They made the call at the 2023 AfricaNXT summit in Lagos, Nigeria, under the theme, The transformative potential of collaboration: leveraging technology, content, and partnerships for sustainability.
Moderated by Chuks Nwanne, Editor, The Guardian On Saturday, the session, which was hosted by AfricaNXT in partnership with The Guardian, focused on the transformative potential of partnerships between different entities for achieving sustainable development.
I her submission, a member of the panelist and co-founder of the Ladies Sports Conference, Tega Onojaife, stated that partnership is the primary vehicle for achieving sustainable development goals and noted that working with other specialists helps deliver and achieve a better project by reaching more people than would have been possible alone.
For the CEO of Collective Media Services, Yinka Obebe, collaboration and partnership are critical to the sustainability of a project. He added that collaborating with an external organization does not preclude an individual or organization from performing but rather assists in achieving a sustainable goal and recognising a person’s or organisation’s lack of strength, size, or ability to pull certain things.
“Speaking of the importance of collaboration and partnership, I think those two things are everything. It’s usually because you’re not strong enough, big enough, or capable of pulling certain things. That doesn’t mean you aren’t all of those things. It just means that you have identified areas in which your strengths can help other people and where some other people’s strengths can help your weaknesses,” Obebe said.
“The reason why people don’t collaborate is that sometimes they don’t feel up to it, and they don’t want to share the idea behind it. If you have an idea, you should share it first because the idea gets better and becomes bigger for everybody. So we’re very selfish, and we can be very greedy sometimes.
“So, finally, there is integrity. A lot of people come to partners because they feel they want something from the other person. You shouldn’t be partnering because you’re getting something from the next person; you should be partnering because you’re providing value. It should be very clear. You should never partner with someone if you’re not clear about the value you’re bringing to the table. You’re partnering because you want free money. No, you’re going to be embarrassed at the end of the day.”
In response to questions about the legal ramifications of collaboration, entertainment lawyer, Akinyemi Ayinoluwa, said the most crucial action to take is to be aware of the laws and regulations of the country in question.
Ayinoluwa said, “First things first, whatever you’re trying to do has to be on the right side of the law. So, that means you can’t collaborate or do anything to offend the codified rules and regulations of the society where you operate, so you have to be mindful of that.
“At all times, if you’re going into collaboration with anybody, the first thing you should think is, ‘Am I going to be offending any laws? Is there anything that will affect my immediate community negatively?’ Also, “Is this something I want to associate with my brand?’ These are not clear-cut offenses, but again, they might not do justice to what you represent. So going into any kind of relationship, you have to be mindful of that.”
He noted that before jumping on the bandwagon of partnership with any individual or organisation, effort should be put into considering the values and damages that might likely emerge from the partnership.
On his part, the co-founder of Adenian Labs, Killian Mayua, spoke on the use of technology during collaboration, adding that technology is crucial prior to and during the startup of an idea or innovation and partnership.
“Technology has made collaboration simpler and dissuaded idea theft, notably with digital content like timestamps and blockchain.”
