Disruption & You
The evolution of airtime recharge in Nigeria, and what it teaches us about change
In 2007 when I relocated to Lagos to make my luck in the big city, the only means of purchasing airtime was by buying scratch cards or recharge cards as they are more popularly called on this side of the world. Initially, it was a small card (about the size of an ATM card), branded in the colours of each service provider, with a silver panel on one side. Subscribers bought these cards, scratched the crud on the silver panel to reveal a 12-digit number, and dialed the numbers along with some USSD prompts to get value. With time, these fancy cards became flimsy strips of paper, stapled together to obscure the 12-digit numbers printed on them. With the strips of paper, service providers spent less on printing cards, the ‘used recharge card’ pollution tide receded, and our index fingers rejoiced.
In the Nigerian spirit of industry, recharge cards opened up an entire business ecosystem for the many people that sold them for a living, on street corners, makeshift kiosks, and on road medians. There was this man called Stephen stationed at the gate into my estate, who was my go-to guy anytime my airtime was low, or whenever I needed to buy phone credit on credit.
Then VTU came along.
VTU
VTU otherwise known as Virtual Top-Up is a digital technology for sending airtime directly to subscribers’ phones without the need for scratch cards or keying in 12-digit number strings. VTU dealers had accounts with service providers from which they digitally transferred airtime to buyers, and they made money off commissions on the volume of transactions they processed. VTU also offered dealers the opportunity of selling other services that relied on the VTU technology like data subscription, paying for Cable TV, and other utility bills. For subscribers, the transaction had been further simplified: pay cash to the VTU dealer, and get an instant notification on your phone.
As VTU gained more prominence, I stopped seeing Stephen, who at the time was still selling recharge cards. I moved on to Nike, a mother of one, whose kiosk was stationed directly in front of an office I shared with a couple of old schoolmates. I could easily call Nike to send me airtime, which I paid for via Internet banking. Stephen faded to black, and Nike took his place. I no longer needed to leave my house to get airtime. With an internet-enabled smartphone and enough units left on it to call or text Nike, I was fine.
… till online top-up entered the picture.
Online Top-Up
Introduced by the banks, the online top-up was an additional tab on my Internet banking platform through which I could buy airtime directly from my bank account. Bank ATMs also had this feature enabled. Rather than call Nike to send me airtime via VTU, then go online to pay for it, I could now do everything online at the click of a few buttons on-screen. Technology had connived with the banks to take Nike out of the picture, just as it had connived with Nike to push Stephen off the cliff into obsolescence.
Need I say that Nike called to inquire why I wasn’t doing business with her anymore? Despite the liking I had taken to this industrious young woman and her lovely daughter, I had to tell her that the convenience of online top-up made it difficult for me to stick with our old arrangement.
With this call, my transactional relationship with Nike ended.
Enter the shortcode
With a shortcode top-up, I no longer needed Internet banking. All I had to do was register my phone number on the Internet banking platform. Whenever I needed airtime, I dialed a short code, followed by the amount of airtime I wanted to purchase, followed by a hashtag; and the gnomes behind the scene crawled to my account, deducted the money, and sent the phone units directly to my phone.
Between the Telecoms company and the bank, Stephen and Nike were no longer relevant in meeting my need for airtime recharge.
This is what is called disruption.
Disruption
Disruption is the inevitable, and progressive manner in which change obliterates the old and paves the way for the new. It is the tide that can make an entire industry obsolete in the blink of an eye, and create a new one in its place. It is the game of numbers, where a string of algorithms can render hundreds of thousands of people jobless because their contributions are no longer relevant in the scheme of things. It is what removed the ubiquitous Nokia chargers from our homes and replaced them with Android chargers. It is what you MUST be conscious of, and be fearful of because the way it happened to Stephen and Nike, it is happening to you right now.
Disruption is all around us — Bookstores are closing down, Amazon is growing bigger; Greetings cards have all but become a thing of the past, short texts, and electronic messages are growing stronger; the PC has gathered dust because smartphones now do the same things; CD plates have been thrown out, digital music on streaming platforms have taken its place; Cars are evolving to becoming green and self-driving.
Whatever you do, whoever you are, wherever you might be, disruption is constantly happening around you, and here are a few tips for staying ahead in a world that is constantly trying to make us do less at the expense of giving us less to do.
Be Curious: Disruption doesn’t happen all of a sudden. Most times it is a culmination of small progressive steps towards continuous improvement in a process, or our way of doing things. Technology rarely moves from mainframe computers to virtual reality in one day. The time it took to go from scratch cards to the shortcode in the technological evolution story I shared above must’ve been about a decade, and the tide is still moving. These days everyone is talking about ChatGPT and AI technology. Many people are using it already to simplify their work processes and amplify their outputs. Curiosity about what is happening around you helps you stay abreast of these small changes that eventually lead to the BIG change.
Be Involved: I must admit that this is easier said than done but if you want to stay relevant in an ever-changing world, you have no choice but to be involved. Being involved doesn’t mean signing up for every new social media app, banking app, language app, or performance improvement app. There are way too many inventions to keep up with. However, show an interest in new things. Ask how it works, and see how it can be of benefit (or threat to you.)
Be Deliberate: Always think about the opportunities and threats that emerging technologies present. While working as a bank teller in the mid-2000s, it didn’t take me long to figure out that in a matter of time, the new cash-paying and cash-receiving ATMs installed on our bank premises would render my service obsolete. There is much to say about workplace fairness and why we shouldn’t let machines take away people’s jobs, but from what I know about disruption, it doesn’t respect these laws. It just happens. Sentient AIs, self-driving cars that can make money for their owners while they are engaged in other activities, all these bold ideas turned into reality will come at huge costs in human capital. It is our responsibility to position ourselves on the leeward side of this flux of change, not willing Change to be considerate. If machines present a threat to your job, don’t picket in the hope that those machines will go away. They exist for a purpose. Learn to program, learn to do something else they can’t do. Whatever you do, make sure that you are swimming in the direction of the ever-running tide of change and not against it.