Maga no need pay

Value Proposition of Model to individual Users & User-Organisations

User-organizations for this model will be local and international recruiters, and all opportunity offering entities who want a means to pick qualified persons from a pool. While the LITCAF portal does not proffer any scientific solution or attempt to render any HR or recruiting service, it provides with this model an interesting filter. Inevitably, it ranks individual users and rewards them with visibility to these user-organizations according to individual user’s commitment towards understanding Africa. The model described would possibly provide a ready answer to a major problem outlined as limitating factor to the cross-continental trade with Africa.

Real opportunity: What the LITCAF Model offers 

Nigeria market challenges, as deduced in extant literatures, (which reflects African challenges) includes that well-connected business people gain from anticompetitive practices that shield Nigeria from market forces. Also mentioned as a challenge is nontransparent economic decision making, especially in government procurement.2

A KPMG report titled “Doing Deals in Nigeria” which shows key Insights from Deal Makers’, was the result of a survey of 50 senior business executives based abroad, who had attempted at least one inbound acquisition in Nigeria in the last four years. Some critical challenges to deal-making in Nigeria was espoused in this report, one of the key challenges being lack of information/transparency on the target companies (74 per cent). The report also notes the leading practices for successful deals in Nigeria, top of which is the need to engage the right local advisers with the right relationships and understanding of cultural nuances, considering that about 70 per cent of the deals are with privately-owned businesses with bilateral ‘off-market’ negotiations. 3

This proposed model provides a transparent, decision making tool for would be deal makers. It provides information and enhances transparency on target skills. It provides a self-use tool potentially for local and international deal makers with which they can get the right relationships and understanding of cultural nuances.

By signing up as a user of the LITCAF portal, reading its contents from time to time, and answering the quizzes, users will advance their chances of being spotted by opportunities. Also, being top in the list exposes them to third party assessment which allows them compete for local and international deals in ways that would otherwise be unavailable to them.

Deal making

The key element of this model is in having the commitment of Deal makers; the user-organizations who signs up to peruse the lists of professionals (individual users of the LITCAF portal from time to time. The bane of this has been the nefarious activities of fraudsters which makes it difficult for genuine professionals to have their own share of the immensely huge gig economy.

Gap between available resources and these promising achievements for the Nigerian is trust from the worker, consultant, or freelancer with their clients. There is clearly a need for third party platforms to bring these two together not only locally but also to access international clients and turn the reality of the cheaper Nigerian naira into an advantage. While there are a couple of platforms offering distantly similar services, the issue of trust remains a problem, thereby prohibiting Nigerians from deploring their skills in empowering themselves financially by converting the disadvantages of the Nigerian economy to advantage. 4