You’ve made a solid point about the latent opportunities and the richness of our talent pool, and despite appearances, I share your optimism about the Nigerian entrepreneurship spirit. It’s unrivaled throughout Africa.
Nonetheless, government spending is and has always been the major catalyst for growth in the local economy but with flat oil prices, 50% drop in production capacity and lower market share no thanks to local sabotage and new entrants such as Iran, the little that the government is able to spend is unfortunately unable to defribillate the sick patient.
Refocusing on fintech, I’ll like to see an “okada-first” approach to payment design. One that prioritises the 10 second offline payment as a first class citizen. To borrow a quote from the ever cerebral @asemota - “A product has to be like cash to beat cash”.
@xolubi said payments is a volume game. I agree. He also indicated that perhaps there is only one player - Interswitch - that sees enough transaction flow to make a decent sustainable profit and if I may add, they are well diversified beyond e-commerce driven flows. The question is do you want to compete in their crimson red, over fished red ocean or can you craft a blue ocean of your own and fish your own $1mln per day in transactions. I think the bigger opportunity is out there in the boondocks of Nigeria. Think Ikotun not Ikoyi, Omasi not Onitsha, Kunchi not Kano, and many similar places where untapped micropayments are taking place everyday and e-Commerce won’t be making any inroads anytime soon.