Some years ago, watching some of these foreign movies, we see people travel in trains with their heads buried in one book or the other. This was a time when people soaked in knowledge and acquired wisdom. Such beautiful sight to behold.
But what do we have these days? Everyones head is buried quite alright but not in books. I was on the MRT yesterday and I looked around and it was amazing to see that about 7% were reading something, another 13% like me doing nothing or sleeping and the remaining 80% had their eyes glued to their smartphones or tablets. They were typing, giggling, and raising their heads only occasionally for whatever reason.
Even at kFC, every one on a particular queue was lost in the mobile world. It was really obnoxious at first but then you never judge a book by its cover even though the cover might make you put it away for a long time. While I cannot really say what impact this is having on people’s intellectual development and social interactions in this part of the world, I can definitely argue its having some adverse effect on Nigerian youths.
But really, we need to slow down a bit on this – it just does not seem right!
I am the author of Scaling for Success: Empowering African SMEs. I am a Partner at Sahel Capital, a food and agriculture-focused private investment firm in Sub-Saharan Africa. Sahel Capital manages the Fund for Agriculture Financing in Nigeria (FAFIN) and the Social Enterprise Fund for Agriculture in Africa (SEFAA).
I co-lead SEFAA, an impact-first fund investing in agribusinesses that provide direct or indirect benefits to smallholder farmers across 13 countries in Sub-Saharan Africa. I also lead investments and portfolio management for SEFAA and manage FAFIN portfolios, two of which were recently exited. I am a director on the board of one of the portfolio companies and serve in advisory roles for several startups and SMEs.