It is fun to guess which new technologies will emerge from the shadows and, like a sleeper hit show, grab our attention

Predicting what technology will become hot this year is like predicting which TV show will be a hit.

Technologies like cryptocurrency and AI made headlines in 2017 and will continue to make news in 2018. It is more fun, however, to guess which new technologies will emerge from the shadows and, like a sleeper hit show, grab our attention. Here are some :

1. Vernacular Apps

Nigeria, one of the fastest-growing global smartphone market. The first wave of new users has reluctantly adjusted to the foreign biases in their devices’ interface.

However, they are beginning to expect their devices to adjust to their desires and the ecosystem will evolve to satisfy them. Underlying technologies that enable vernacular content such as speech-to-text, language-translation, and automated content generation are maturing.

Unlike in the past, when companies paid lip service to regional languages by changing a few menu items. I expect to see truly vernacular versions of several popular Nigerian apps in 2018. we may see several apps being designed where the product itself is targeted for a particular community.

2. Digital credit

Lack of easily accessible credit is one of the biggest impediments to entrepreneurship in Nigeria. The young adult wanting to open a Computer repair shop or start a clothing label is limited by capital. Banks continue to rely on antiquated mechanisms like credit ratings and salaries.

I expect 2018 to be the year we will see new credit offerings doing well, in particular, credit tied to online purchases and contract work. Digital lending will rely primarily on digital trails of data to rate credit seekers, and use digital mechanisms to issue and recover loans. The efficiencies of these mechanisms will allow issuance of credit of lower denominations and for shorter periods.

3. High-Bandwidth Apps

The unrelenting growth of smartphone penetration and mobile data usage in Nigeria is the big underlying theme of this decade. Last year, we witnessed the mass adoption of high-bandwidth connectivity. Any society exposed to such a powerful new communication capability will certainly come up with new ways to use it.

I expect that 2018 will see innovative approaches to exploit this bandwidth, in particular through new forms of graphics, audio, and other media.

4. Digital agencies

Nigeria has a large service industry that includes call centres, transcriptionists, graphic artists, etc though under-performing. We will see the emergence of digital agencies that provide similar services over software APIs and online interfaces.

Using online interfaces to acquire, define, track and pay for work will allow digital agencies to scale faster and use a combination of technology and humans to achieve greater efficiencies. The domains that may see early adoption of these are healthcare, education and media creation.

5. Remixed supply chains

Traditional traders have effective supply-chain systems for distributing goods, handling inventory, offering credit, and liquidating unsold goods across small towns. The e-commerce industry has built parallel supply chain systems that work efficiently for metros and large cities. This year, we should start seeing a remixing of these two supply-chain systems, especially as technology-enabled players try to penetrate broader Nigerian markets more than that of previous years.

Online bulk-selling, e-distributors, warehousing and logistics-as-a-service, and e-commerce players using stores and affiliate marketers as resellers will become part of the landscape.

There are several other interesting technologies emerging over the horizon, such as virtual reality and augmented reality, drones, electric vehicles which is gradually finding its way into the Nigerian market. There are several startups working on these areas. But I expect these need a few more years of research and development before we start seeing them have a significant impact on the Nigeria market.
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