For weeks now, Nigerians have spent hours in lengthy queues to buy petrol, and the government is only making promises while people continue to suffer. The ongoing scarcity of fuel has indeed shaken the country to its core.
Lacking stable electricity, many startups have suffered severe losses from fuel scarcity. But in some tech companies, it has been business as usual as they bank on their tech integrated systems to help weather these storms.
Work from home
As the world is recovering from the pandemic that altered the status quo, making work from home the new order, companies like Andela have since 2020 gone fully remote.
In recent times, tech companies have advertised on job posting platforms like Indeed and Jobberman fully remote positions for everything from engineers to customer care representatives. Between January to May 2021, there were 1.2 million remote job postings, a survey by CBRE shows.
Many Nigerians have lamented that rotten petrol sold to them has destroyed their cars, but this hasn’t been the case for many who haven’t needed to drive to work. This rise in remote jobs has eased the impact of the lack of enough petrol for citizens in the country on working professionals, like many that would have needed fuel to travel to the office work from home.
Work from home has been a panacea for effective continuation of duties, as tech bros go about their jobs almost uninterrupted by the lack of power. Some have taken to working from co-working spaces or food chains like Burger King and Dominoes to charge their computers and other equipment for work.
Alternative power generators
The rise of inverters as a sustainable means of generating power in tech companies in the country has also been beneficial to tech companies at this time. With inverters and other alternative power generators that don’t need fuel or diesel, for the tech companies that insist on staff working from an office, Some have fallen back on their inverters, working them overtime, almost unbothered by the scarcity that rages outside.
Bike-hailing tech companies
The proliferation of bike-hailing delivery companies has also been instrumental in this time. With bike-hailing services, focus on instant deliveries like Kwik that need lesser fuel to operate work has gone smoothly.
Young professionals who need to transfer documents physically to a colleague employ bike hailing companies to transfer sealed documents to and fro, with either party not having to leave their homes and step into the office.
What does it all mean?
This however is not to say that the Nigerian tech space has been insulated from the pitfalls of the fuel scarcity ravaging the country. Many companies tech startups still rely heavily on fuel to function. But the integration of their companies (for these that have) with tech has felt the heat just a bit lesser than those that haven’t.
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