Evaluation of the Factors influencing the Indigenous Software Products Development in Nigeria

This paper evaluate the internal and external factors influencing software development in Nigeria. The significance of these factors were also examined and the level of acceptability of the locally developed software products. The ICT firms that specialized in software development, educational institutions and other major stakeholders, including users of software packages were also covered. Data were collected using sets of questionnaire and from secondary sources. The questionnaire was administered on purposively selected software developers in select ICT firms and elicited information on factors influencing the indigenous software product development in Nigeria. A five-point Likert scale rating of 5 to 1 was used to determine the relative weight of the influencing variables. The result indicated the internal factors influencing software development were human resources (3.69), on the job training (3.58), R&D activities (3.48) and working experience (3.37).While access to technical information and support (3.65), competition with international market (3.59), economic factor (3.46), access to professional skill from the labour market (3.39) were the external factors that influence software development in Nigeria with significant difference F= 8.60 p≤0.05. Acceptability of locally developed software in Nigeria, was on the average, relatively low compared with the foreign software products. This was due to the problem of reliability, efficiency, security and scope of functionality. These were circumstances that made users prefer foreign software products. Similarly, the result revealed that the desirable and critical role of government support and policy to drive the software industry for growth were lacking. This implies the need for effective policy framework for the development of software in the short, mid and long term prognosis within the earlier opportunity niches and should be accorded the desirable national attention and priority. International Journal on Advances in ICT for Emerging Regions 2014 07 (03) DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.4038/icter.v7i3.7159