Nigerian entrepreneurs are resilient. They excel where people who are pampered with world class infrastructure cower in utter frustration.
The recent award of the world’s fastest growing tech city to Lagos is a glowing testimony to the resilience of Nigerian entrepreneurs.The award was won by Lagos which mustered the most decrepit infrastructure among the 288 hubs surveyed under the contest.
The award was foisted on Lagos by the adventures of dare devil entrepreneurs in the fintech and logistic sectors.
Dealroom Global Tech Ecosystem Index, the firm that conducted the survey, listed the daring exploits of start-up enterprises in fintech and logistics like the Jumia Group, Flutterwave, Opay, Palmpay, Moniepoint and Interswitch, among firms that gave Lagos the laurel.
The Jumia Group started out as an on-line super market. It started the business by displaying goods on an electronic platform and awaiting customers’ patronage. Interested consumers would pay on-line while Jumia delivers the goods to them at home.
The venture was something of a double blessing. It saved consumers the time they spent on shopping and created jobs for staff of the courier companies delivering the goods.
From its humble beginning, the Jumia Group now musters annual turnovers in 11 digits. The success of the business is overwhelming.
Even those who started out with the company during its grievous teething problems are now thriving in the same business as they nurture their own brand of on-line super markets.
A female teacher who was earning N45,000 per month in a popular private secondary school in an area of Ogun state bordering Lagos, sneaked out to start with Jumia at the founding stage of the company.
She carved out her own venture by going to the market to source for what consumers cannot obtain from Jumia platform.
As the demand on their own platform surged, she and her husband left their starving wages and faced the on-line super market business.
Today they have grown from their starving wages to multi-millionaires.Their three-storey building in the Meiran area of Lagos is nearing completion. It will serve as their residence and storage facility for their booming business.
They now import directly for their teeming clientele.
Even cash-intensive business like courier is being operated at the micro level by daring Nigerians.
In a business that requires the use of at least a motorcycle for deliveries, jobless Nigerians are now venturing into the courier business by using public commercial buses.
They board the public buses with the item to be delivered to a consumer and drop it for their client at minimum transport cost.
Depending on the weight of the item to be delivered, a transaction that involves delivering an item from Balogun Market in Lagos Island to Alakuko near the toll gate in Ogun state cost anything from N15,000.
The person delivering the goods spends at most N2,000 on transport and goes home with N13,000.
Some handle two or more transactions in a day and might close with a minimum of N30,000 as daily turnover.
The fintech companies are now giving conventional banks a run for their depositors.
The fintechs emerged just in time to prevent the total collapse of monetary transactions conjured by the mismanagement of the naira redesign of 2022 by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN).
CBN almost forced Nigeria back to the days of trade by barter as it failed to supply sufficient cash to the banking system.
During the first month of the mismanaged currency swap, CBN withdrew N3.2 trillion from the banking system and replaced it with a paltry N600 billion in new notes. Consequently, depositors would queue for a whole day in the bank to withdraw their own money only to be turned back empty handed.
Even the networks of the banks were congested, making it impossible to consummate transactions through on-line payments.
There was one pathetic scene at a branch of a first generation bank during the crisis. A woman whose child was critically ill in the hospital was given a bill of N70,000 as cost of drugs for the child.
The woman used her ATM card to settle the bill in a PoS terminal operated by the hospital.The PoS debited the woman’s account but failed to credit the hospital apparently because of network congestion. The hospital refused to deliver the drug to treat the sick child.
The mother rushed to the bank’s branch nearest to the hospital and after queuing for hours to meet the customer service official, was told she had to wait for three days for the transaction to be consummated.
Everyone in the bank screamed and demanded instant settling of the matter to protect the dying child. The customer relations official said he lacked the power to consummate the transaction instantaneously.
Things were just slipping from bad to worse when the fintechs like Opay, Moniepoint and Palmpay opened their networks for use by frustrated banks’ depositors.
Millions switched to the fintech networks and had relief as their on-line transactions were consummated in seconds. Since then, the fintechs have warmed their way into the hearts of banks’ depositors.
Millions opened accounts with them and it became obvious that fintechs might beat banks in their own game.
The situation became so precarious that banks’ managing directors mounted immense pressure on the CBN to stop fintechs from taking deposits.
Even as the CBN did the bidding of the banks, fintechs remain a big threat to banks.
The situation is so bad that banks hardly list fintechs in their ATMs to enable depositors make on-line transfers to them. Fintechs can only be reached through depositors phones.
The Dealroom survey shows that with a population of 21.3 million, Lagos has seen 11.6-fold increase in start-up enterprise value since 2017. That massive increase was recorded in the face of delirious power outages and agonizingly slow internet outings.
Despite the overwhelming odds, Lagos won the laurel through start-ups by resolute Nigerian entrepreneurs. It defeated 287 hubs enjoying world class infrastructure.