Recently the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) announced the redesign of the highest three Nigerian naira notes with the specific dates of launching the new notes and the deadline for receiving the old notes. This announcement has induced a counter announcement by the ministry of finance claimed not to have been aware of the decision by the central bank of Nigeria to redesign the naira. However, the presidency had to intervene in the matter by clarifying to the public that the CBN got the node of the federal government to implement the naira redesign.
Upon confirmation of the CBN’s announcement and affirmation by the federal government, it became obvious that the old naira note will lose its value as legal tender after the deadline, hence, corrupt citizens who have these naira denominations and may not want to put back their money into the system decided to exchange their naira for foreign currency such as dollars, pounds, & euros. The demand for foreign currencies via the black market exchangers known as the Bureau De Change (BDC) became higher than the supply and availability. The effect of these is the cause of the depreciation of the naira value. Naira closed last week at an average of N860, N830, and N950 against dollars, euros, and pounds respectively.
While the sudden rise in foreign currencies especially the dollar which is used as an international exchange currency has a huge effect on almost all sectors because Nigeria is an importing nation. Most importantly, Information Technology/Cybersecurity Professionals, and Indigenous Technology Service companies are largely affected by this rise.
Most of our IT/cybersecurity professionals who have obligation to renew their membership subscription to remain relevant in the global space will find it difficult to pay for their annual membership professional fees. Companies and organisations that depend on foreign software and services whose subscriptions are yearly will also find it difficult to pay for their subscription. How about students who want to take their professional examination to become recognised global industry professionals will find it difficult to pay for their exams. For example, the CompTIA security+ vouchers that used to cost around N120,000 in July 2022 now cost N180,000. PECB/ISO 27001 course that used to be N520,000 is now N680,000.
Before now most companies that host their website with international hosting companies were already finding it difficult to renew their hosting because of the old black market rate of N650 and the CBN’s policy that reduced international card spending limit, but now the concern is the high rate of dollars which stands at N880.
The rise in this rate without any mitigation will harm the country’s digital economy. The IT professionals and companies are major drivers for the digital economy we hope to get to, hence the need for the government to develop an interface for IT service subscription and payment as mitigation plans.
Without a mitigation plan, the high exchange rate will ultimately cause Nigerian IT professionals to be local without global recognition. It will reduce the number of new IT/cybersecurity professionals we produce as a country and it will cause tech companies to go bankrupt because of the inability to meet up with the operating cost of foreign host services considering the current value of our naira.
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