If I said to you that a devalued Naira is a blessing, you’d probably turn towards me yelling “your fada” with as much venom as a village cobra. But if you think about it deeply and understand a few things, this tough pill might be a lot easier to swallow.
Since time immemorial, Nigerians have always valued a strong Naira. My mum regaled me with stories of N1 getting $2 on the streets of Lagos; those were the days chicken went for dentals. However, the Naira has been on a free fall since; plummeting faster than a falling rock. Because we import everything, the fall means life is difficult for the average Nigerian Joe.
So, it’s almost foolhardy convincing Nigerians that a devalued Naira can be a good thing.
How can a weak Naira even be a good thing?
Let’s start with the internet.
The internet aids the average Nigerian’s discoverability
It’s one of those things that our politicians and money bags haven’t been able to ruin, per se. With the internet, every Nigerian has a chance to sell their services and even goods across the globe without leaving their homes in Ilorin or Kaura Namoda. As long as you have something to sell.
The internet makes every one of us discoverable – competing with everyone in the world, irrespective of the corner of the earth where they are holed up. All you have to do is be on the right platform and showcase your quality. With the right keywords, your services could be found by anyone in any country.
Being found is one thing, after all, others are being found in other countries as well. But with our weak Naira, converted to USD, suddenly, your services and goods can now be found at a bargain.
The opportunities exist …
If you think you have to export something physical, you are missing the point of globalization. Every soft skill can be sold as a service online.
As a writer, you could get access to tons of writing gigs online. Software developers are in high demand especially when you share the same time zone as Europe where the demand for engineers is so hot it could melt a stone; content creators are being sought after from every part of the globe. Global firms are in need of designers, virtual assistants, analysts, etc. The world is quite literally your playground.
Slow your roll …
Granted, these opportunities exist and are ripe for the taking but only those who are ready to put in the work and understand the right kind of work to put in will go home smiling; tapping into these openings won’t be a piece of cake. A lot is required, the stakes are higher and the competition pool is deeper.
Let’s start with the basic requirement being a constant access to good internet (our service providers are chuckling at this one). In this Digital Age, internet access has rightly established itself as a need but we haven’t quite hacked the model for providing good and affordable unlimited internet services just yet. Perhaps, internet connectivity should get in line for a fix behind it’s older brother, electricity. But that’s not to say we don’t have a couple of reliable providers keeping Nigerians connected to the global village.
It goes without saying (but I’ll still say it) that when trying to tap into the global market, lowering the communication barrier is important; your command of English, the global lingua franca, must be impeccable. proper articulation can be quite advantageous – whether in your speech or writing. Speak well, speak clearly and apply the same to your writing. People recognizing your genius rests heavily on you being able to communicate it.
Beyond the basic requirements or the skills you have, being professional, responsible and having a keen eye for quality can really put you over the top. Resist that urge to tell your clients to “manage it” when you have produced subpar work; the global market is not as forgiving of mediocrity as we have somehow learnt to tolerate as Nigerians. Be open and flexible; continuous improvement should be your holy grail.
And my personal favorite, being accountable makes you even more attractive in the market; don’t disappear on your clients or give excuses after the fact; instead, let them know ahead of time if there will be any deviations or if you will be unavailable for a while; trust is everything, especially when building a borderless proposition.
What’s in it for you? Money.. And that’s just the start
In some twisted way, this is perhaps one of the few times a devalued currency can serve its intended purpose; the foremost economic logic behind a weaker currency is that it makes a country’s exports cheaper and more competitive in the foreign market – this is supposed to serve as an incentive that boosts exports. The economic quagmire we seem to have found ourselves in is: a weaker currency, a struggling commodity exports economy which is also highly import-dependent (shedding premium tears).
The silver lining here is that our human capital exports seem to be thriving and this is perhaps the loophole with which Nigerians are taking advantage of a weaker Naira whilst they patiently wait for the country to heal itself.
The pay from working abroad can be amazing. N200,000 here as a writer, could seamlessly be $2,000 net from working remotely; N400,000 as a developer could be $5,000 and a designer could knock off about $500 per good design, and that’s about one every couple of days… do the math.
And my grandma said
Bi a gun iyan ninu ewe; ti a se’be ninu epo epa. Eni to ma yo ma yo.
(cha ching!)
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It was quite interesting reading this and the points were so finely articulated. I’m almost won over with this perspective. Thank you for sharing.
I see your point, but I don’t quite agree with you. And this is because prices of commodities keep skyrocketing and purchasing power keeps going down. Non-Fx earners who trade in commodity goods don’t earn in dollars and so they do not live in that reality, and so after I have earned money in dollars, I will still come and buy stuff at outrageous prices from them. At the end of the day, we are back to where we started, at point zero.
If we make the argument about earning as much $2k, how many people in Nigeria have the skills or capacity to earn that. Scratch that, what is the percentage of people who have access to internet infrastructure to even read this well-worded article, let alone get jobs outside the country that can pay well enough to impact the economy. I think these solutions are great, but they can be likened to taking pain killers without addressing the root cause of the pain.