised by continued growth, however, it may slow down as the adoption of agency banking becomes more widespread and the ecosystem reaches maturity. The ecosystem can also expect bad actors to be weeded out. 

Unfortunately, this maturity means that marginal players may lose out as the market becomes more saturated. The agent networks started by catering to basic banking services, but we have seen them evolve to extend more financial services like credit, merchant payments and other use cases when combined with mobile wallets. As the ecosystem matures, the market will be met with an increase in competition and customer appetite for more advanced financial  services, which smaller players may struggle to keep up with, without substantial investment in technology and service expansion. As a result, they risk losing relevance or being phased out entirely as more established providers like the Moniepoints and Opays of this world, dominate the space.

A few years from now, the success of agency banking for business banking will be more pronounced. Although, as a result of the ecosystem’s leaning towards digital payments, agency banking providers might eventually cut out the middlemen (agents) and serve the customers and businesses initially welcomed into the ecosystem through the agent networks, directly. Fully digitized platforms for business transactions like digital storefronts and web checkouts that providers like Paystack and Flutterwave seem to have locked down, will be prominent in the future. 

SANEF has done commendable work using agency networks as a tool to increase financial inclusion in Nigeria and the populace has shown great acceptance of this model to meet their financial needs. 

However, we still have a long way to go, especially with penetrating the Northeastern region of Nigeria. But who shall bell that cat?

AI is a blessing and a curse. For Africa

As of this month, the general AI frenzy across the world would have been around for about two years. Although, in reality, AI has always been there, it’s just that the buzz around it started much later. It’s been almost two years since Open AI launched ChatGPT in November 2022, fueling a widespread popularity of AI and since then, AI technology has unveiled some mindblowing developments.

At first, I felt the trend, just like other useless problem-seeking-solutions, will fade. But it hasn’t so trust me to start experimenting. 

Being a pragmatic soul, I found some commonsense AI tools play around which include Bland AI for voice calls, Visual Electric for image generation, and Google’s ImageFX for podcasting. 

Bland AI as it allows you to have proper intelligent conversations with the tool but it still feels a little script kiddie and unpolished so I wouldn’t call it a favorite at this time; still a work-in-progress. Visual Electric was made for design and lets you generate so many images. It’s pretty amazing and this one is definitely a favorite. That’s what we currently use in my company, Lendsqr and even in Open Banking Nigeria,  instead of looking for stock images from Shutterstock or even open source images. Google ImageFX is also great and you can use that to create audio, images and maybe even videos soon. 

Do you see the big picture yet? 

In the last couple of years, AI technology has rapidly expanded to support a wide array of activities that before now, could take hours or even days of work to complete. In Lendsqr, we’re embracing this new reality and using AI to drive customer service and other activities where we’ve identified that integrating AI into the process can give us better results and free up our talent for more engaging work.

Bless AI …

As much as we can look at AI as the shiny new thing (for those who just encountered AI technology for the first time out of their television screens with ChatGPT), its rapid and widespread uptake is owed to its unmatched utility and ability to solve real problems that people like me, especially in Africa and other less developed regions, have been dealing with for years. 

The first pain is that being able to get the right type of image has always been a concern. At Lendsqr, we’re heavy on marketing because I love writing and I think it’s an effective way to get our message across to our target audience. Even on a personal level, I’ve been writing for about 23 years so I know the power of writing first hand. So, we do a lot of marketing, posting on social media, etc. and being able to get the right type of image for the markets we operate in, has always been a concern. This concern has grown most especially in recent years, where we have to be sensitive to demographic representation needs with our target audience.

The second is the high costs for image sources. We used to sign up for expensive tools like Shutterstock to access images we could use but it became clear that this came with the problem of a limited image stock. So even when you find good images, you’d realize that they’ve been used or will be used so often that if you ever meet the models by chance, say at the airport, you’d be so convinced that you know them because they’re on everyone’s billboards and social media posts. Before now, if you wanted something very creative for yourself or your brand, you’d have to shoot it. That’s also expensive and you’d probably only use the image once.

And for those who tried to escape the cost of these image sources and opted for free sources, 9.5/10 times, they were met with quality issues. Yes,there are some free sources available, but they’re not common and the quality is usually not great, or even decent enough to get by.

But AI technology came to save us from all that.

Here’s how AI technology has made my world a little brighter

Over the last year and some, we started seeing guys like DALL-E, Midjourney and Visual Electric come up with the ability to generate stunning and unique images. But many people can tell that those images are AI generated. However, they’re getting to a level where more people are getting confused, wondering if the images are AI generated or not. 

I watched this happen recently: my siblings and I were reminiscing about our mum’s old car, a blue Volkswagen Beetle, and in that wave of nostalgia, I got curious about how accurately I could reconstruct the key elements of those memories. So, I went ahead, dropped my prompt, generated an image of the car with a young lady standing by it and posted it on my WhatsApp status. Interestingly, people who know me reached out to ask if the lady was my cousin to which I responded “yes” and when pressed further to ask why they had never met her, I responded that it was because she was my AI cousin. Made for a good laugh. 

Although AI generated images may not always come out perfect, if you’re good at prompting, you can dictate what you want down to the smallest detail and master the greater creative control AI technology affords you. I envision that AI image generative tools will get so good that it might not even make sense to use stock images anymore because stock images are coming from somebody’s preconceived idea of what another person could use it for, while with AI, you get to generate images based on your specific needs.

Additionally, it definitely doesn’t hurt that AI tools are more affordable and give you more value for money. For instance, Visual Electric is dead cheap at just $16 a month for the standard version and you can even use the free version if your needs are limited or you just want to give it a try before a financial commitment. These tools create more images than you could get from stock images, and what you get is unique to you. 

Above all, I think the greatest attribute of AI technology is its ability to evolve. I was engaging with the CEO of Visual Electric recently, Colin Dunn, and he mentioned something about them working to release a version that’ll generate videos too. Amazing.

AI technology is impacting how we work in incredible ways 

At the rate we’re going, people will be able to generate tons of images that may even be better than real life. Soon, this gets to audio, music, videos, animations, and possibly, 3D. This way, people will be able to create interesting content more easily and much faster, and this obviously increases its utility for marketers.

Today, people snap photos and use filters. We know they’re using filters but nobody cares.

Just like that, a time will come when we’ll know that you’ve generated an AI image, and nobody will care—they’ll look interesting and normal.

In fact, your creativity would soon be measured from being able to use AI to generate extremely creative content.

There’s a lot of talk about AI replacing people but perhaps we also need to talk more about how it helps people become more efficient. In Lendsqr, we’re so crazy about hiring only the very best people; a lot of them are first class graduates, very highly talented people and when we assign them to do customer service jobs, they don’t like it. No brilliant person wants to go to school, just to end up doing customer service. And I’m strongly against the idea of lowering our standards to find those who maybe weren’t so great at school and want to do customer service because they think it’s easy. I want everyone who works in Lendsqr to be great and first class rated. 

So, we thought about it and instead of dumbing down the job requirements and bringing people that may not be fit for our highly intellectual environment, or making very smart people unhappy by doing mundane support jobs, we decided to increase the challenge and transform their jobs to high-level problem solving support. These guys are so smart that they’re now building tools to do the mundane jobs they don’t want to do. AI helps my people do great work.

Two-thirds of AI is a blessing and one-third is a wicked curse 

I know I’ve spent most of this piece talking about how great AI technology is but I won’t pretend to be blind to the adverse impacts this advancement will have on the way things are done, the people who do them and those who consume the output.

People are going to lose their jobs for sure, because they may not be that great, or even when they’re that great, they’re competing with something that costs less than $20 a month and can work 7 days a week, 24 hours a day. These tools are always available and they’re learning very quickly how to understand what people need.

Another unpleasant outcome is that customer support business process outsourcing (BPO) centers in India will become obsolete. And this would happen so fast that Africa may never have enough time to get a slice of this.

Also, while most of the benefits of the increased efficiency that comes with AI are clear, the overall impact on society and advancement of the human experience is still unclear. The technology is still developing, so there’s a big question mark on the quality of results and ethical concerns which can have adverse effects on the quality of decisions resulting from AI input. Can we trust AI generated data enough to make business, economic or life-altering decisions?

I admit that AI has been great for improving overall efficiency in my company but it can only go so far. There are some parts of our human experience that deserve the delicate human touch and original thinking that AI is yet to replicate. Can we objectively say that work devoid of that human touch and unique creativity is truly great? I’m not so sure. I’m a grade A tech fanatic but even I don’t leave certain things to AI. 

Regardless, the benefits outweigh the costs

While it’s true that some people will lose their jobs to this tech advancement, the beautiful thing is that generally, we’re going to be better off. The progress made with AI technology means that a lot of people today, for whom being able to have armies of people to provide support, is what has been the cap on their aspirations of building very successful global businesses, can now do so with little to no friction.

The 24/7 availability of these tools also means that businesses can expand their internal functions faster and cheaper. Even running even a one-man business is a lot easier now, with tools that can do customer support, marketing, accounting, etc.

You can also train AI faster and without incurring thousands of dollars paying for employee training courses. These tools will learn and grow much quicker than human beings which means your business and your quality of delivery can improve in much less time—your 5-year profit projections might very well be within your grasp in less than half of that time. And they’ll enable you to more easily eliminate human error to produce more consistent results over time. 

I  believe I’ve just painted the ideal growth conditions for African entrepreneurs like me. 

So, what’s holding you back?