Where are we going? What are we doing?

Many questions come up when I started telling people about this trip so I am going to share some details this journey, and I hope you enjoy the ride :)

Where are we going?

Continent: Africa

Country: Nigeria

State: Ogun State

City: Abeokuta

Nigeria is often referred to as the “the Giant of Africa”, due to its large population and economy. With approximately 174 million inhabitants, Nigeria is the most populous country in Africa and the 7th most populous country in the world.

 Nigeria is located in West Africa and shares land borders with the Republic of Benin in the west, Chad and Cameroon in the east, and Niger in the north. Its coast in the south lies on the Gulf of Guinea in the Atlantic Ocean.

Ogun State, today, has emerged as one of the fastest growing business destinations in Nigeria

Abeokuta is the largest city and capital of Ogun State in southwest Nigeria, and that's where we are staying.

Like I mentioned in a previous post 11 IBMers from 7 countries India, Hungary, Australia, Ireland, Mexico, USA and Brazil are leaving in the next 2 days to start our one month assignment in Nigeria

Vaccination

In case you don't know to be able to get in any country in Africa and specially to be able to come back to your country you need to take few vaccinations that are required and recommended. The most important one if the yellow fever which is an acute viral disease transmitted by infected mosquitoes. The “yellow” in the name refers to the jaundice that affects some patients. I actually had to take 4 shots including the yellow fever. It made me remember of the fiance visa process I went through 4 years ago as I had to take about 8 vaccinations just to be able to get my visa approved (this is definitely a story for another blog).  So back to the current story I took all my shots and received my yellow vaccination card (I thought it was funny that the card was actually yellow - but I guess it's a quick way for the agents at the customs to identify if you have the yellow shots or not.

Let's go to a interesting topic....

What are we doing there?

We will be working on 4 sub-groups all with different agencies within Ogun State Government, and the 4 projects will be related to Water Corporation, Ministry of Commerce and Industry, Ministry of Education/ SW Resource Center, and Women Affairs & Social Development.

The specific project that my group (Susan, Sergio and I) is going to be working on is with the Ogun State Water Corporation. We received the SOW two weeks ago, and started reviewing the assignment objectives so summarizing we will be assisting them in developing a road map/guide on the collection and analysis of data on water production, demand and usage in order to develop an electronic record tool for water metering, billing and receipts. We will be also assisting and consulting on an overhaul of their business processes to develop a medium term business plan that integrates their existing Human Resource, Financial Management Software, Asset Management, billing and Audit systems. There are other few objectives in the SOW, and I am thinking we are staying there for a year - ohhh noo - just for a month? So we better get to work as soon as possible!

Our team started to study our project in depth, so we could have good ideas, questions and plans to have a good start once we get in Abeokuta. We were able to talk to our client through emails this week, and share some first questions/ideas about this project. It seems we are all really excited with this opportunity!

We leave in less than 36 hours and I still have some packing to do lol

It's almost 4 am so I better get some sleeping zzzzzzzzzz