Benchmark

Derek Coleman

June 6, 2021

A current issue that Nigeria is dealing with is restrictions on humanitarian access in the Northeast. Currently all humanitarian agencies can only operate inside government-controlled areas and must go through a length process to obtain authorization for various things like moving personnel, cash, and cargo relief materials (World Report 2021). This issue effects the whole population of Nigeria, especially the poorest. These individuals are located in the northeast region of Nigeria. Due to COVID-19, everyone nationwide suffered. During the lockdown periods Nigeria’s GDP suffered about 34.1 percent, which equals $16 billion USD (Andam, 2020). Two-thirds of the lost was from the service sector, while the agriculture sector suffered 13.1 percent, which equals to $1.2 billion USD. Households lost an average of 33 percent of their incomes with the heaviest losses occurring in rural non-farm and for urban households. These impacts meant a 14 percent temporary increase on the poverty headcount for Nigeria, meaning an additional 27 million people fell below the poverty line. The economy is on is slowly recovering but has yet to reach where it was.

Technology has advanced over time and allows or assist with the effectiveness of varies issues that arise. Having resources can help facilitation reasonable solutions for your issues. It is hard to get around humanitarians going around the government approved places and allow them in the region, but one of the best solutions would be for mobile application, chatbots and social media. These devices can make people more aware of what is going on. “According to the latest data from Pew Research, around 71 percent of people get their news input from social media platforms” (Hutchinson, 2021). With these statistics it gives the humanitarian groups a greater advantage because they are not having to worry about solely the new outlets promoting their cause. With this they will be able to reach more people, therefore making them aware of their cause and the issues they face expanding into the Northeastern region of Nigeria. This will also decrease their cost associated with promotion of their cause. To advertise on social media is relatively free to minimum in cost so they will be able to reach a lot more people or organization than normally would be. On social media people are able to share the news more quickly and effectively than the news. People are constantly looking and updating their feeds, so the news is traveling all times of day and night versus just at certain times on the news platforms.

Chatbots, which is part of AI is in the peak of inflated expectations and trough of disillusionment stage of the hype cycle. Mobile applications and social media are both can be deemed to be in the slope of enlightenment or plateau of productivity. This is thought of because new applications and social media products are constantly being developed. The idea is not necessarily new but the need is new.

The 6 D’s of exponential organization are: digitized, deceptive, disruptive, demonetized, dematerialized and democratized. Digitized information is easy to access, share and distribute and can spread the spread of the internet. Once something has been digitized the initial period of growth is deceptive because exponential trends do not seem to grow fast. The existing market is disrupted by the new market of exponential technology. Money is increasingly removed from the equation as the technology becomes cheaper and sometimes becoming free. In dematerialized stage separate physical products are removed from the equation (Ramirez, 2018). Convergence is thought of as the catch-up effect in economics. This is when the poorer economies per capita incomes will grower faster than the richer economies. In the case of Nigeria, I do not believe this is applicable, but the poorer economies growth can increase from their current stage (Kenton, 2021). “The law of diminishing marginal returns, the idea that as a country invest and profits, the amount gained from the investment will eventually decline as the level of investment rises” (Kenton, 2021). Higher income countries averaged 1.6 percent GDP growth in 2019, versus 3.6 percent for middle-income and 4 percent for growth in low-income countries (Kenton, 2021).

Innovations can resolve the issue that we may face in the future due to technologies. Nigeria is behind in developing new technologies and depends on other countries to create these technologies for them to use. Unfortunately, these technologies are not really available to the poorer nations and they have to depend on others to promote and let others knows about it.

There are multiple multinational companies (MNC) in Nigeria, mostly in oil and gas such as Shell, Chevron, Mobil, Total & Halliburton but also, they have Nestle. These companies can help spread awareness. “Most economies believe that the MNC’s are exploitative as natural resource found in developing countries such as Nigeria meant for its development goals are not productively utilized due to de-capitalization of the economy in form of profit repatriation (Eluka, 2016). The principal objective of MNC’s is to secure the least costly production of good for world markets (Eluka, 2016). Multinational corporations have spurred the economics activities Nigeria by transferring technology directly to their foreign-owned subsidiaries and indirectly to their domestic enterprises in host countries. This creates employment opportunities to assist with the standard of living in host countries (Abimbola, 2015). Also, MNC’s can spread the awareness with the large platform. Since they have such a large standing national, they can spread the word to others, and promote issues. They can even do something like match donations to get the issues address quicker.

References

Abimbola, O. S., & Dele, A. O. (2015). Multinational Corporations and Economic Development in Nigeria. American Journal of Environmental Policy and Management, 1(2). https://doi.org/http://www.aascit.org/journal/ajepm

Andam, Kwaw S.; Edeh, Hyacinth; Oboh, Victor; Pauw, Karl; and Thurlow, James. 2020. Estimating the economic costs of COVID-19 in Nigeria. NSSP Working Paper 63. Washington, DC: International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI). https://doi.org/10.2499/p15738coll2.133846

Eluka, J., Uzoamaka, N.-O. P., & Ifeoma, A. R. (2016, November 9). Multination Corporation and Their Effects on Nigerian Economy.

Hutchinson, A. (2021, January 12). New Research Shows that 71% of Americans Now Get News Content via Social Platforms. Social Media Today. https://www.socialmediatoday.com/news/new-research-shows-that-71-of-americans-now-get-news-content-via-social-pl/593255/.

Kenton, W. (2021, May 30). Catch-Up Effect Definition. Investopedia. https://www.investopedia.com/terms/c/catch-up-effect.asp.

Ramirez, V. B. (2018, March 19). The 6 Ds of Tech Disruption: A Guide to the Digital Economy. Singularity Hub. https://singularityhub.com/2016/11/22/the-6-ds-of-tech-disruption-a-guide-to-the-digital-economy/.

World Report 2021: Rights Trends in Nigeria. Human Rights Watch. (2021, January 13). https://www.hrw.org/world-report/2021/country-chapters/nigeria#.