But can the region fix its education system and ensure its youthful talent pool can capitalise on the opportunities of the 21st century digital economy?

According to Titilayo Adewumi, managing director at SAP West Africa, bold steps toward educational reform are needed to promote improved learning outcomes and ensure the region an capitalise on the opportunities presented by abundant population growth.

“Technology should play a central and guiding role in enhancing education systems in West Africa. In Nigeria, for example, Edo state has launched a new system approach that leverages digital technologies to improve teaching and learning,” she said.

Challenges with education persist

With much of the developed world facing ageing populations and slowing population growth, Africa is expected to play a central role in the global labour market. The working age population in Sub-Saharan Africa will more than double in the next 30 years, accounting for more than two-thirds of total global population growth.

However, despite Africa’s youthful population, only 9% of children in sub-Saharan Africa that enrol in primary school make it to tertiary education, and only 6% graduate.

Mobolaji Abubakre Ogunlende, Commissioner at Nigeria’s Ministry of Youths and Social Development, says:

“In West Africa, and by extension, Lagos, only a fraction of children who start in primary school make it to tertiary education and even fewer manage to graduate. The root of this issue lies in the inefficiencies that plague our education systems, including the lack of digital transformation, which forces millions of students to compete for limited spaces in in-person educational institutions.”

Adewumi adds,

“A lack of digital transformation in West African education systems means millions of students have to travel long distances to physically collect transcripts instead of simply accessing digital copies online.”

Climate change is adding a further dimension to the region’s education challenges. The impact of droughts, floods, fires, heavy rain and heatwaves on education infrastructure can impact school attendance rates and dropout rates.

One study estimates climate change could keep more than 12 million girls in lower-income countries from completing their education every year from as soon as 2025. 

Bold steps needed

Experts are calling for bold action to address the region’s education challenges.

The World Bank’s Western and Central Africa Education Strategy 2022-2025, for example, brings top education leaders and experts together to advance the cause of education in the region. This strategy also sees investment of $3-billion into the education portfolio, with an additional $2-billion in the pipeline.

According to UNICEF’s strategy for enhancing education in Central and West Africa, the region’s education sector should focus on four key priority areas, namely:

• Access to education for all children, including an expansion of early learning programmes, vocational training, and national data production;
• Quality learning through improved teaching skills, quality standards, life skills programmes and early learning assessments;
• Girls’ education through programmes that support girls’ achievements in and through education; and
• Education in emergencies, especially for children living in conflict or disaster zones, where school safety, psychosocial support and information management are critical.

Private sector support critical

Adewumi says the private sector can play a critical role in enhancing education systems and outcomes in the region. “By investing in education and skills development initiatives, the private sector can also ensure it has access to the skills it needs to succeed and grow.”

Research conducted by SAP revealed an acute tech skills shortage in the region, with only 3% of organisations saying they don’t expect to have significant tech skills challenges in 2023.

More than nine in ten organisations (93%) also said the need for tech skills has increased in the past 12 months, with two-thirds of Nigerian organisations saying he need for tech skills has increased significantly.

To help organisations in the region address the tech skills shortage, SAP introduced the SAP Dual Study Program, which partners with top universities to take talented graduates into SAP-specific training and help them bridge the gap between university and the workplace.

Commissioner Ogunlende says:

“Undeniably, government infrastructure and programs are needed to adequately provide efficiencies not only by increasing conventional capacity but also leveraging on the capacity of private-run programs like the SAP Dual Study Program and the SAP Young Professionals Program that have demonstrated the positive impact of private sector engagement in youth educational programs. By creating a multi-pronged assault on the issue, we can make significant in-roads in upskilling our population. These are some of the plans we would be unfolding in the next set of months in partnership with SAP.”

The SAP Young Professionals Program provides a two- to three-month enablement plan that includes SAP software functional and technical knowledge. Graduates receive certification from SAP and exit the program as Associate Consultants, making them instantly employable within the broader SAP partner and customer ecosystem.

This model creates benefits across the board: youth develop industry-ready skills and secure suitable job opportunities; SAP partners and customers gain access to much-needed talent; countries benefit from the digital skills created; and SAP itself strengthens its own ecosystem.

“By making timely investments into strengthening the West African education system, the region can more readily benefit from its abundant youth skills,” says Adewumi. “However, considering pervasive challenges with access to quality education outcomes, organisations in the public and private sectors must come together to design suitable programmes that can accelerate youth skills development. Done correctly, this investment will pay dividends for decades to come.”

According to Titilayo Adewumi, Managing Director for West Africa at SAP, the past few years have seen a sharp increase in the adoption of cloud technologies among West African enterprises. “The digital transformation of organisations in the region is supported by powerful cloud technologies. Organisations adopting cloud are realising greater scalability, improved data and analytics capabilities, enhanced innovation and greater flexibility to adapt to disruption or emerging opportunities. Ably supported by a growing ecosystem of expert partners, organisations in the region are taking bold steps to becoming cloud-enabled intelligent enterprises that can stand shoulder-to-shoulder with top global companies.”

She adds that, due to legacy underinvestment in technology, organisations in West Africa have a golden opportunity to leapfrog several technology adoption stages and reengineer their business models using the latest cloud technologies. “Cloud technologies are helping organisations replace manual processes, improve staff retention, and achieve greater agility in how they respond to opportunities and threats.”

Cloud adoption driven by benefits, challenges

A 2020 study into cloud adoption in Africa found that the main benefits of cloud adoption for West African organisations were greater business efficiency (63%), agility or operational flexibility (63%), improved customer service (43%) and increased speed or time-to-market (60%). 

According to Adewumi, the growing adoption of cloud is driven by four main factors: the need to adapt to new hybrid work models; the changing needs and expectations of customers; ongoing disruption from new technologies; and the influence of a powerful ecosystem of partners that are taking advantage of the commercial opportunities offered by cloud technologies.

“SAP works closely with expert partners in the region to ensure West African organisations have the technology and business support they need to drive successful cloud-enabled digital transformation,” says Adewumi. “This is helping organisations reimagine human capital management, exceed customer demands, adapt to the impact of new disruptive technologies and become more sustainable and successful.”

According to Adewumi and several key technology partners in the region, these are three of the main drivers of cloud adoption in West Africa:

1. New models of work

One of the most disruptive factors for companies following the pandemic is building new capabilities to manage and enable a remote or hybrid workforce. 

C2G Consulting’s Lauretta Oshomoh says the main digital transformation focus for their customers is human capital management. “Cloud is key to any digital transformation initiative and can help organisations manage their growing remote workforce. Cloud is also a vital way to reach customers and employees.”

Adewumi adds that organisations are also focusing on designing consistent, high-quality employee experiences to aid workplace productivity and talent retention. “A study by Forrester commissioned by SAP, Qualtrics and EY found that the number of HR decision-makers that said employee experience (EX) is the most important aspect of their HR strategy had nearly tripled over the past two years, with EX budgets almost doubling in the same period.”

Michael A Ogunlade, IT Transformation Consultant at EY cites the remote work exodus resulting from the pandemic as a transformation driver for cloud adoption. “Companies are leveraging cloud technologies to enhance their external and internal collaboration and improve their capacity planning and workforce management in a new world of work.”

2. Changing customer needs

It’s not only employee expectations that have shifted over the past few years; customers today demand greater flexibility and personalisation, combined with exceptional customer experiences.

“Companies are having to explore new ways of reaching and engaging with customers,” explains Adewumi. “Today, empowered consumers demand consistent customer experiences and high degrees of personalisation, forcing companies to leverage data and analytics capabilities enhanced by cloud technologies.”

Oluwole Oyeniran, Enterprise Technology & Performance Leader at Deloitte, cites cloud’s role in engaging consumers and customers in new ways. “Organisations that leverage cloud technologies are unlocking new capabilities including digital-first sales and customer service, more customer-centric marketing, and seamless customer engagement through digital self-service, chatbots and digital assistants.”

EY’s Michael A Ogunlade adds that one of the main habits of digital transformation leaders is their focus on customers first and foremost. “Cloud solutions are becoming increasingly important for companies to respond to changing market conditions and increase efficiencies. Successful cloud deployments can unlock greater customer value through high consumer-centricity, better customer experiences, and higher levels of customer loyalty and satisfaction.”

3. Ecosystem of expert integrators

According to Adewumi, one of the major drivers of greater cloud adoption in the region is the role of expert partners and integrators that have both the technology skills and market insights to help organisations drive successful digital transformation projects. “A growing ecosystem of experienced implementation partners are helping organisations in the region overcome obstacles to digital transformation, in the process helping improve the region’s global competitiveness.”

Technology partners are also realising immense business benefits from driving cloud adoption in the region. C2G Consulting’s Lauretta Oshomoh says their partnership with SAP allows them access to development resources, demand generation tools and enablement services. “Being partners with SAP gives customers a level of comfort and confidence in the services we render.”

According to Deloitte’s Oluwole Oyeniran, West African companies leveraging the partnership between Deloitte and SAP for their digital transformation gain access to a range of benefits. “Companies can use our combined capabilities to leverage proven, scalable solutions built on modern architecture, improved delivery capacity and capability, and unlock inherent analytics capabilities, all driven by proven digital transformation architecture and methods.”

Business leaders today are digitising with haste, seeking to enhance products and services, future-proof their businesses, drive innovation, and improve customer experiences.

While governments in West Africa strive to undo the damage wrought by the pandemic and implement policies to boost economic growth in the region, business leaders have their hands full dealing with widespread uncertainty and disruption. 

However, West African enterprises face a golden opportunity to accelerate their digital transformation efforts and build globally competitive business models that can unlock revenue growth through innovation and efficiency gains.

One Harvard Business study singled out Nigeria as a country of untapped opportunities for growth in digital technology adoption, citing the country’s immense start-up ecosystem and powerful economy as key potential drivers of greater digitalisation.

Building intelligent West African enterprises

For any modern business, one of the most important drivers of digital technology adoption is the attainment of intelligent enterprise capabilities. 

An intelligent enterprise can consistently apply advanced technologies and best practices with agile and integrated business processes to solve problems or take advantage of new opportunities. It uses powerful technologies to collect insights about customers, partners, and employees to uncover trends and opportunities, and seamlessly blends new tools such as AI to take better decisions that accelerate the achievement of broader business objectives.

Intelligent enterprises share several common traits, including:

• Agility and responsiveness, which ensures employees can respond to challenges with intelligent decision-making.
• Real-time adaptiveness that drives better business outcomes by improving decision-making with real-time data and intelligence.
• Collaboration and integration across the enterprise, ensuring organisations can build and engage a global network of suppliers, skills, and supply chains.
• Innovation, driven by data and emerging technologies to enable quick scaling.

For West African businesses, achieving intelligent enterprise capabilities will help build greater resilience against disruptions while unlocking accurate real-time decision-making at scale. 

By having access to the right technology to drive improvements across their operations, intelligent enterprises can accelerate the pace at which they innovate, remove friction from customer experiences, better attract and retain hybrid workforces, and gain greater visibility over end-to-end business processes.

For many business and IT leaders, however, understanding where they are on the road to achieving intelligent enterprise capabilities – and what steps need to be taken to get there – can be tricky.

Business-Transformation-as-a-Service supporting business efforts

The immense pace of change in all areas of trade is one of the biggest challenges facing modern business leaders. The past few years have only served as further proof that change is the only constant in our current business environment.

Business-Transformation-as-a-Service has emerged as a powerful tool to help companies keep up with the pace of change and deal with complexity more effectively. 

SAP’s Rise with SAP programme, for example, offers companies a rich suite of products and services designed to accelerate digital transformation, no matter where the business is on their journey toward becoming an intelligent enterprise. 

Rise with SAP offers companies a powerful suite of market-leading technology, the power and scalability of the cloud, and a vibrant ecosystem of partners to accelerate digitalisation efforts and build more efficient and resilient businesses.

West African companies from leading soft drink manufacturers to consumer goods companies are leveraging Business-Transformation-as-a-Service to become intelligent enterprises, unlocking vast business benefits along the way that include:

• The ability to manage huge data sets through intelligent ERP systems that integrate data sets with powerful analytics for real-time insights.
• Greater agility through intelligent decision-making that is powered by real-time data-driven insights.
• Improved availability of data to decision-makers as well as better integration of extensions such as IoT devices.
• Visibility across business processes that encourages greater collaboration within the organisation as well as with external suppliers and partners.
• Greater scalability through leveraging cloud technologies, allowing the business to enter new markets while maintaining standardised business processes.

With the correct investment into new technologies, West African enterprises can build greater resilience against disruption while eliminating uncertainty from their business environment. 

And with the introduction of Business-Transformation-as-a-Service supported by a rich ecosystem of expert partners, West African enterprises have a golden opportunity to gain new capabilities that will enable their success and growth for years to come.