Boasting some of the biggest tech names in the world with the likes of Apple, Google, and Facebook, as well as those innovating tech in a different way with the likes of Tesla, the tech hub of Silicon Valley will likely remain as the tech capital of the world for some time yet – but an emerging market is started to catch some of the tailwind.
Lagos, dubbed the Silicon Valley of Africa, is starting to pull huge investor attention as tech startups flood the market.
Nigeria is also perfectly poised for this growth – although there are unique challenges to the continent that have to be overcome, the infrastructure is still developing within the country and leaves a gap for the tech industry to develop and grow alongside it. With the evolving infrastructure, the small businesses within Lagos have been able to learn lessons from abroad whilst preparing their businesses – the west may still be going through a huge tech boom, but it has also discovered where success can be found and where it could be questionable, and it provides a comfortable roadmap on which direction is best to pursue, and which to avoid.
The next step may be to see where huge growth can be found – within Nigeria these companies can scale very aggressively with strong investor backing as the infrastructure is still developing and as niches are being carved out – we’re seeing huge growths in areas such as mobile gaming across the world – TBC recommend these non gamstop casinos as the casual gamer audience continues to show a growing strength and may be the next area of expansion within the country, digital content media such as Netflix has already found a representation within the country and logistics companies are starting to find their footing.
The next challenge to overcome within the country may be widespread connectivity – data costs are starting to come down but they’re still relatively high for the GDP in the area – this is also the same for the second hand tech market, as buying a modern smartphone still has a relatively high price barrier, but once costs continue to reduce to become affordable to the mass audience these markets will continue to expand massively – and as we’re already seeing signs of this, a lot of confidence is being passed on.
The market is still emerging, and still growing, but the early signs are looking very promising as millions of dollars flow from investors into these startups – there are still plenty of lessons to be learned and still a lot of room to grow, but in the coming decade the expectation is that huge growth will continue to happen, and much like China’s growth through industrialization, we may see Nigeria, and other parts of Africa such as Kenya, grow to become some of the bigger tech hubs of the world.
