In many parts of the world today in efforts to curb the spread of Corona virus many governments are taking measures that will encourage social distancing and self-isolation, such as quarantine, working remotely, and banning gatherings that draw crowds of people, however, in Nigeria, is it possible that social distancing would work with the challenges faced in technology?
As we all can attest to, here in Nigeria there are problems of inconsistent power supply, network speed, costs of data, and digital literacy. Not everyone has a solution to this, not everyone has a generator, or can afford data/Wi-Fi, and not everyone is plugged in and online or knowledgeable of how that works.
Many people in this country still heavily rely on person-to-person (P2P) interactions and being face-to-face. Take for example, banking. Think about the country’s level of financial literacy. A lot of people don’t use mobile banking; a lot of people don’t have smartphones to use banking apps.
One may say it is only technology establishments that can fully work remotely since they know of and can use helpful tools to support effective remote work.
Evidence to this is in how Twitter, Facebook, Amazon, Google, Microsoft, and LinkedIn have told workers to work from home.
In Nigeria, Paystack, Carbon, and BuyCoins have activated full remote work from March 19th until second week in April as COVID-19 nears escalation. Mark Essien the CEO of Hotels.ng announced that he was putting into place plans to prepare his staff for remote work.
Some days ago, CcHub suspended activities in its co-working spaces and hubs until further notice.
However, other companies like Tek Experts, an IT solutions firm and Microsoft Office partner in Nigeria have said that their staff cannot work remotely due to the nature of their job and the peculiarity of the work tools they use.
Likewise, eCommerce outfit Konga in a joint response with Zinox Technologies, it’s parent company, said “staff predominantly have to be physically present at the offices and other areas of operations”.
The question is how will most small businesses, entrepreneurs, and individuals survive at a time like this? And even if social distancing by way of working remotely can work in Lagos and Abuja, would it work as well in other states?
What are your thoughts?
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