During the Social Media Week, Minster for Information and Communication Technology, Hon. Mobolaji Johnson mentioned what the government is doing to raise help for local developers and how local developers are also doing well by winning international awards with their software applications.
One such winner is Ihesie Peter, the team leader of iPolice, a mobile app that just won World Summit Award in Abu-Dhabi under ‘M-government’ category. We had a chat with him and here is what he had to say:
Can we meet you?
My name is Ihesie Peter, a software developer by profession and currently managing the team behind the iPolice Mobile Application.
Please tell us about iPolice?
iPoliceMobile was developed as a security and safety app in response to security challenges faced by Nigerians in recent times. The application aims at providing Nigerians and tourists to Nigeria with tools and information to live safely and become security conscious.
The mobile application provides users with following benefits and functions:
- Security tips and education from security experts within and outside Nigeria, thereby improving the overall security awareness and consciousness of Nigerians.
- The app leverages the location capability on most phones to locate the nearest police stations with contact details and phone numbers of the Divisional Police Officer (DPO). Users can also search for any police stations by any given location.
- iPoliceMobile provides users with a quick dial access to national and most state emergency numbers, including but not limited to toll free police numbers, fire service numbers, traffic service, Federal Road Safety Commission (FRSC), ambulance and vehicle rescue numbers. With this feature, help is only a call away.
- iPoliceMobile gives users insightful information about the various efforts by the security agencies to making our community safer. With this, users will appreciate the work being done by our security agencies, thus creating a more cordial relationship between the people and the security agencies, which will help them to report or provide more useful information to the security forces that will help them better carry out their duties.
- Thinking of security and safety news around the country? iPoliceMobile aggregates most security news into a central point, thus giving users quick and wide range of information into the security happenings and also a base for data analysis.
Congratulation on the new award, can you tell us more about it?
In recognition of the potential and positive impart iPoliceMobile can have on Nigerians and the amount of work we have put in to achieving this thus far, World Summit Award recently recognized us as one of the best apps in the m-government and participation category in the just concluded WSA-Mobile award at Abu-Dhabi, UAE.
The World Summit Award (WSA) is a global activity to select and promote the world’s best e-content and most innovative ICT applications. It offers a worldwide platform for all who value the creative use of ICT and who are committed to making today’s information society more inclusive.
From your experience, what do local developers need to do to stand the international challenge?
This is an interesting question and I have used every opportunity available to me to talk to people about the experience especially in the area of content development. It was an interesting time in Abu-Dhabi and I was particularly thrilled by the hospitality of the people and the orderliness of the society.
Apps should be developed to meet a need in a particular space. Almost all the apps at the WSA event where targeted at solving local or international problems that affected the developers one way or the other.
In Nigeria, we have challenges that are affecting us – from high level of maternal mortality to malaria, education, goods/products authentication, security and so on. Developers should spend some time with the people to understand the real issues then come up with solution rather than develop an application then start searching for a problem that it will solve.
Most development platforms have standards and best practices, we developers should spend some time to study and understand them as they will help us in developing internationally accepted apps. Taking some time to study other local and international apps is also one of the ways I get inspired and learn and will advise others to try it.
Where do you see Nigeria technology in next 5 years?
With the attention the Nigerian market has attracted so far, I see that continuing with more people moving to smart phones and lower connectivity cost, thus there will be more connected Nigerians with smartphones. This presents lots of opportunity for local developers with good content to reach many people with their apps. Our just concluded research showed that phone users are willing to pay for apps that are useful to them and are also easy to pay for. Payment now is an issues that all the major players in the space are working together to solve and I believe that in the nearest future that will be a thing of the past.
