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Funke Opeke is the chief executive officer of Main One Cable Company,
the first broadband cable to launch in Nigeria and Ghana. A graduate of
the then University of Ife, and Columbia University, New York, Ms.
Opeke, in this interview, speaks on the company’s operations, and the
challenges of running a business in Nigeria.

Is this what you have always wanted to do?

I think building
network is something I acquired a passion for in graduate school
because data communication was just taking off and the Internet came
later.

Setting up Main One
is one of the aspirations I am happy to accomplish. Having seen the
innovation of technology that drives creativity, I wanted to do that
and see the benefits enjoyed in my country.

Building Main One
happened as a natural progression from what I was doing. I studied
Engineering because I like Mathematics and Physics more than I like
Biology, and as a growing young woman interested in scientific
professions, it was Engineering and not medical school that was my
passion. There was also the place of curiosity.

I entered college
in the mid 1970s, but technology was just developing around that time.
Things like cassettes, video recorders, betamax were just developing
really. Electrical/Electronic Engineering was very fascinating. The
world was changing rapidly and by pursuing a career along that line, I
had the opportunity of being part of it.

I was the only
female in my graduating class at the University of Ife that time, but
there were other females in other classes next to mine, though it was
always just one or two.

How did it feel being the only woman?

To be honest, I did
not feel anything different. It has made me somewhat less sensitive to
the male/female thing in the work place. It also helped in America
where I’ve worked most of my career, as you don’t only have to deal
with such but also that of race. It helped me to focus on those things
that really matter. A lot of time you’re the exception but you get on
with what you have to do.

Most singular influence in your career

Gosh! The most
singular influence in my career? I’m not sure that there is one
influence I can pick. But I think I have learned from mentors and have
had really good mentors because of what I do. No single thing really,
it is an aggregation of many factors.

If there is one
thing I have learnt from them, it is that you should do what you are
doing really well. They have encouraged me to work hard to achieve my
results from a career point. Do what you’re doing now well and the
opportunities will come.

Don’t worry about
what’s coming next, just keep getting good at what you’re doing. You’ll
find the opportunities, not the company or the job you’re doing, and
that has helped me build up myself and my capacity.

In terms of Main One and being able to run it in Nigeria, Mr. Fola Adeola has been a very strong mentor.

Growing up

I grew up in Ibadan
and I went to Queen School, a boarding school. One of the differences
between when I was growing up and now was that we felt that the sky was
our limit, even in Ife. We did not feel that what Steve Jobs was
achieving in the United States for example, was totally out of reach
for us being educated in Nigeria, if we built up ourselves and take all
opportunities available to us.

We truly expected
Nigeria to participate on the world scale, and if you look at our
economic rankings compared with other countries, it was much higher
that time. I worry today that young people graduating from Nigerian
universities do not aspire to create a Google, or an Intel, to create
the kind of tremendous economic value that can transform our society
and the world.

I think that’s a
big difference; we had access to the same information. Today, anybody
going to school in Nigeria is at a marked disadvantage. Even if you go
to the best schools in Nigeria, you don’t have access to the
information that someone in Harvard, for instance, does; even in South
Africa.

We played on the
streets and lived in mixed economic neighbourhood. We had people of
mixed faith living together, Christians and Muslims, and it was about
hard work, going to school, and doing well. The values were different.

People who were
wealthy or respected in the society then, we knew what they were doing
to gain that respect. We knew what they were doing to achieve that and
there was no popularity contest, so you also wanted to earn your place
in the society.

Coming back to Nigeria

At some point in
the late 1990s, when I had been away for about 15, almost 20 years
working in a company in the US, I wanted to go back to sunshine, and
that’s when I started thinking of coming back to Africa.

It seemed more
meaningful that I could give more back to Africa and it was no longer
about self but giving back, and I thought I could give more in Africa.
If I built another fast feed link in New York, it would allow people
watch movies faster, but it would not even be that but maybe give a
choice of selecting from 1000 movies, as opposed to being able to
select from 100.

If I give Internet
to someone in Nigeria, it could make the difference between life and
death, it could ease how they get information to someone in rural
communities, on how they can get information about a certain ailment
that needs urgent treatment, someone’s life being saved, someone is
able to share information without taking a five-hour road trip from the
hinterland to Lagos, escaping the risk of the hazards of the road.

It could mean
thousands, hopefully millions of young people having access to the kind
of information where they are able to acquire knowledge and improve and
educate themselves, since today’s education is about e-learning.

A lot of time, I
still think I’m crazy being here. Whenever I get out of my home, before
I travel five minutes, I see a lot of people, hundreds, young, middle
aged people, who if employed at all, are marginally employed, they are
not skilled.

I wonder what they
are going to do in retirement when they are too old. I really wonder
what quality of life they have or their children. I’m indeed privileged
to be in the position I am here in Nigeria or the States.

This is what I know
how to do; telecommunication is what I know how to do in my life. Maybe
I can create something for 10, 000 or 20, 000 people, then I’ve done my
best. It’s hard coming back to Nigeria. We still talk about light going
out, inverter, water, security guards, and what have you, things that
are taken for granted in other societies. It’s hard to live here still.

Working with MTN

MTN actually
brought me back. They were doing something on a scale and wanted me to
be part of it. A rather gutsy move, if I have to say so myself, because
outside my youth service, I had not worked in Nigeria. I think my
family was a little bit concerned that I was going back.

Then I got called
upon to work with Transcorp to privatise NITEL and it was not just
about the company but about Nigeria, a national phone company that
NITEL is. If you look at the advanced economies in the world today,
even with privatisation, British Telecom is still the largest in
Britain, Deutsche Telecom in Germany. The incumbent national phone
company always has a critical role to play in the development of
infrastructure in the country.

I thought I could
impact Nigeria through that platform. Unfortunately, it was not to be
and the NITEL matter is unresolved till today. I came out of that and
asked how do I add value to Nigeria? I then looked at the region and
asked myself what I can do that will be meaningful and consistent with
my ability, and that’s how Main Street, which gave birth to Main One,
came about.

Solving the NITEL conundrum

If I was asked what
to do to save NITEL, I would give it away to the most competent party
that will manage it, clean it up, and turn it around. I will not
collect any money since it has fallen apart. I will not allow them to
sell any of the company’s assets, but look for the best way to add the
most value to it.

Second, they have
to think of how it can be funded. They may be required to go and raise
money based on the merit of the business plan, but the government may
be required to give them some seed money. If they did that and succeed,
then they will have to pay back the government, since it is a
commercial investment and the people who have done the work get a
further payback beyond their salaries in form of some ownership of the
company.

More importantly,
Nigeria would have created an indigenously managed company, though
there might be some form of foreign partnership of NITEL. With this,
part of our unemployment problem would have been solved, and this would
add value to the Nigerian economy. So, you create job and strategic
infrastructure that will help grow the economy.

Internet service pricing in Nigeria

The prices have
crashed at the wholesale level and at the retail level too, depending
on who your provider is. At the wholesale level, prices have been
reviewed by maybe 70 per cent across the market, but on the retail
side, for instance blackberry, we’ve seen a 40 per cent reduction
across the market, on retail bundles, to go on your laptop probably
about 20 per cent.

For subscription
services, it’s been more of improvement in service than reduction in
price, but I think that is coming. It has to come because the market is
changing, but also one of the challenges is that the last mile
distribution and the infrastructure is largely fragmented proprietary
and costly.

The last mile to
get that modem in your house is owned by one party and for another
person to be able to deliver that they have to build infrastructure
running to millions of dollars.

In retail data, we
still do not have that kind of mass market competition that GSM
afforded on the voice side, but we expect that over the next 12 to 18
months, given the amount of bandwidth that is landing on our shore and
the evolution of technology, hopefully with some policy support from
the government, which is always crucial, we will get there.

Main One business operations

We’re making money,
but people seem to forget that we invested $240 million to build Main
One and capital is expensive in Africa. Operations are expensive in
Africa and I wish we make enough money so that I just pay off this loan
so I don’t have to worry at night about generating enough revenue to
cover our operations, pay our obligations, and also give something back
to those who took a risk by investing in the business when I just had a
plan on paper.

We are earning
revenue, but we are not rolling in money. As an entrepreneur, the
greatest challenge is the difficulty and cost of capital in Africa. We
don’t have matured processes and support for incubating and launching
new businesses. The other one, now that we are in operations, is the
fragmentation in the market, access, and getting to individual end
users. Our price to wholesale operators today for data service is lower
than 60 per cent of what they were paying to others before we came to
the market because of the retail distribution. The networks they use
are so fragmented, so there is no large economy of scale.

Our prices will go
down further if we were doing more volume and the benefit on the retail
scale will also be higher. But because of our infrastructure
constraint, we don’t have that. I know that the NCC has been looking
into it, but in some advanced economies what they do is unbundle, to
separate the physical infrastructure from the service, and so ensure
that it is priced on a competitive basis.

I engage with a lot
of government officials but the ability to drive change through
policies is a challenge here, especially in economic growth and
infrastructure. Most of the developed economies output is driven by
government policies and is implemented by the private sector, but we
are yet to see that here.