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Meaning ‘Ban Uber’? Very clever…I get it
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It is not a slippery slope because once you ban, then all the billions in ad money and e-commerce that is flying out of the country remains, and thousands of local jobs are created. For who’s benefit? The entire country! The entire country benefits much more than our current situation where guys like FB take billions away and don’t even hire a single local.
On the point of of Syrians using Facebook and Whatsapp, if every country had it’s own Facebook and whatsapp, by now they probably would have all come up with a standard social networking protocol that would allow for communication across networks, which would be a big plus for the open internet, rather than the closed wall of Facebook we have now.
Then you expressed fears that a local monopoly would be established to the financial detriment of the rest. This point seems to be borne out of jealousy for seeing your fellow Nigerian prosper. After all, Facebook, Google, Rocket and Uber are foreign monopolies operating to the financial detriment of Nigerians but you don’t consider that to be a slippery slope.
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Ehh, I’m not jealous of the ‘richest black man’ and even more importantly, I’m sure he couldn’t care less either way!
But back to banning, my main concern is that there have been numerous examples where banning had the exact opposite effect that policy makers envisaged. Why would it be different for say in this case of Uber? That’s why I don’t for one second believe that banning Uber will benefit the ‘whole country’.
The economic arguments you’re making regarding the billions are real but we don’t even have transport system in a lot of African countries, so how does it help the ‘whole country’ to ban one?
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It helps to ban all…
China’s economy is 98% run by the Chinese if not 99.50%… bcos I heard on a news station that foreigners consists of only 2% of China’s population… This is a country where 99% of the population are literates and they mostly speak one language.
Unlike Nigeria, where foreigners control a large portion of the economy…
You want foreigners to also control the transport system in a country 
Is it that you have slave mentality or you just dislike anything that’s locally made???
I hate writing long posts but your mentality is shocking…
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I agree with @PapaOlabode on everything except his long posts. To be honest, I don’t see his POV as suffering from slave mentality rather a need for local startups to step up their game.
If they can’t get funding to offer a great service to customers like the Ubers of this world, whose fault is it. Banning Uber will make absolutely no difference whatsoever as customers will still get crap service.
We generally don’t like competition in businesses but will love the opportunity to be in a position to charge extortionate prices.
Overall the customers will lose out on all fronts, prices and services etc
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Hey @Godmode, I don’t have ‘slave mentality’ and I’m proudly ‘locally made’, so that point is mute.
But If my posts were too long for you to absorb, apologies…I was replying to @MistaMajani as he makes lots of good points, although I don’t agree with them.
And no worries @Godmode, don’t let me stop you…at least I’m not pseudo posting garbage all over the net.
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local competition is better than competing with a company whose currency is valued more than the local currency
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At first, your response is the above, then…
the only good point he made was using China as an example… Most countries have their own clones of U.S tech companies. Africa will always be a third world to most of them…
Its how Africans see Africa that matters.
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I don’t see how you interpret my quotes but both say the same thing, which is that I don’t agree with his points.
But not surprising the way you reach conclusions since according to you, I have ‘slave mentality’ because I don’t agree with your points.
Tell me o wise one, what does this mean to this Uber post?
Post Xenophobia!
Why do you think it is such a positive thing for Netflix to ‘flex’ it’s muscles in Africa? Btw they are not even considering Africa at the moment. Wouldn’t it be better if for instance Iroko TV was such a behemoth that Netflix wouldn’t be able to enter Africa and could only sell their titles to Iroko TV. Because we all know Iroko TV will hire more Africans than Netflix.
I understand were you’re coming from, in essence it may be sort of late to ban some foreign companies. However, you’re speaking from a pessimistic point of view, you can’t see how Nigerians will be able to make ordinary messaging apps that will gain traction. Take a look at WeChat, began in China and is now marketing aggressively in Africa.
I don’t understand your Syrian Crises analogy, all I and @MistaMajani are talking about is the economic benefits of it all. The silicon valley app may be better than what Nigerians come up with in the beginning but it doesn’t stop the Nigerian product from refining itself and improving. At the end of the day we’ll have both the service and the money. Think the Japanese car industry. In their early years they were very restrictive on car imports because Japanese cars couldn’t compete with American ones. The Americans thought their cars will remain the best forever so they didn’t care about the Japanese cars, until the Japanese had such a stranglehold on the American markets and manufacturing jobs started disappearing. Same thing with electronics in Japan and South Korea.
Do you think a Nigerian electronics firm can compete against Samsung, Sony, LG, etc. while we have no protectionist measures in place? The short term may not be super good but eventually we’ll have the TVs and the money in OUR country.
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With this statement you could have as well said there is no point competing with foreign multinationals, they have the money. That is exactly the point of protectionism, because we CANNOT compete with foreign companies on funding, gosh!
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Good! Now we’re getting somewhere!
On Iroko TV, I want him to win but of course he’s a big boy and knows fully well that everyday, there are others (like Netflix, Napsters) out to eat his bacon. That’s life. But what you’re instead saying is take away the competition from him, let him go big, he will employ more Nigerians and pay more taxes. Never mind the customers. I get it, I just don’t buy it.
In regards to your specific examples of electronics and car companies, what we should simply ask ourselves:
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Have we created the infrastructure - power, good roads, educational system, rule of law, etc to enable us gain the rewards of protectionist measures? No
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But what does it take to put protectionist measures in place apart from a government declaration? Nothing
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Should we do # 1 before # 2? Yes…it kind of makes sense but we will do #2 first.
That’s where this all breaks down. We want to ban but not sure what it even means to ban. I’m not pessimistic actually, I just want us to have the right kind of arguments. Nigeria is planning a national carrier for exactly the same reasons you’ve state to have our own. See the neutral VOA article and check out Nigerian’s version.
I of course root for us to develop our ‘own’ but if we keep having the sort of thinking that ‘Uber killed startups’ that died even before they came into the country, then we don’t even make any progress.
Finally this is a good read along the same line of problems African startups face…although it doesn’t end calling for a ban Why solve a need formula doesn’t work for African startups
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Don’t you think protectionist measures will lead to Number 1 above, that is, the development of infrastructure in the country?
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Exactly, the west will keep getting better, if we ever start the least we can do is to catch up, but if we never do , the best we can do is to consume…truth is, we hate our own. Yet the best from the west yesterday is today’s junk that we still can’t even make or match. Smh
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I agree a hundred percent with everything you wrote. It makes sense and that is what Im trying to make people see. Thank you for being more articulate and direct than me.
7 million Nigerians daily use Facebook. 15 million monthly. I believe we can use those numbers to estimate how many people use the internet daily and monthly in Nigeria. I still cant believe we got South Africa beat.
I think this is a great topic that should have its own article on techcabal if that is not too much. I will also like to reply to alot peoples post in one sum, but it is pretty difficult. Does Techcabal support deep linking ~> https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_linking ?
Haha! This is hilarious… Pulse - the fastest growing entertainment site in Nigeria is swedish for what its worth, Naij.com is russian and Bet9ja is owned by the KC gaming network which has some foreign links. A lot of things you “think” are Nigerian or industries you think are protected are really not. Just because the owner managers don’t blog publicly about their business or drive range-rovers to events doesn’t mean they don’t exist. But its ok. Let’s protect your fantasy 
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