I would bet against Yaba being anything other than a cluster of well financed Internet clones and wannabe silicon valley dreamers. Lagos with the space issues, bad transport high cost of property will tend to disperse its tech companies far and wide in the same way its multi billion bank headquarters are not found on the same street.
As far as tech goes I think what will drive it in Lagos are existing areas of strength. So anything finance, travel, hospitality, food, trade and media caters to all the big banks, investment houses, restaurants, hotels, airport, celebrities and huge population.
While lagos will inevitably attract successful startups the essential creative juices will come from other parts of Nigeria just like it has in the Nigerian movie and music industry. Indeed novel tech ideas have a better chance to spring from Owerri or Akure than overcrowded, expensive and elitist Lagos.
I agree with you on the Yaba not being the future tech hub point, but I honestly doubt it will be outside Lagos because talented people tend to gravitate to the areas with the most opportunities.
also the technology field cannot survive without other sectors and most of their activity in Lagos. I know Lagos is expensive but I think it has been exaggerated. Any flourishing tech company should be able to manage the costs.
Yes Lagos is a large market but it does not have a culture of creativity. Lagos imitates and distributes but is rarely innovative and further, its elitism is its greatest stumbling block to trying novel things.
Case in point is Nollywood Nigerias greatest non oil export in recent times. Lagos had a headstart in film, tv and theatre production in the 1970s yet the Nigerian home movie industry sprouted from onitsha traders and is shot everywhere today. Many of the actors and actresses came from Port Harcourt, Enugu, Owerri, Calabar and today ghana and South Africa. Yes actors and actresses gravitated towards lagos to cash in on their celebrity but did Lagos birth Nollywood or distribute it?
Tech which has less physical need for distribution will evolve even further away from Lagos. Nairaland for example is doing quite well based in Ibadan. Hotels.ng could have done equally well in its original home Calabar as in Lagos after all there is little physical need to interact with users of its service.
About talent gravitating towards opportunity, in the tech world opportunity could be a company based in Abuja or Kaduna or Enugu or Akure it doesnt have to be lagos and indeed when offered the opportunity to work in a place where going to and from home does not require a three hour marathon drive believe you me everywhere in Nigeria is already better than Lagos.
That could be a model but my main point is that while lagos is our biggest city, Nigeria is far far bigger than Lagos. There are 14 other cities with more than 1 million people in Nigeria, there are 30 mid sized cities outside Lagos. There are many more universities and technical colleges outside Lagos. 3G is available practically in most urban areas in Nigeria.
Lagos is only 30% of Nigeriaās urban population and anywhere between 15% and 25% of its GDP. This is why all the telcos did not start and stop in lagos. They rolled out fiber across Nigeria. Those building shopping malls are doing the same. Didnāt malls with shoprite as anchor open recently in Akure and Owerri?
In America that we like to copy you have tech companies all over. Amazon and Microsoft are based in Seattle, Groupon is based out of Chicago, akamai is in Boston, Netflix is in Los Angeles, and the list goes on.
So nothing stops a tech company from basing out of Kaduna or Ilorin or Warri. Nigeria is not Ghana or Kenya with single city models.
Didnāt you hear that Silicon was discovered at Yaba? In fact ARM built a factory there to mass produce thier processors which has led to a large influx of entrepreneurs to the area. Dude where on earth have you been?
When you say Yabacon Valley to someone, do you explain to them that there isnāt a space between Yaba and con? You know, to avoid making it sound like a place where convicted criminals roam free.
Yeah, but Lagos has the highest concentration of educated people, this gives it the critical mass needed to keep growing and have more businesses flock there. And again your comparison with America fails to consider that all those cities, Seattle, Chicago, LA have amenities and a large enough concentration of educated people to sustain such high tech businesses. Chicago is no Port Harcourt and Seattle is definitely not Kaduna.
Hmm, I like Yaba Right. Mainly because itās just waaay better than the other suggestions (except Tolaās one ofcourse lol).
Like someone said, if we want to make Yaba Right catch on, just put it in a few publications. @iaboyeji you have access to these channels right (pun intended)?
I can imagine there were a few people who opposed āComputer Villageā at first too. Canāt please everybody abeg.
Eventually, people will start using it and it will become a thing.
Sidenote: As we can see from the initial post, it was an OUTSIDER (@misslara16) that came up with the name. Iyin just pioneered it (sorta).
And why weāre still trying to figure-out;
Yaba! Yaba! Yaba! Yaba!!
@iaboyeji has it officially clinged to his Twitter Bio/Status. #YabaRight or die trying.
John: Iām in talks with some VCās who have shown interest in my Startup but persist I move to Lagos before they can provide seed funding.
Where do you think will be the RIGHT area/spot to setup my head office?
Doe: Simple. YabaRight.
Okay. Boring Definitely not funnyā:angry:.
Who cares?
I can already see YabaRight in headlines.
The only critical mass Lagos has reached is in traffic congestion, stress and hosting big corporates head offices. Yes it draws the Nigerian business elite but it also harbors the poor after all most of Lagos is a myriad of slums and backwardness with 70% of dwellings in Lagos having no plumbing whatsoever as the 2010 Lagos Household Survey found.
For tech startups locating in Lagos is not going to matter as much as if you are distributing indomie noodles or importing petrol or setting up physical bank branches. So eventually any founder will ask why endure the hardships?
Abuja, Ibadan, Port Harcourt, Calabar, Enugu, Owerri all have lots of educated people and practically the same amenities with less stress. These are cities I would expect a tech company to take those extra hours of not sitting in traffic to come up with novel ideas. This is why Capetown is the tech hub in SA over bigger Johannesburg and why Bangalore beats larger Mumbai and Delhi in India.
No other city has nearly the amount of educated people that are willing to live there. And by amenities I mean it is one of the easiest places to live a middle class life, best primary schools for instance, internet providers. Yes swift and others began in Lagos and were lagos only for a long time. We can nitpick on the poverty but owerri, ph, warri are much poorer and do not have the critical mass of educated people.
And donāt you think those companies have compared the advantages to the disadvantages. Why are they still coming to lagos is droves. The fact and truth is lagos has by far more money exchanging hands and is a far more stable economy. If traffic was everything why arenāt employers attracting people to Ibadan and Ogun (these are even near lagos).
All other states are full of people on the government dole (civil servants). Regular private sector earners are still in Lagos and for good reason. Again, that critical mass.
Haha! Of course you reply to anecdotes with more anecdotes. There are so many tech companies in the valley you donāt even know.
But letās agree on a metric that defines why Silicon Valley is incontestably the epicenter of tech in America : number of tech jobs in the Bay Area : 387k. There are 280 tech jobs for every 1000 private sector jobs.
Please bring data to the contrary or hold your peace
Definitely not funnyā:angry:.
