LIL+ Magazine September 2025 by Lost in Lagos Plus Magazine

Victoria Island | Ikeja | Banana Island Boat Club | Four Points Sheraton, Oniru

Elvis Osifo Editor-in-Chief, Lost in Lagos Plus Magazine X: @dantelvis

EDITOR’S NOTE

There’s Rice Tech At Home

Igave up on attending many Nigerian tech events. Why? Thank you very much for that question. More often than I’m proud to admit, I noticed that there were a lot of shuffled concepts. I barely saw anything new, talk less innovation.’ Xpay, Ypay, Zpay, raising rounds for products solving problems that either do not exist or already have solutions deployed in the market.

Away from shuffling ideas, we’ve come a long way, and the future looks even more exciting. However, standing at the intersection of history and possibility, our ingenuity demands a new name: innovation. “Innovate, Naija” is a transportive dive into how technology is shaping and improving Nigerian lives, not in theory, but in action. We are spotlighting realtime innovation, not the kind dressed in borrowed clothes and buzzwords for global applause, but the kind that sincerely works for us. Innovation that’s honest, grounded, and designed for Nigeria’s actual needs.

In this issue, Olatunbosun Alake discusses how Innovation in Lagos, driven by technology, requires robust communication and talent infrastructure, supported by startup funding and university R&D, while Oswald Osaretin Guobadia highlights the need for Nigeria to look within and engage domestic capital, not external validation. Fola Ogunsiakan emphasises

the critical levers for innovating for tomorrow, and Dotun Olowoporoku shares how the key to startup survival isn’t about avoiding errors, but making them at the right time. Samuel Ogbe, Samson Ogbole, and Femi Adekoya are using technology to catalyse revolutionising Nigeria’s food system, and Andre Ayomide discusses technology as the backbone of gaming. Odunoluwa Longe highlights the importance of intellectual property for startups and their longterm journey, and Dolapo Morgan discusses the “Leveling VC” initiative to bridge capital gaps for female-led startups. Philip Akoda is building digital infrastructure for African languages beyond simple apps, and ChatGPT and Gemini discuss the biggest misconception about AI language models in Nigeria. Don’t forget to check out our list of Top 10 Tech Hubs around Africa, and our list of top 5 events in Nigeria.

If you close this magazine and the next line of code you write, the next cheque you sign, or the next class you teach is not significantly impactful, then we have failed. If, however, you pause and ask, “Does this serve the civil servant who needs to annotate?” then the circuitry is complete.

#DiscoverNigeria #ExperienceNigeria #LostinLagosPlus #LostinLagosPlusMagazine

LOST IN LAGOS Volume 10.0 September 2025 Title: Innovate, Naija FOUNDER Tannaz Bahnam PUBLISHED BY Knock Knock Lifestyle Solutions Ltd PRINTER Tee Digital Press EDITOR-IN-CHIEF Elvis Osifo EDITOR Leon Izegbu DESIGN Ernest Igbes CONTRIBUTORS Elvis Osifo, Mona Zutshi Opubor, Leon Izegbu, Ernest Igbes, Enemona Udile, Matildah, Iyinoluwa Aboyeji, Olatunbosun Alake, Oswald Guobadia Osarentin, Godwin Benson, Dotun Olowoporoku, Fola Ogunsiakan, Folayemi Agusto, Philip Akoda, Chukwuma Nwanze, Samson Ogbole, Dolapo Morgan, Odunoluwa Longe, Femi Adekoya, Andre Ayomide, Samuel Ogbe, Moe Odele, Om Opubor, Dara Adesanya, Jenny Onibode, Miracle Nwaogu, Klick Africa, Tech Cabal, Chef Nitaa, Omoye Cooks, Hitchoflife, Olufe Ututu Cover Credits: Ernest Igbes, Elvis Osifo (Creative Idea)

#GOTTAHAVEIT

A bit about the Products of the Month

Every month, three products are selected from businesses in Nigeria and shared with you to appeal to your senses. They range from cool, functional items that become indispensable and intimate items that make for thoughtful gifts, to artefacts you can splurge on and everything in between. This month, we curated a list of upscale tech-upgrades to make life more worth living.

Embody Chair

The Fun Tech Bro

The Embody Chair literally consumes you, keeping you in its warm embrace for as long as you work, maybe even longer. Once you’re seated, time fades away with its spine-soothing massages and neck rubs. It’s the perfect treat for anyone looking to have fun while working. Be you a gamer, a tech bro, a writer, or just someone who enjoys seating, this is your best bet. It comes in a mix of blue and red, the perfect blend to match your home décor, with a personality that says “I’m fun and serious”.

PlayStation Portal from Tekkastore Nigeria Gaming, Without Limits

Sometimes you just want to relax and play without being stuck in one spot, right? The PlayStation Portal gets it. It’s like your PS5, but in a light, portable form you can carry around the house or take on the go. The controls feel just like your DualSense, every tap, every rumble, every smooth move, so it’s the same game you love, just with more freedom. It’s gaming without limits, and it fits right into whatever cosy or high-energy mood you’re in.

Smart Lock from BullaugenTech Smart, Secure, Stylish

The BullaugenTech Smart Lock is like your space’s personal doorman, letting you tap-in with your phone, a fingerprint, or even your card. With options like fingerprint, facial recognition, passcodes, and card access, it’s security that’s stylish and personal. Bonus: many come with built-in doorbell and camera features, so you can see who’s at your gate right from the app.

A BIT ABOUT ME:

I’m a 20-something-year-old living in Nigeria, so you know I’m constantly tired. I spend way too much time obsessing over self-care, food, tech, and anything else that makes my life easier, making me your perfect plug for anything! Like most people, I find randomly shopping online at odd hours therapeutic, so much so that if you look into your mirror and say “retail therapy” three times, I will appear.

Featured Columnist

Mona Zutshi Opubor

A RETURN TO ANALOG TECH

My son plans to leave Lagos next year to further his education. As his life has grown busier, I have struggled to manage his calendar. I tell my husband that I need to track our son’s appointments because we share a car, but in truth, I want to help him because he’s my baby. Sometimes people (spouses) with strong opinions about “fostering independence” or “raising men” need to respectfully mind their own beeswax because mothers mother. It’s what we do.

Last year, frustrated that I had confused a date, I made monthly calendars out of paper and taped them to the wall. These handdrawn pages proved so successful that they have become a family resource. Yes, it is 2025, but if I want to know when

my visiting daughter has her dentist appointment, I will check the calendars hanging in the dining room.

It makes me emotional to see them stretching all the way through June of 2026, when my son graduates. I think about all the university applications and exams that will be noted on these blank, future dates, and I feel awed. Parenting races by, and the babies you carted around grow taller than you. My empty nest is in sight, and it is bittersweet. It tickles me that we’ve moved into a digital age–with apps to make every facet of life more convenient–but our family’s organisational solution is old fashioned.

When I was little, my parents had a paper calendar where they wrote down their

important dates, too. Most notations revolved around picking up a relative or acquaintance from the airport and hosting them before they moved on somewhere. As immigrants to the USA in the 1970s, our home served as the entry point for scores of Indians visiting or relocating.

My parents also had a series of little books where they recorded phone numbers. Every Sunday, my mom would check the book and type in a long string of digits to phone her parents, in-laws, siblings and friends. Every few years, she copied all of her data into a new directory, and that was a precious source of information in my childhood home.

Technology arrived in fits and sports. As a gift, an uncle gave my parents a small,

battery-powered machine. They could write their phone numbers on plastic rectangles, and press alphabetised buttons to spin the numbers into view. The 80s were a boring time to be a kid, so my brother and I spent hours poking the little machine, watching it spin. Then that device broke, and my mom and dad went back to using booklets to store their numbers.

I went to university, clutching my own directory. Contact details of my friends were crossed out and rewritten, as we all

bounced around to different dormitories without mobile numbers that stayed constant. When I visited my parents, their house sported increasingly complex cordless phones.

It was easy back then to lose track of someone. If you moved–or they did–one could get lost. Now I can google my preschool bestie, but back then I had no way to cybersleuth. Information had a way of slipping through your fingers, never to be grasped again.

Mona Zutshi Opubor is an Indian-American and Nigerian writer. She holds an MSt in Literature and Arts from the University of Oxford, an MA in Creative Writing from Boston University and a BA in English Literature from Columbia University.

SPOT OF THE MONTH

FLOWERSHOP CAFÉ | FLOWERSHOP

For over a decade, Flowershop Café has been one of the most popular spots (if not number one) in Akin Adesola. It has grown with Victoria Island, serving Lagos with love, beauty and good food, inducing the secretion of all the happy hormones that keep the city going. Born from a vision to give people access to fresh blooms beyond the limited options the city once knew, Flowershop Café, over time, has conspired with food, flowers, and fragrance to soften the chaos that lies therein in the hustle and bustle. And just when the city thought it could not ask for more, Flowershop has quietly unveiled an exciting new chapter: an extension in 23B Isaac John St, Ikeja GRA, a space dedicated solely to the artistry of flowers and events, created to meet the ever-growing “petal demands” of the city.

This new outpost, known simply as Flowershop, strips away the Café element but keeps the heart of the brand intact: flowers at their finest. Located along the leafy Isaac John axis and directly next to a burgeoning restaurant, it is intimate, refined, and bursting with colour. Walk inside, and you are greeted by rows of chrysanthemums, gerberas, gypsophila, and lisianthus

in every imaginable shade. Where the Victoria Island flagship offers a lush garden café escape, the Ikeja spot presents a purist’s dream; a focused celebration of flowers as both luxury and language. It is here that gifting, events, and personal indulgence find new life.

At the heart of Flowershop’s reputation is the meticulousness of its processes. From curating varieties, both classic and rare, to precision in storage, conditioning, and arrangement, every detail is handled with reverence. The team understands that a single stem can carry as much meaning as an elaborate bouquet, which is why customers are invited to be part of the journey: to choose colours, shapes, and budgets that reflect their own story. Roses here are not just roses, but range from modest short-stemmed pieces to voluptuous garden roses whose fragrance fills a room. Tulips, carnations, hydrangeas, and lisianthus are treated with the same care, arriving chilled, hydrated, and arranged in a way that extends their fleeting lives. Delivery, too, is handled with precision: only air-conditioned cars are used to ensure freshness, because here, nothing is left to chance. This devotion translates into more than flowers to

a customer experience built on trust and creativity. Clients can pick a single sunflower, an opulent N2-million arrangement, or anything in between. The gift offering expands further with artisanal extras: wines, candles, chocolates, even curated selfcare treasures, allowing each bouquet to become part of a larger, more personal gesture. Behind every order lies long hours of work: cleaning, conditioning, arranging, and packaging. For the Flowershop team, this labour is love returns in the form of loyalty, with nearly 80% of customers returning again and again.

Seasonality adds another layer of enchantment. Peonies in spring, tulips in early summer, pines and berries in winter, every season brings new textures, scents, and stories to Lagos through Flowershop’s doors. During Christmas, their shelves are heavy with evergreens, gilded roses, and eucalyptus, which can create tablescapes that turn dinners into theatre. Valentine’s, however, is the crown jewel. It becomes a rigorous love affair where over 2,000 arrangements are crafted, often with the team sleeping in-store for days. Bouquets, bridal arrangements, wedding bouquets, corporate gala, centrepieces, and private event florals are executed with the same zeal.

Amid the allure of imported peonies and garden roses, Flowershop never loses sight of home. A truly noble character, you barely find these days in businesses. The brand works closely with Nigerian growers, sourcing tropical beauties like Bird of Paradise and Heliconias, and showcasing them in ways that remind clients of their inherent local elegance. Supporting local farmers is a philosophy. Relationships with growers globally are nurtured like family, just as staff members who have been with the brand for a decade remain its backbone. It is this foundation of loyalty and trust that sustains Flowershop’s expansion and growth, and the busy scenes of Ikeja just got blessed.

Flowershop Café

274 Akin Adesola St, Victoria Island, Lagos +234 815 990 6666 (coffee shop) +234 815 991 6666 (flowershop)

Flowershop

23B Isaac John St, Ikeja GRA, Ikeja 000000, Lagos +234 915 476 6666 (IKeja) https://flowershopcafe.com.ng/ IG: @flowershopcafelagos

Interview

Olatunbosun Alake

Honourable Commissioner for Innovation, Science and Technology, Lagos State

Meet Olatunbosun Alake, the esteemed Honourable Commissioner for Innovation, Science and Technology in Lagos State. In his pivotal role, he masterfully oversees the IT infrastructure for the Lagos State government, effectively serving as the state’s de facto IT department. This includes the strategic management of ERP systems for critical government functions like payroll and HR, and the robust operation of a data centre that hosts vital IT systems. Beyond his impressive IT stewardship, Commissioner Alake is a driving force behind science, technology, and innovation outcomes in Lagos State. He leads a dynamic startup funding function, providing crucial support to technology startups across diverse verticals such as fintech, agritech, construction tech, and the circular economy. His vision extends to fostering groundbreaking research and development, evidenced by significant funding for universities to invent new products and services that propel economic value. Furthermore, he passionately champions STEM programs in schools, laying the groundwork for future generations of innovators. Commissioner Alake’s day-today dedication constitutes the majority of his impactful activities, continually advancing Lagos State’s technological landscape and innovative spirit.

How would you define innovation in a Lagos context, beyond global buzzwords and hype?

We see innovation as a value creation activity where we use the tools we have to create value in a sector. And so when we use technology tools to make unique and convenient ways of payment for goods and services, or reduce the number of steps to produce a good or a service, these could be an innovation. Or using tools in science and technology to create products and services that are of value to citizens. That is what we term as innovation. And this is what our activities are based around. So innovation for us is creating pots of value that will improve the lives of our citizens.

What infrastructure, digital, physical, or regulatory, do you consider most critical for Lagos to scale its innovation economy in the next decade?

Important question. Number one infrastructure is communications infrastructure, from a technology point of view. Telecommunications has been very important to the world. It makes us connect with our loved ones. It helps us to work, and it helps people to be educated. If you recall how Yaba itself became sort of like a mini Silicon Valley, what brought that was the communication infrastructure. One of the first high-capacity fibre cables was laid in that area, which attracted multiple startups to the area. Because there was robust connectivity, business and other activities began to take place in that area.

Another element I think is also equally important, if not more, is talent. I think the

talent of a jurisdiction or of a place is directly proportional to the development of that place, honestly. And this is true the world over in developed countries. At any point in time, if you are asking for a developer in China, you’ll find two million of them. And what I feel in Nigeria is that we need more talent. Yes, we have talent in Nigeria, but we need more. The more talent you have, the more production, because when you measure GDP per capita, it is the amount of value that one person can create. And what is the causative effect of creating value? It is the skills that people have that will create that value, that will raise the GDP of that nation. So, talent is incredibly important. It is one of the major reasons why Lagos is where it is in comparison to the Federation. So, talent infrastructure has been a critically important development factor for us in Lagos. And we continue to double down on those two factors.

Lagos has often been described as Africa’s tech capital. From a policy perspective, what do you think still needs to be done to cement that position?

Lagos has achieved a lot, but for us to cement or solidify Lagos’ position as the top technology destination in Sub-Saharan Africa and perhaps even the wider world, we need to make innovation part and parcel of the socio-economic fabric of Lagos State. What do I mean? We institutionalise innovation. So, it’s not a random affair if somebody has an idea.

No. We institutionalise the innovation process so that it’s a going concern. It happens naturally. And it happens through a process in Lagos. And that’s why we are working on the innovation bill. The innovation bill seeks to make the research, development, and innovation process a seamless end-toend process in Lagos. So, from when the person has an

idea, what tools would they need to turn that idea into reality? What kinds of obstacles do they need removed to form a company around it? How can they easily get funding? How can they get the right connections to build that idea into an investable and valuecreating product? Or how quickly can that process happen in Lagos? That’s what the innovation bill seeks to catalyse.

And if we do that, I think Lagos will continue to cement its place as number one and surpass even cities in other jurisdictions. In all honesty, yes, we might be big men in Africa, but we need to be big men in the galaxy (lol).

Are there specific incentives, programs, or public-private partnerships being rolled out to channel funding into priority sectors beyond fintech?

Today, we have the Lagos State Science Research and Innovation Council. It’s a private-public sector council that has been formulated and was inaugurated by the Governor. It has private sector experts on it. The idea is to funnel innovation funds into different sectors. So, for our last call-out, we made a lot of investments and grants funding into Environmental Science and Secular Economy. We also invested in startups that were in Electric Vehicles. We invested in a startup that was also doing things around E-commerce. So, we are very well-versed in funding other areas that are not fintech because we want to be able to: grow these sectors and de-risk them for bigger funders to come and take them to a logical

LASRIC Innovation Bill Meet the Ministry

conclusion.

We’ve funded quite a few areas, even in Construction. There was this company that was turning plastic bottles into interlocking stones/building blocks, you know, which ticks two boxes: Secular Economy and Construction, but what we plan in the future is to have a dedicated fund from the state’s capital budget that will continue to fund multiple ideas and multiple research and development initiatives in universities. In fact, we had a team of medical professionals build a medical device in Unilag, and we got a patent for it, recognised as an original invention made in Lagos. So, things like that are some of the things that we are doing, and we are beginning to attract partnerships right from across Nigeria. There’s a partnership we are working on now in the research and

‘‘development space. I think once it’s finalized, we’ll be able to announce it.

This has been eye-opening. There’s so much innovation happening around us. Now, you spoke about systematising/ institutionalising our innovation process so that it works. If we can ensure these are not just buzzwords, but actually work in real-time, that will be really great!

Absolutely!.

And to that, to readers or to listeners, go and check out for yourself some of the stuff we’ve done so that you can see how tangible they are. If you go to lasric.lagosstate.gov.ng, you will see some of our beneficiaries from our previous funding drives and rounds for companies creating value, and you’ll see

some of our research and development initiatives that are also creating value today. We have open call-outs every year to fund some of these things.

If you go to innovationbill.lagostate.gov. ng, you will see our draft innovation bill to systemise these activities so that it becomes something that’s followed, regardless of administration. All of these things are in the public space. They are currently out there for anybody to see, to contribute, to comment, and to support. So, yes, we are quite proud of the Lagosians who are creating value. And we will continue to support them and make sure we systemise the process of catalysing innovation in Lagos State. Thank you so much.

Talent is incredibly important. It is one of the major reasons why Lagos is where it is in comparison to the Federation. Talent infrastructure has been a critically important development factor for us in Lagos. And we continue to double down. ‘‘

Interview Oswald Osaretin Guobadia Digital Evangelist Co-founder & Executive Vice President, DBH Solutions

Meet Oswald Osaretin Guobadia, with 30 years of experience building technology systems across the globe, a distinguished digital technologist and policy adviser. Hailing from Benin City, Nigeria, his work is now primarily dedicated to shaping Africa’s future by helping its leaders develop robust policies. His mission is to create an ecosystem where innovation and entrepreneurship can thrive, preventing brilliant ideas from being lost to regulatory hurdles.

The Startup Act has been hailed as a breakthrough in aligning government with the innovation ecosystem. Looking back, do you think Nigeria is fully leveraging this law to build a selfsustaining tech economy, or are we still too reliant on external validation?

Look, Nigeria understands what’s at stake and is taking strides. Maybe not as expediently as we’d all like, but they are real steps nonetheless. The beautiful thing about the Nigerian Startup Act isn’t just its existence, though that matters enormously; it is how it was developed. That collaborative “Big Tent” approach means the law lives in the hearts of Nigerians. There’s genuine ownership, which is why you’re asking this question in the first place.

The Act has already influenced other laws, directed funding towards the ecosystem, and inspired countries across Africa to recognise how critical innovation is for our growing youth population. It’s also becoming a guiding light for states developing their own policies to attract, retain, and help talent thrive in the digital economy. But you’re absolutely right to push. It’s time we embraced that Africa is the digital present and future. We have real, fantastic problems that need digital solutions. We don’t need external validation; we need to look within, develop our skills, improve our policy landscape, and critically engage domestic capital. The work is ahead of us.

Reflecting on your time in government, what do you see as the single most transformative impact of the Nigeria Startup Act on the average Nigerian’s life so far?

Faith. That’s the word that comes to mind.

Citizens saw their government take a position in their interest and deliver on it through a transparent, collaborative, and efficient process. That might sound abstract, but it’s profound. When people see that collaboration between citizens and the public sector actually

works, it changes expectations. It builds the trust necessary for a country to move along the positive trajectory of its developmental cycle. That faith, that sense that “we can actually do this together”, ripples through everything else we’re trying to build.

What specific policies, in your view, are most critical now to ensure that the benefits of Nigeria’s digital economy are inclusive and reach the most vulnerable populations?

I’d love to answer this differently and say: we have policies. What we need now is to review, update, and, most importantly, implement them effectively. But here’s the thing: policy alone isn’t enough. What’s equally critical is investment in infrastructure. Policy and infrastructure must move together like twin rails supporting a train. You can’t have one without the other and expect to reach your destination.

The true test isn’t just having beautiful policies or impressive infrastructure. It’s whether someone in an African village can conceptualise an idea and actually develop and commercialise it. That’s when you know your digital economy is truly inclusive. My conviction remains that the next startup to impact the world will start in an African village, but only if we build the rails to support that journey.

Policy is often reactive in Nigeria, catching up to trends rather than shaping them. With emerging technologies like AI, blockchain, and green tech, how can Nigeria position itself to be proactive, creating frameworks that anticipate, not just regulate?

I actually don’t think this is completely true anymore. Nigeria has blockchain and AI policies already in place. The issue isn’t foresight; it’s implementation and buy-in.

‘‘

We don’t need external validation; we need to look within, develop our skills, improve our policy landscape, and critically engage domestic capital. The work is ahead of us.

What’s critical now is the broad implementation and integration of forward-thinking policy at the state, federal, regional, and continental levels. We need to think about how our policies engage with existing laws to enable cross-border trade. Remember, the AfCFTA was designed to create the world’s largest free trade zone. The real question is: are our policies aligned to integrate into this continental framework?

Policy should be a living thing, adaptive and responsive, rather than gathering dust after the ribbon-cutting ceremony. When policies become tools instead of trophies, that’s when you shift from reactive to proactive.

Nigeria’s tech narrative is often dominated by funding rounds and valuation headlines. What, in your view, would a more authentic measure of success look like for the ecosystem?

Actually, it should be dominated by funding rounds! Creation is experimental, and funding is absolutely needed for ideas to reach their full potential.

But here’s where I think we need balance: we must also invest in the enabling environment. As the grandson of a farmer, I see ideas as seeds that need to be planted. Funding is the irrigation system, which we definitely need to structure better from local sources. But that still leaves us needing fertile soil, and that is the policy. The

authentic measure of success isn’t just how much funding flows in, but whether that funding is helping to solve real problems for real people, whether the regulatory environment supports sustainable growth, and whether we’re building an ecosystem that can stand on its own. It’s about the quality of the harvest, not just the amount of water we pour.

As a ‘Digital Evangelist,’ what is the core message of hope you share with young Nigerians who are looking to build a career in tech?

“Shine your eye”, do the work, gain the skills, solve real problems, take small wins, but think long! And please, do not be an impostor. The world doesn’t need another copy of someone else’s success story. It needs your authentic contribution.

Let me state the obvious: the world is digital, Africa needs solutions, so where are you? This isn’t just about building the next unicorn or getting acquired by some Silicon Valley giant. It’s about recognising that we have the talent, the problems worth solving, and increasingly, the policy environment to support innovation. The message of hope is simple: you’re not too late, you’re not in the wrong place, and your contribution matters more than you might realise. The next chapter of Africa’s digital story needs authors, not just readers.

Interview

Godwin Benson

Founder, Tuteria

‘‘ The most important value is to ensure the tech solves the “REAL” problem the users have, not the perceived problem.

Meet Godwin Benson, a Systems Engineer by training and an educator at heart, who is best known as the founder and CEO of Tuteria Education. His company is a leading education technology platform in Nigeria, dedicated to delivering personalised and high-quality tutoring. Under Godwin’s leadership, Tuteria has impacted over 125,000 children and adults in Nigeria and the Diaspora, offering a wide range of lessons from core academic subjects like Maths and English to specialised skills such as music and coding.

Beyond your well-known story of starting Tuteria, can you share a specific moment from your early life where you first realised that technology could be a powerful force for solving everyday Nigerian problems? There were several little moments.

I first discovered the internet in 2003, in JSS 3, as a tool for self-study at what was popularly called a “cybercafé”. I would save up 50 naira to buy 30 minutes of internet access to consume scholarly content on topics in Physics, Maths and Chemistry online. I was fascinated by how much I could learn beyond what was taught in class or available in books. I saw computers and the internet as a powerful tool to reach a large audience, share helpful information, and educate students.

Another moment was in 2012 when I first learnt that the song “Gangnam Style” had garnered over one billion views on YouTube! I thought to myself, “This is a fun song seen by a billion people; what if it was a message, a product or an explanation of a concept? It could help a billion people!”. That’s when I realised that technology and the internet had so much power as a tool for change. Following this, I started an online platform called Transtudent World (i.e. the world of transcendent students – now defunct) in 2013, where I shared tips, insights and principles to help students achieve better academic excellence. The platform garnered over 24,000 readers from more than nine countries, and I also authored an e-book, which sold thousands of copies.

The final moment was when I first learnt about Fiverr, the freelancing platform, in 2013. I joined the platform offering editorial services and was earning between $700 and $1,000 a month as a Corper. I was impressed by how they had worked out a way to connect the supply and demand for talent online. I saw how this could be a tool to create economic opportunities and help many people earn a living. It’s therefore not surprising that I would go on to make “my own Fiverr”, building technology to connect the supply of teachers to student/parent demand, which is more in

line with my passion.

We often talk about tech in terms of business. But on a personal level, how do you envision technology simplifying the lives of Nigerians all over the country?

Fundamentally, technology is a tool to help improve our quality of life. It therefore has limitless potential to simplify life and living for Nigerians.

Today, we see innovations in health-tech that make it easy to access health records, medicine, doctors, lab tests, and other healthcare services. We see fintech innovation that makes it easy to move money, which accelerates trade and financial inclusion, enabling Nigerians to invest in assets and participate in the global economy.

Funny story: in the early days of Tuteria, we had to physically move cash from one bank to another daily to enable us to pay out to our tutors, exposing us to the risk of theft and loss. Now we don’t have to do that.

Similarly, industries such as logistics, food, transportation, education, rentals and agriculture have experienced tremendous growth and simplification due to improvements in the underlying technology.

I’m optimistic that the application of technology in the future will be very personalised, especially in the era of AI. Technology will learn about us individually, communicate with us, understand our needs, habits and behaviours, and continuously adapt to help us maximise our outcomes.

With Tuteria, you’ve democratised access to skills. What other aspect of Nigerian life, whether it’s healthcare, food, or civic engagement, do you believe is most ready for a similar tech-driven transformation?

I believe we’re just at the beginning phases of the transformation to be seen in sectors like education, healthcare, mobility and ag-tech in

Nigeria.

We’ve made a great deal of progress in these sectors, but a lot more work still needs to be done to drive widespread adoption among everyday Nigerians, to the point where, just like payments, they get embedded into our way of life.

What’s the most heartwarming story you’ve heard from a Tuteria user that made you say, “This is exactly why we built this”? Oh! I remember one.

I visited one of our parents in her home. She had a 7-year-old son who had sustained a head injury two years prior, which developed into a learning challenge that affected his speech and reading ability. He couldn’t read or pronounce words correctly.

When his mum came to us, she was desperate for a change. We got her an incredibly good tutor who was great with children and also a child behavioural psychologist. They had lessons for about five months by the time I visited.

Tears filled our eyes as we watched her son read words, pronounce them well, and solve numerical problems! Not only could he now read, but he’d also developed a love for learning and had storybooks he enjoyed reading!

This experience has stayed with me. This is why we built Tuteria: to make transformative learning accessible to everyone.

What is the single most important value you believe must be at the core of any technology designed to genuinely improve the lives of Nigerians?

The most important value is to ensure the tech solves the “real” problem the users have, not the perceived problem. It has to be presented in a form that the user can access and use with minimal effort. It has to do what it claims to do to build trust, which is very important for adoption.

Interview Samson Ogbole Team Lead, Soiless Farm Lab

Before you became “Farmer Ogbole,” what was your first personal encounter with a piece of technology that made you believe it could change the world, or at least your world?

I was an intern (NYSC) at IITA. This was my first professional encounter with both agriculture and aeroponics technology, which was being used for the growth of seed yams in the YIIFSWA project. I saw this as innovative and believed that if it could be localised and made accessible, it would tackle the seasonality in food production.

Your work is incredibly high-tech. But if you had to explain your job to someone outside the tech and agriculture space, or even to a ten-year-old, how would you describe it?

Explaining it to a child is easy. Would you love to eat corn every day? How about mango or your favourite fruit every day? Well, what I do is try to ensure we do not have to depend on the rainy season to grow our food. We want to create a system of growing that is not dependent on seasons. To do this, we need to control the two main things that can affect growing: living things (biotic factors) and nonliving things (abiotic factors). When we control these things and remove the guesswork, that’s what we call precision farming. So, every piece of technology you see us using on the farm has one single purpose: control. The more control we have, the better we can predict the outcome of what we do.

Meet Samson Ogbole, the Team Lead of Soilless Farm Lab, a pioneering Agri-tech company transforming the horticultural value chain. He leads a team that specialises in climate-smart agriculture, utilising advanced technologies like AI-based irrigation, soilless farming, and drones to ensure precise, year-round production. Beyond cultivation, the company manages a full processing and distribution network and empowers the agricultural community by setting up farms and providing expert training.

We are fascinated by your aeroponics system. Can you break down how technology, from sensors to data analysis, helps you grow a perfect yam without soil?

The key is to understand that plants do not need soil to grow; they only need the nutrients and other factors that soil provides. Think of it like cooking your food: you do not need wood, sawdust, kerosene, or gas to cook; what you need is heat. Whatever can give you heat will allow you to cook. In the same way, growing plants is about delivering nutrients to the plant’s roots and ensuring they can breathe. Aeroponics simply creates a nutrient-laden mist for the root zone and provides a support system. Because it’s a mist, the plant can grow very well. Using it for yams is to get vines for multiplication, which can then be used to grow seed yams in a chosen substrate medium before being replanted in soil to get ware yams.

The sensors are used to monitor the root zone first, because too much water will suffocate the roots and too little will kill the plant. You also want to monitor the shoot zone to ensure the plants are growing as planned. Additionally, you need to monitor the growth data and the nutrient solution to see what the plant is absorbing at any given time. This is the science in agricultural science, ensuring that at the end of the day, we get plants that are growing optimally.

Technology is often seen as isolating. How do you use it to build a stronger, more connected community among your trainees and the next generation of farmers?

We start with what is locally available. You cannot adopt science beyond the locality’s existing infrastructure and knowledge base; these must grow first. This is why it is not a sprint but a marathon, which involves localising the technology as much as possible. In addition, we are intentional about teaching the principles and not just the technology, as the human mind is capable of applying these principles using the resources available to them.

What’s the most common myth you have to debunk for people when they first learn about your high-tech approach to farming?

Farmers in Nigeria need to step up their adoption of technology to ensure food security. The truth is, food security is beyond what farmers alone can achieve. Hunger and poverty are both systemic; a system created them. To tackle them by hoping only the farmer can solve it is to burden the farmer with a problem they cannot solve alone. They are just a small cog in the machine, and even with the most advanced technologies, we as farmers will only produce more food that goes to waste. There is no silver bullet for systemic failure, so a food system needs to be created that includes everyone, even the consumers.

You cannot adopt science beyond the locality’s existing infrastructure and knowledge base; these must grow first.

Interview Dr. Dotun Olowoporoku Managing Partner, Ventures Platform

‘‘Startups are fragile,inherently and the key toisn’tsurvival about avoiding errors, but rather making them at the right time.

Can you walk us through your journey into venture capital and how your earlier experiences prepared you for this role?

My background is academic. I have a PhD in Air Quality Policy and Management from UWE Bristol and did a two-year postdoc in Carbon Management. During that time, I stumbled into entrepreneurship and launched Meals.co.uk in 2011, an online food delivery platform similar to Uber Eats and Chow Deck. Unlike earlier platforms that only aggregated restaurants, we built a platform where independent riders handled deliveries via GPS-enabled smartphones, which was an innovation then. We raised VC funding in the UK but couldn’t scale as fast as Deliveroo, our competitor in London. Eventually, Just Eat acquired my company and integrated our technology. The exit wasn’t huge, but it gave me a taste of entrepreneurship and venture outcomes. Instead of returning to academia, I was encouraged by one of my investors, Doug Scott, to be an investor in Africa.

In 2015, I became a venture partner at Potential VC, Doug’s firm, visiting Nigeria regularly and connecting with leading founders. Although our initial fund couldn’t invest in most Nigerian startups due to jurisdictional restrictions, I launched Starta, a startup advisory and ecosystem platform. I organised events, started a podcast, did consulting, and angel-investment work that prepared me for a bigger role as a full-time venture investor and GP. By 2018, I had partnered with Kola Aina, who had started an accelerator programme in Abuja. We set out to raise a VC fund, but with no prior fund management experience, it took time. While Kola Aina built the syndicate’s fund for Ventures Platform, I joined Novastar Ventures to gain hands-on VC experience, managing capital, transactions, and postinvestment support. Learning from seasoned partners prepared me to run our fund at Ventures Platform effectively.

Through Novastar, I also led an early

Meet Dotun Olowoporoku, a Managing Partner at Ventures Platform, where he leads investments in the next generation of high-growth, tech-enabled startups across the African continent. As a Venture Capitalist, he has managed over $46 million in funds dedicated to supporting companies from the pre-seed and seed stages. Dotun has been privileged to back some of Africa’s most successful businesses, with a portfolio that includes pivotal companies such as Paystack, PiggyVest, Reliance HMO, and Moniepoint.

investment in Moniepoint, then a late entrant in agent banking. While many doubted them, I believed in their model and convinced my team and partners to back them. I worked closely with the founder, Tosin Eniolorunda, helping raise funds and structure the company, and later joined Moniepoint as Chief Commercial Officer for a year. Afterwards, I reunited with Kola Aina, and together we closed our first fund, now investing significantly in African startups.

You’ve seen startups rise and stall. What distinguishes the ones that truly scale from those that don’t?

Most startups that succeed have unique

qualities that contribute to their success. However, while there are many unique paths to startup success, the road to failure is often predictable and marked by common mistakes. Startups are inherently fragile, and the key to survival isn’t about avoiding errors, but rather making them at non-fatal timing. Even today’s billion-dollar companies made critical mistakes but were saved by favourable timing, which highlights how this single factor can mean the difference between shutting down and scaling to massive success. Even billion-dollar companies like Moniepoint, Flutterwave and OPay made plenty of errors, but they survived because timing worked in their favour. For example, some were hit with billion-naira fines; if those had come earlier, they might not have survived. Timing is critical.

Another factor is the founder’s unique understanding of the market, product, or technology. Without this, many fail. Founders who deeply understand distribution, technology, or customer needs often build stronger companies. Tosin Eniolorunda at Moniepoint succeeded because of his insight into agent banking distribution, combined with good timing (COVID and CBN cash policy

shifts). Similarly, Shola Akinlade of Paystack saw the gap in card payments and acted quickly.

Beyond timing, success typically hinges on two other pillars: the founder’s unique insight and relentless execution. A founder must possess a deep and unparalleled understanding of their market, product, and distribution channels. However, this knowledge is useless without executing a disciplined and obsessive drive to turn vision into reality. Ultimately, the powerful combination of a unique idea, the capability to act on it, and being in the right place at the right time is what separates a thriving business from one that predictably collapses.

What do you see as the biggest misalignment between the way Nigerian startups are funded and the actual needs of our ecosystem?

With Moniepoint, the initial VC pushback wasn’t due to a lack of understanding. Rather, investors doubted how it could compete with existing players, which limited early traction. You have to remember, Moniepoint started agent banking towards the end of 2019. At that point, there was OPay, and a lot of people had put money into it. By 2020, OPay had raised about $170 million, Paga had raised maybe about $30 million, and quite a number of others were already capturing the market. Then there was the threat of MTN, which could likely do more as well. And there were the banks. Actually, the largest agent network in Nigeria in 2020 was FirstMonie, with agents in all 770 local governments.

In its early days, Moniepoint was a tiny company with only 6,000 agents, facing immense competition from established banks, MTN, and other heavily funded fintechs. This made most investors overlook them, not because they disbelieved in the market, but because their biases made it hard to back such a small underdog. However, I decided to invest after meeting the founder, Tosin Eniolorunda, and discovering we shared a unique thesis. We both believed that agent banking was not just an end in itself, but a crucial foundation for building a much larger digital banking ecosystem in Africa, a long-term perspective that other VCs failed to see.

VC is a belief system; it’s about using money to prove your belief. So, as a VC, you are using money to prove something that you deeply believe in. Of course, you use numbers to back it up, but most investment has to come from conviction. Venture capital isn’t just about numbers; it’s fundamentally about a VC’s personal belief in a founder’s vision, much like Accel’s early, convictionbased investment in Facebook. This principle is especially critical in Africa, which gets less than 5% of global VC funding because foreign investors often lack this deep, genuine belief in local business models and invest opportunistically. The solution, therefore, is to have more local African fund managers who possess the inherent conviction and contextual understanding needed to truly champion innovation on the continent.

Startups like Moniepoint, Paystack, and Flutterwave struggle at Series B and above. Paystack was lucky to be bought, but raising $100–$200 million in Africa is hard. No African VC fund can write that cheque. In the U.S., $100 million is pocket change for a $3 billion fund. That’s the disconnect; it’s about the source of capital. We’re getting there. More African fund managers will emerge with more money and deeper market understanding. In the end, VC is believing in a future and putting money behind it.

As African startups seek global capital, they sometimes adapt their stories for foreign investors. How do founders stay globally attractive while remaining locally relevant?

The problem you’re solving as a founder has to be uniquely local and scalable. You should not tweak your fundamental model to appeal to a New York investor. Your model must remain local and scalable.

To attract global funding, African founders must tell their story in a way that international investors can understand, even if the business model is locally specific. For example, the concept of “agent banking” used by companies like Moniepoint and OPay initially confused investors. By reframing the narrative describing agents as “merchants” who use point-of-sale (POS) systems to offer familiar services like “cashback”, the

model became relatable to successful global businesses like Square. This crucial shift in storytelling allows founders to secure investment without changing their core business model, which must remain relevant to the local market.

Local investors are vital in this process, often serving as “interpreter investors.” They understand the business from the ground up and help translate the founder’s vision for a global audience of partners and co-investors. These early backers often become the most effective storytellers for the startup, bridging the gap between local operations and the global investment community. This support is critical, as it helps bring in larger international funds for later growth stages, proving that while the business stays the same, the way it is presented is key to success.

What are the most common mistakes you see African founders make when pitching to VCs, and how can they avoid them?

I would not say there’s just one mistake; there are several common pitfalls. The most significant one is failing to understand the VC you’re approaching - their investment model, thesis, focus areas and constraints. It’s crucial to research this thoroughly before pitching, so you can tailor your presentation to align with their specific interests rather than delivering a generic pitch.

Remember that a VC’s primary objective isn’t to help founders. Many entrepreneurs mistakenly think, “They’re not investing in my business because they don’t like my idea” or “Why are they funding that startup instead? Is it personal preference?” This couldn’t be further from the truth. VCs invest for one reason only: because they see your business as a vehicle to achieve their ultimate goal - generating substantial returns for their investors. Whether they focus on climate tech, fintech or another sector, it’s simply a means to an end.

The fundamental point to understand is that VC investment decisions aren’t personalthey’re entirely driven by potential returns. When you recognise this reality, you can position your pitch to demonstrate how your business aligns with their venture return and impact objectives.

SkinCure: Science-backed Medispa As The Future Of Skincare

What if your next serum is prescribed by an algorithm that has already mapped how the dense Lagos traffic air from car engines will oxidise your lipid barrier by the close of business? Or what if your mirror becomes a live feed of transepidermal water loss, gently nudging you to rehydrate before the first tightness even registers? These are not hypotheticals borrowed from Silicon Valley daydreams; they are conversations already being had in medispas from Seoul, Bangkok, Basel, and now, Lagos

The future of skincare is here. It’s a world where beauty is no longer defined by fleeting trends but by lasting health. It’s a city that stops guessing what its skin needs and starts listening to it. It’s a time when Lagosians, notorious for their resilience and relentless hustle, finally realise that their skin has been carrying more than they’ve ever acknowledged.

For the first time ever, the future is not only circuitry. It is also stillness. You feel it when a

therapist’s hand slows your vagus nerve with measured pressure, when linen is warmed to 37 °C, and when music tuned to 60 bpm lowers cortisol by 21%. You can see it when treatment isn’t one-size-fits-all, when outcomes are tracked, when you visit 310B Akin Ogunlewe Street, Victoria Island, Lagos

In any fast-paced city like Lagos, where pollution, stress, and lifestyle often leave visible marks, SkinCure offers something rare: results you can measure, treatments you can trust, and therapies designed for our unique environment.

Listening is the first line of code in any upgrade. That’s why every treatment, rooted in clinical expertise and designed to restore skin at its core, starts with a consultation and analysis. Whether it’s facials, boosters, injectables, or body therapies, SkinCure is not about surfacelevel quick fixes: it’s about long-term skin health.

Dolapo Morgan Investment Principal, Ventures Platform

You work on the Leveling VC initiative to bridge capital gaps for female-led startups. How does this innovation change the funding narrative, and what real impact are you seeing?

Leveling VC is an initiative by Ventures Platform designed to address a clear gap in the market by investing in and supporting female founders. The main goal is to get more women funded, as the current statistics in Africa are stark: less than 4 per cent of female tech CEOs receive funding. This gap often exists because incredible founders may lack the right network or knowledge of what investors expect. To tackle this, we are actively empowering women through dedicated office hours and educational sessions. This approach is yielding positive results, as we are already seeing an increased pipeline of female founders. By making our commitment visible, we encourage more founders to connect with us. Our ultimate goal is to equip these founders with the necessary tools and eventually provide the funding they need to succeed, closing the significant gender gap in venture capital.

As a Forbes 30 Under 30 honouree and Oxford-trained investor, how does your perspective differ from other investors, and how does that shape your investment decisions?

My perspective is a significant asset during deal reviews. As a Black woman, I have an inherent understanding of certain industries, like beauty, which helps reduce bias against femaledominated markets. I can quickly validate market sizes that others might question. My background also plays a crucial role. Having lived in different countries, including the Middle East, gives me the cultural insight to better analyse a start-up’s potential to scale internationally. This broadens my ability to evaluate opportunities beyond Nigeria and provides a more comprehensive view when analysing deals.

Does the level of funding allocated to a startup directly affect its impact and productivity, and therefore its propensity to become the next big thing?

While funding is helpful, its role in a start-up’s success is nuanced and not a simple guarantee. Many successful companies were initially bootstrapped. Funding becomes paramount only when significant technology or licensing costs are involved. Conversely, limited capital can force founders to be more innovative and efficient, which can lead to better outcomes. Ultimately, success depends less on the amount of funding and more on a combination of factors: the industry, the nature of the founder, the solution itself, and the ability to manage capital effectively. There is no one-size-fits-all answer.

What key factors do you evaluate before deciding to invest in a start-up?

‘‘ VC is an apprenticeship model where excellence is learned through experience and working with skilled mentors, not from a book.

It is across several key metrics.

First, the evaluation begins with the foundational elements: the market and the team. For investors seeking significant returns, the market opportunity must not only be large but also actively growing. Just as critical is the quality of the team, as early-stage investing is essentially a bet on people. Investors need to trust that the founders are capable, complementary, and will use the capital effectively to ensure the company’s success.

Next, the focus shifts to the business’s performance and strategy. Investors analyse the company’s traction, which is the consistent, month-over-month progress shown through metrics like revenue or user growth. This demonstrates a founder’s understanding of their customers. The company’s solution must also be competitive and defensible with a strong moat, and it needs a clear go-to-market strategy that outlines how it will acquire new customers.

Finally, the assessment concludes with the end goal in mind: exit viability. Since venture capitalists only make money when they can sell their stake, they must determine if the start-up is a business that could realistically be acquired or merged in the future. This potential for an exit is crucial for ensuring that investors can provide a return to their own backers.

Do you believe gender dynamics, especially within Africa as a rising market, have an impact on the productivity and growth potential of start-ups? And if so, in what

Meet Dolapo Morgan, a Principal at Ventures Platform. She plays a key role in identifying and investing in the next generation of African tech start-ups. She spearheads the firm’s investment pipeline from pre-seed to Series A, managing everything from sourcing and due diligence to transaction structuring. With over two and a half years of experience, she is dedicated to providing capital and support to help founders succeed. A multi-faceted professional, Dolapo also channels her creativity into designing unique jewellery

ways have you seen this play out?

I think when you look at the research, it actually points to the success of gender-balanced teams. My proposition is not that every start-up should be only female-run, but that there should be a balance. Having a man and a woman as cofounders has historically shown that those teams grow faster and generate better returns for their investors. For example, some women may bring a little more empathy, while a man may bring a different energy, but I do not want to generalise and say all men are aggressive and all women are not. It is not always that clearcut. The point is that gender balance matters. We are nurtured in different ways and taught to view life differently from birth. That balance creates a better working environment and stronger outcomes for start-ups.

What do you think makes a good VC generally?

Becoming a good VC is a combination of factors. VC is an apprenticeship model where excellence is learned through experience and working with skilled mentors, not from a book. Success is almost a case of pattern recognition. Personally, learning from my experienced colleagues, Kola Aina and Dotun Olowoporoku, has helped me grasp concepts more quickly than reading ever could. My advice to anyone entering VC is to work with someone reputable and experienced. The best deals are brought to VCs who are trusted, and that reputation is built on how you treat founders throughout the process, even if you don’t ultimately invest.

Nigeria’s No. 1 Women-Led Online Store for Baby and Children Products

It was a Saturday morning when Anisha Bhojwani ran out of wipes and diapers— every parent’s nightmare. That same weekend, Rohini Chugani realized she had forgotten to buy a birthday gift for a party her child was attending that afternoon. A few days later, the two mothers met at a Mommy & Me class in Lagos and bonded over how difficult it was to source authentic, trusted baby and children’s products when needed most.

From unreliable Instagram vendors and counterfeit products to delayed deliveries and unanswered messages, shopping for essentials and gifts often felt like another full-time job. That conversation planted the seed for Klick—the business they went on to build together in 2023.

Klick was founded with a clear vision: to become Nigeria’s number one online store for baby and children’s products, designed to solve the very problems that first brought its founders together. Anisha, a Chartered Accountant, and Rohini, with a background in investment banking, combined their professional expertise with their experiences as mothers to launch a digital-first, womenled platform offering a seamless, reliable way for parents to shop. From daily essentials like diapers and wipes to gift-wrapped toys and curated return presents, Klick covers it all.

What makes Klick stand out is its commitment to authenticity, service, and technology-driven fulfilment. Behind every order lies a carefully designed backend system that ensures speed and reliability. Real-time stock management and automated order processing enable same-day delivery within Lagos—a feature parents highlight as a game changer.

“Parents don’t have the luxury of waiting days for essentials,” says cofounder Rohini. “Our investment in technology means that when you place an order, it’s processed, picked, and dispatched within hours. It takes the stress out of parenting emergencies.”

To further build trust, Klick ensures all payments on its website are secure, partnering with trusted gateways such as Paystack and Flutterwave. Parents can shop confidently, knowing transactions are protected by industry-leading systems.

But Klick is more than just a store—it is building a supportive community for parents. Through its social media and digital channels, the company shares advice on challenges such as sleep training, teething, and other parenting concerns. This blend of commerce and care reflects Klick’s broader mission: to be a partner in the parenting journey, not just a retailer.

The company’s women-led structure also sets it apart. From procurement to fulfilment, every aspect of Klick is run by women. “We wanted Klick to be more than a business,” explains Anisha. “It’s also about empowerment—creating a company where women support women, and where mothers understand the needs of other mothers.”

In just 18 months, Klick has grown from an idea born in a Mommy & Me class to a trusted household name, with a customer retention rate of 91%. Growth has been fueled by word-of-mouth and consistent new user acquisition, while customer feedback consistently praises its speed, reliability, and service.

What began as two mothers solving their own Saturday morning problems has become one of Nigeria’s most promising women-led e-commerce success stories. With its tech-enabled logistics backbone, secure payment systems, parent support community, and dedication to empowering women, Klick is more than just a store—it’s reshaping how parents shop and connect in Nigeria. And if the journey so far is any indication, Klick is only getting started.

IG: @klickafrica Tiktok: @klickafrica Website: www.klick.africa

Interview Chukwuma Nwanze CEO and Managing Director, Credit Direct

‘‘ Nigerians are some of the fastest adopters in the world; we leapfrog. The real challenge isn’t adoption; it’s trust at scale.

Many financial leaders talk about “digital transformation,” but Credit Direct has actually led with it. Looking back, what were the inflexion points where you realised this wasn’t just a strategy, but survival?

The real inflexion point came when we realised our customers had moved faster than us. Lifestyle, commerce, and payments had shifted into digital ecosystems, and the question became: were we going to follow, or fade? That was the moment we understood digital transformation wasn’t a strategy, it was survival.

Since we made the leap, the benefits have been undeniable: stronger profitability, sharper efficiency, innovation of new products, growth in customer numbers, lower acquisition costs, and higher customer lifetime value. Transformation wasn’t just about tech; it became the operating system for our future.

Embedded finance is quickly becoming invisible as it’s seamlessly woven into lifestyles, commerce, and communities. How do you see Nigeria’s embedded finance story differing from global narratives?

Globally, embedded finance often shows

Meet

Chukwuma “Chux” Nwanze, the Managing Director and CEO of Credit Direct. A passionate leader at the intersection of finance, strategy, and technology, Chux is dedicated to transforming institutions to unlock new possibilities for people. He is currently spearheading Credit Direct’s evolution into Africa’s leading embedded finance provider, building a digital-first platform that integrates lending, payments, and wealth solutions to empower individuals and businesses across the continent.

up as features tucked into apps. In Nigeria, the story is more organic, more communitydriven. People transact inside networks of trust: churches, co-operatives, employers, and market associations. Finance here will be embedded in communities, not just apps.

At Credit Direct, our ecosystem narrative reflects that. We start with captive routes, use credit as the ignition, and disburse into wallets so customers can borrow, pay, and transact seamlessly. Idle funds can then be reinvested through our high-yield product, Yield, creating passive income opportunities. All the while, we are using data points across credit, payments, and investments to offer more personalised products at the exact

point of need. That’s embedded finance, Nigerian style.

The Nigerian economy right now is challenging for both consumers and businesses. Where do you see the boldest opportunities for innovation in credit and lending, especially for underbanked Nigerians?

I see bold opportunities at the intersection of nano-credit, merchant finance, and open banking. In an economy where liquidity is tight, what people need is credit that is immediate, contextual, and affordable. Open banking will accelerate this by giving us access to richer datasets, enabling smarter risk decisions.

Add to that Nigeria’s growing internet penetration, smartphone adoption, and now the wave of AI, and you get the ability to create hyper-personalised products that meet customers at their exact point of need. For example, imagine a trader automatically being offered working capital based on their sales patterns, or a commuter being preapproved for transport loans based on their spending habits. That’s where the future lies.

There’s often tension between regulation and innovation in fintech. What would you like regulators to better understand

about the future of consumer finance in Nigeria?

First, let me acknowledge the great work the Central Bank of Nigeria is already doing. Their efforts in policy formulation, payments modernisation, and financial inclusion frameworks have laid important foundations for the industry.

That said, I think the future requires regulators to see themselves less as referees and more as architects. Innovation in finance is moving at the speed of community, and regulation has to evolve at that same rhythm. What’s crucial is to see consumer finance not just as lending, but as financial dignity. If regulation is framed around protecting and enabling dignity, then innovation and policy won’t collide; they will align.

Many Nigerians still think of credit as “a last resort” rather than an enabler. How are you working to reshape cultural mindsets around credit, borrowing, and trust in the financial system?

At Credit Direct, we are deliberately rewriting

the cultural story of credit in Nigeria. For too long, credit has been seen as a burden, something you only touch when you’re desperate. We want to flip that thinking and show it as a cycle of empowerment.

That’s why our business model integrates lending, payments, and wealth into one ecosystem. With Checkout by Credit Direct, customers can access goods and services instantly through BNPL, without stigma. With our wallets, disbursements don’t just stop at loans; customers can transact, transfer, and build financial habits on the same platform. With Yield by Credit Direct, idle balances can be reinvested into high-yield investment products, helping people grow wealth while staying liquid.

Beyond individuals, we have built the Credit Direct Business platform for merchants and MSMEs, a digital-first hub that allows them to borrow, pay, and grow their businesses at scale. By plugging into our ecosystem, small businesses get access not just to credit, but to the tools and flows that strengthen their cash cycles and expand their growth capacity.

By putting these experiences together, we are showing Nigerians that credit is not just about surviving today, it’s about building tomorrow. Borrowing becomes part of a growth cycle: access funds, transact, reinvest, and expand. That’s how we are shifting mindsets, and that’s how we are building trust in the financial system at scale.

What’s the most counterintuitive insight you’ve gained about technology and finance in Nigeria, something outsiders almost always get wrong?

The common misconception is that Nigerians resist adoption. Nothing could be further from the truth. Nigerians are some of the fastest adopters in the world; we leapfrog. The real challenge isn’t adoption; it’s trust at scale.

You can build the smartest tech stack, but if people don’t trust the institution behind it, usage dies. That’s why at Credit Direct, we invest as much in culture, transparency, and execution discipline as we do in product innovation. Tech is the easy part; trust is the hard infrastructure.

By Victoria Olaonipekun Junior Projects/Events Associate, Big Cabal Media

What’s Next for African Tech? A Moonshot Manifesto

Just a few years ago, Africa’s tech ecosystem was booming. In 2021, startups across the continent raised over $4 billion across 355 funding deals, buoyed by a global investment wave and the promise to leapfrog innovation. But the wave has since receded.

By 2023, funding had dropped by over 40%. The funding winter began as global VC pullback, economic headwinds, and local currency instability created a tougher, leaner environment. The fallout was swift and painful startup shutdowns, brain drain, layoffs, and widespread uncertainty.

In 2024, it became evident that the world was moving fast, and Africa must move with it. To find the growth and total addressable markets that make for viable and VC-pleasing exits, African startups could no longer afford to think only locally. They had to think bigger and go further afield to truly thrive. That urgency informed the theme of Moonshot 2024: Building for the World.

Despite the headwinds, the ecosystem didn’t collapse. Slowly, it began building momentum. The funding frenzy cooled, but in its place came a stronger focus on business fundamentals. Resilient startups adapted, restructured, and survived the downturn. Many emerged with leaner operations, sharper product-market fit, and clearer growth paths.

By early 2025, green shoots began to appear. The market seemed to have corrected itself and turned a corner. Investor sentiment started shifting. Most notably, the emergence of two new unicorns in Q4 2024 and the strong funding kickoff in Q1 2025 signalled that the tide was rising again, albeit more cautiously and deliberately.

The ecosystem is moving again, and this time, it’s moving smarter. That’s what Moonshot 2025 is all about. We aim to create a platform that examines the past, learns from it, and boldly co-creates the future together. Moonshot will be an experiential event that reflects a maturing ecosystem capitalising on existing gains to leap into the future, and unveiling Africa’s next great stories.

A theme rooted in reality

“Building Momentum” isn’t just a catchy phrase. It’s a pattern we observed across dozens of conversations with founders, investors, and policymakers on the continent and the globe, as we prepared for this year’s conference.

“The ecosystem is bullish, as it is standing with little reliance on foreign capital,” said Wiza Jalakasi, Director of Africa Market Expansion at EBANX, capturing the prevailing sentiment during a pre-Moonshot conversation.

The theme acknowledges the hard-won gains of the ecosystem while emphasising the urgent need to shift from survival to structured, scalable growth. It seeks to answer the question: What does scale look like for African startups?

All through our research, expert insights, and conversations, it became clear that while the ecosystem is regaining steam, it is also important to learn from past cycles and prepare for its next leap forward.

At Moonshot 2025, we’re assembling the operators and leaders moving the continent forward to address the key question of what scale looks like for African startups.

What momentum looks like in Africa’s tech ecosystem

Let’s be clear, the numbers aren’t yet explosive, but they are telling:

Over $800 million in equity funding was raised in Q1 2025 alone, signalling cautious investor confidence returning.

Sectors like climate tech and AI saw double-digit growth in startup creation and partnerships.

More local capital is being mobilised through angel networks and sovereign funds, slowly replacing foreign VC dominance.

And hubs within and beyond the “big four” continue to deepen their startup ecosystems with policy reforms, accelerators, and infrastructure investments.

There’s no single breakout moment, but there

is clear forward motion, and there needs to be sustained momentum as a collective. That’s why we’re centring Moonshot 2025 on the builders, believers, and institutions laying down the rails for Africa’s next leap.

What to expect at Moonshot 2025

This year, Moonshot expands beyond a conference; it becomes a curated, living museum of Africa’s innovation journey. We get to tell the stories of what got us here and spotlight the people and ideas that will carry us forward.

9 bold content tracks from the Creative Economy to the Future of Commerce, this year’s programming is laser-focused on sectors and ideas with real potential to shape Africa’s digital future. Each track is designed to answer with honest reflections and hopeful forecasts: What is the next concrete step forward for this sector?

100+ speakers from within and outside Africa, including policymakers, big tech leaders, early-stage founders, innovators, and investors making the boldest bet on Africa.

Action-focused Conversations. Think less, talk, more traction. We’re crafting deep-dive workshops, policy roundtables & pledges, and live showcases designed to move conversations into outcomes.

TC Battlefield, Africa’s leading early-stage pitch competition, returns with stronger value and matchmaking sessions designed to connect the most promising startups with top African and international investors. Apply here: bit.ly/tcbattlefield25

Workshops & Roundtables, practical deep dives, live use-case walkthroughs, and policymaker-operator roundtables focused on solutions, not soundbites.

Join the momentum

Whether you’re a founder looking for your next investor, a policymaker charting a digital growth strategy, or an operator building the next category-defining product, Moonshot 2025 is where momentum builds. Join us at the Eko Convention Centre in Lagos from October 15-16, 2025. Visit: moonshot. techcabal.com to learn more.

Why You Should Be at Moonshot, Africa’s Biggest Tech Conference

Close your eyes and imagine a packed conference hall in Lagos, filled with thousands of founders, investors, and innovators gathered for the biggest African conference celebrating innovation and ambition. If you visualised Moonshot by TechCabal, we owe you a free ticket.

Moonshot by TechCabal is where Africa’s startup ecosystem comes together at full force. In 2024, over 4,000 founders, investors, and innovators connected for two days of ideas, debate, and deal-making.

The event featured nine content tracks across fintech, climate tech, e-commerce, media, and policy, with speakers like Nigeria’s tech minister Bosun Tijani, former Google Africa lead Juliet Ehimuan, unicorn entrepreneur and investor Iyinoluwa Aboyeji, and creator Layi Wasabi.

Gathering these experts under one roof was a hectic task if you ask my colleagues felt like the celebration of Africa’s tech wins, a mourning for its losses, and an opportunity to collectively chart the next chapter.

If you think this sounds like the place for you to be, then you would be happy to know that this year’s edition will definitely be bigger and better.

What to expect

If, like me, you actively follow tech news on the

continent, then you would have seen Bosun Tijani, Nigeria’s Minister of Communications, Innovation, and Digital Economy, listed as one of Time’s 100 most important people in artificial intelligence globally. What you may not know is that Moonshot was the first place the minister detailed his ambition for Nigeria’s artificial intelligence sector.

“We would have failed our people and the future generation if we slept on artificial intelligence,” he warned. For a country often bashed for its infrastructure gaps, the minister’s stance was bold. Critics argued that Nigeria should fix electricity and education before chasing AI dreams, but Tijani pushed back at Moonshot; great nations, he argued, don’t wait for perfection before innovating.

What I liked about the minister’s chat with Tomiwa Aladekomo, Big Cabal Media’s CEO, was that Nigerians had the chance to put a minister’s plan under direct scrutiny. That kind of access is rare. Moonshot created it.

If the minister’s talk provided vision, other Moonshot panels provided actionable insights from across the continent that founders could immediately apply. In one session, venture capitalists and founders tackled the question of clean technology and carbon credits, an increasingly relevant topic as African startups commercialise sustainability. Vladimir Dugin, a partner at E3 Capital, noted that carbon credit financing could be a game-changer for cleantech

startups, but only if African governments set clear rules for it.

The potential is enormous: the global carbon market is valued at around $909 billion, and Africa’s share could reach $82 billion in the coming years. As Dugin and others explained, carbon credits can help renewable energy businesses finance expensive projects by unlocking new revenue streams.

Another much-discussed topic was the boom in AI applications across industries. In a fireside chat about the future of commerce, Anu Adasolum, CEO of Sabi, highlighted how artificial intelligence can streamline trade in Africa’s huge informal sector. One of the hardest parts of working with informal markets is communication and trust, she noted. “AI bridges this gap,” Adasolum said, describing how smart bots on ubiquitous platforms like WhatsApp can help small merchants automate orders and track inventory.

My takeaway: Africa can harness AI as a practical tool to improve transparency and ensure traceability in businesses, and the practical ways to make money as a continent by selling carbon credits. I am sure that attending this year will leave me with new ideas about the future of tech in Africa.

Regulators across the continent also took the stage to explain the gap between policy and execution, agreeing that laws alone

won’t move the needle without functioning infrastructure. “In the way that love is not enough for a relationship to grow, policies are not enough for the digital economy,” quipped Victoria Manya, a PhD researcher at Leiden University’s African Studies Centre, drawing laughter from the room. (Yes, Moonshot can also be funny.)

Ghana’s Dr. Augustina Odame, CEO of the Ghana Chamber of Technology, gave a blunter example: startups shouldn’t be paying heavily to access government data that already exists. If agencies opened up datasets and if broadband and electricity were reliable, founders could spend their energy building products instead of recreating infrastructure, she argued.

The Nigerian and Mauritanian delegates echoed the call for public–private partnerships to bankroll large projects like rural fibre networks and power grids. Capacity building was another recurring theme. NITDA’s Kashifu Abdullahi pointed to training initiatives that could turn Nigeria’s young population into a “global talent factory”, while Sierra Leone’s representative outlined programs to help founders sharpen business skills.

The panel’s takeaway was plain. Africa’s digital economy, projected to hit $180 billion by 2025, won’t be unlocked by policy papers alone. Infrastructure, skills training, and genuine collaboration will decide whether the continent’s tech boom includes everyone. Not all conversations at Moonshot were polite panel discussions. Some were raw, exposing real tensions in the ecosystem. One headline session put founders and tech journalists on the same stage to hash out their often uneasy relationship. (This was my favourite.)

Over the past year, African tech media, led by TechCabal, has exposed high-profile startup collapses and fraud allegations. Oo Nwoye, a ‘tech OG’ and outspoken commentator, accused journalists of tarring all entrepreneurs with the same brush.

“If one bad apple commits fraud, they write it like all founders are fraudsters,” he complained. His frustration came from seeing a few scandals overshadow years of work by honest founders.

TechCabal’s former Editor-in-Chief, Olumuyiwa Olowogboyega, pushed back. Journalism’s job, he said, is accountability. That means reporting rigorously and giving founders the chance to respond. Too often, he added, reporters reach out for comment only to be ignored (I agree). Wimbart founder and PR veteran Jessica Hope agreed, noting that when founders avoid the press, they create a vacuum that “can be filled by assumptions.”

Moonshot gave both sides a platform. I learnt that tough conversations like this may be uncomfortable, but they are what build trust and the foundation for growth with integrity.

Why Moonshot matters

By the end of Moonshot, after learning so much in two days and meeting some of the

most important and coolest people in African tech (and a couple of drinks), one thing was clear: this is no longer just another tech event. It has become a festival of African innovation, with all the energy, optimism, and growing pains that come with it.

For anyone invested in the future of African technology, being at Moonshot felt like plugging directly into the ecosystem’s nerve centre. It was where founders, regulators, and investors argued over how to unify a fragmented market, and where trust, inclusion, and collaboration were given as much weight as product demos and funding announcements.

If the goal was to make people want to be part of Africa’s tech story, Moonshot delivered. Attendees left with new contacts, sharper ideas, and a shared conviction that the continent’s best chapters are still ahead. Moonshot is back this October, and it will once again set the agenda for African innovation. For those who missed the twoday event in 2024, the message is simple: this year, be in the room.

By Faith Omoniyi Reporter, TechCabal (in partnership with Centre for Journalism Innovation

and Development (CJID) and

Luminate)

AI is learning to speak African languages, thanks to these startups

It’s a rainy Saturday morning in Lagos, and the noise inside the public hospital walls on the city’s coastal edge drowns out the pelting rain. In one of its echoey wards, voices overlap, and weary nurses try to manage paper trails piling up faster than they can process them. For decades, this scene has been typical: overworked staff hunched over files, struggling to juggle patient care with burdensome documentation.

But something is changing. In one consulting room, a young doctor in a lab coat finishes diagnosing a patient, and instead of scribbling into a paper chart, he speaks. “Fifty-year-old male, presenting with fever, cough, and fatigue. Suspected tuberculosis. Start treatment protocol.” Within seconds, his notes appear, transcribed verbatim on his screen, complete with punctuation.

This shift is powered by Intron, a startup using voice-based artificial intelligence (AI) to help healthcare professionals enter medical records using speech.

The startup, which launched in 2020, was founded by Tobi Olatunji, a medical doctor with a decade of experience. In many African countries, doctors like Olatunji attend to hundreds of patients daily and deal with a lot of paperwork. Intron Health cuts the time

doctors spend writing a patient’s diagnosis. Doctors can enter patients’ medical records and generate patient reports by voice commands. Crucially, Intron’s AI understands Nigerian accents.

Intron is part of a wave of African startups building artificial intelligence tools that speak to the continent’s realities. Beyond local accents, its voice-to-text system understands medical terminology, allowing overworked doctors in Nigeria and Kenya to dictate patient records hands-free, in real-time. Across sectors, homegrown AI solutions like this are bridging long-standing gaps: helping healthcare workers clear documentation backlogs, enabling customer support in indigenous languages, transcribing local court proceedings, and making radio broadcasts more inclusive. As global models struggle with the underrepresentation of African data, homegrown ventures like Intron are building tools trained on local voices to close service gaps in medicine, education, agriculture, and media.

While AI applications on the continent have been affected by inadequate data, Intron’s speech-to-text AI transcription tool accounts for many African accents. Olatunji says the datasets are trained on over 3.5 million audio clips across African languages,

making accommodations for 288 accents. The company currently cares for more than 56,000 patients across over 30 public and private hospitals in Nigeria and Kenya, including the University College Hospital, Ibadan, Aminu Kano Teaching Hospital (AKTH), Kano, Babcock Teaching Hospital, Ogun, and Meridian Health Group, Nairobi.

Intron, which has expanded its AI models to power courtrooms and call centres across Africa, claims it has helped reduce the turnaround time for radiology reporting at the University College Hospital, Ibadan, by 99.3% from 48 hours to 20 minutes.

Intron isn’t alone. Enter Spitch AI Beyond Intron, a growing crop of startups across Africa is building foundational voice AI, tuned to the continent’s linguistic realities. One of them is Spitch AI, a developer-first audio AI platform.

When Temi Babs realised that OpenAI’s Whisper “wasn’t well-tuned to African voices,” the former engineering student abandoned his note-taking app and set out to build the missing layer himself. “African languages were not being catered to by these large models, so we pivoted to voice AI for Africa,” he says, recalling the October 2024 launch of SpitchAI.

The startup had a clear mission: to make AI speak the languages of Africans, in both directions: speech-to-text and text-tospeech. Rather than build end-user apps, the Lagos startup sits at the bottom of the stack, offering simple APIs and SDKs that let any team plug local-language voice capabilities into call centres, media tools, or learning platforms, without the need for Machine Learning expertise.

Starting with Yoruba, the team has since added Hausa, Igbo, Nigerian-accented English and, after demand from East Africa, Amharic. Those rails now power everything from multilingual customer-support hotlines to Nollywood studios that generate synthetic dialogue instead of hiring voice actors. “Producers choose the voices they want; now they can produce their movies in a shorter time and spend less money,” said Babs

Developers buy pay-as-you-go credits to use the speech-to-text and text-to-speech APIs, while large corporations pay bespoke fees for tailored models. “We price on a case-bycase basis: developers go to our portal to buy credits and make API calls, enterprises want a custom solution,” Babs explains.

The Nigerian government is in the race While private companies like Intron and Spitch AI are building artificial intelligence tools that speak to the continent’s realities, the Nigerian government has quietly entered the race to build a foundational AI model.

Last year, the Federal Ministry of Communications, Innovation, and Digital Economy commissioned Awarri, a Lagosbased startup, to develop what will be the country’s first government-backed large language model (LLM). The model, now nearing completion, is a direct attempt to help increase the representation of Nigerian languages in the artificial intelligence systems being built around the world, according to Nigeria’s tech minister, Bosun Tijani.

Co-founded by entrepreneurs Silas Adekunle and Eniola Edun in 2019, Awarri is building the country’s first LLM model trained on five low-resource Nigerian languages and accented English, in partnership with Data. org.

In November 2023, the Lagos-headquartered startup launched a data annotation lab poised to be an AI talent development hub. The lab employs over 100 workers, who are responsible for gathering and annotating data, creating language models, and developing AI apps.

Awarri also launched LangEasy in April 2024, a platform that enables anyone with a smartphone to contribute to training

the model through voice and text inputs. LangEasy gives users sentences to read out loud and asks them to save the audio on the app. The app will help crowdsource data for Awarri’s LLM, according to the startup founder.

Building Nigerian AI is anything but easy

Building Nigerian AI is anything but easy. Training data remains scarce, especially for indigenous Nigerian languages with low digital footprints. Infrastructure barriers continue to slow progress, and the effectiveness of these AI tools depends on how well they capture Nigeria’s full linguistic and cultural diversity.

“Building in AI requires two major things: computing and data. That pipeline does not exist in Nigeria at scale,” said Babs. To get around it, SpitchAI has stitched together an internal data-collection and labelling pipeline and leans on partners for proprietary corpora. “We have our own data infrastructure plus some really good data partners that help us get the high-quality sets we need,” Babs adds.

For Intron, the process involves managing over 3,000 active contributors, collecting hours of annotated voice data, paying workers across borders, and verifying every utterance for training-grade quality.

“People think it’s just about models, but the real moat is operations. You’re managing massive linguistic diversity, Igbo, Hausa, Wolof and paying thousands of contributors. That’s not just a tech problem. It’s logistics, quality control, finance, and trust at scale,” Olatunji notes.

On the computing side, costs are brutal. Training a single model takes weeks of GPU time and cloud orchestration. Despite credits from AWS, GCP, and Azure, those budgets dry up fast. “We’ve burned through $100K in AWS credits already. And that’s just one training cycle. You need bigger GPUs, faster clusters, every experiment costs real money,” said Olatunji.

But infrastructure is only half the battle.

Unlike many AI startups that wrap opensource models, Intron builds from scratch. That requires real research talent, and in Africa, that’s hard to find, harder to train, and nearly impossible to retain.

“Zuckerberg is hiring ML researchers at $200M. How do you compete with that? We mentor our team internally, but even that isn’t scalable anymore,” said Olatunji.

The team now runs an open-source research group of 30–40 PhDs globally, publishes papers, and uses that network to hire strategically, avoiding inflated U.S. salaries

while still accessing top talent.

Even after training, Intron spent over a year figuring out how to serve models to just 100 users reliably. “People think calling an API is scaling. It’s not. You’re dealing with model orchestration, concurrency, GPU latency, and cost optimization. At AWS, we had 30 engineers just managing that layer.” Intron had to compress that into a 30-person company.

The opportunity: a voice-first Africa, defined by locals

Despite the headwinds, the path is clear. Intron and Spitch are two of the earliest and most serious contenders in the race to define what voice AI should look like for African languages. While global players continue to prioritise scale over specificity, both startups are digging into the hard, messy, and valuable work of building AI that actually understands the continent.

And they’re already seeing traction.

Intron is landing enterprise deals across healthcare, legal services, and government, with clients like Ogun State Judiciary replacing legacy voice systems and hospitals adopting its transcription stack for clinical recordkeeping. The company is also powering voice authentication for fintechs and working on voice-enabled banking and KYC flows, allowing users to conduct transactions via natural speech.

“We want a future where someone says, ‘Send ₦5,000 to my brother,’ and it just works in Yoruba, Swahili, or African French,” says Olatunji. “We’re not just doing AI. We’re designing usability for where the infrastructure actually is.”

Spitch, meanwhile, is positioning itself as developer infrastructure for voice, offering a no-code conversational agent builder (currently in private beta) and supporting early users in healthcare, legal tech, customer support, and entertainment. “We want to sit at the bottom of the stack,” says Babs. “Let other industries innovate on top of us, whether it’s a bank in Lagos or a media startup in Nairobi. That’s how we scale.”

This platform-first approach gives Spitch more surface area than vertical-focused startups and aligns with investor expectations in a nascent market. “We’re not chasing quick revenue,” Babs adds. “The real upside is in reach. Savvy investors know this is a long-term game.”

If both data engines scale as promised, Intron and Spitch could define the default voice layer for the region long before Big Tech learns to roll its r’s in Yoruba

Interview Samuel Ogbe

Lead Agronomist, Farm Natics

‘‘

Technology will be the catalyst that revolutionises Nigeria’s food systems.

What was the pivotal moment or observation that made you believe technology was the definitive key to unlocking Nigeria’s agricultural potential?

I had always seen farming as intriguing yet exhausting. However, I believe Nigeria has the potential to feed itself and export to other countries. My conviction grew stronger when I came across an app called Plantix sometime in 2020. It helped me identify diseases affecting my plants and how to control them. It was mind-blowing and significantly improved my results. If utilised properly, technology will be the catalyst that revolutionises Nigeria’s food systems, boosting both food security and the economy.

Food loss is a major challenge. How is technology, from simple farm management apps to better storage solutions, making a real dent in postharvest losses for Nigerian farmers?

There has been a significant reduction in post-harvest losses for farmers in recent times. Technology, such as refrigerated vans, is helping farmers transport fresh vegetables and fruits from the far north down to the south with little or no loss. Furthermore, new technologies like solar-powered cold rooms are now available and accessible to some farmers, enabling them to store their produce while it remains fresh. These advancements are helping to reduce postharvest losses significantly.

For a small-scale farmer with limited capital, what is the most accessible and impactful low-cost technology they could adopt today to boost their productivity significantly?

Meet Samuel Ogbe, a dedicated Lead Agronomist at Farm Natics.

Driven by a passion for food security and a firm belief in Nigeria’s agricultural potential, in his role, he provides vital consultation and training services, empowering local farmers to grow food sustainably. Samuel believes everyone should have access to safe and nutritious food and is actively working to make that a reality. His current project involves developing an innovative Learning Management System (LMS) to scale training on the sustainable cultivation of vegetables across Nigeria.

The most impactful and accessible technologies include:

• Shade nets to control temperature.

• Drip irrigation systems for efficient irrigation and fertigation.

• Hybrid seed varieties.

Looking beyond the farm, how is technology streamlining the entire food value chain, from processing and packaging to direct connections between farmers and consumers?

Technology is bringing about positive change in the Nigerian food system. The introduction of solar dryers, smart milling equipment, and advanced packaging materials is improving shelf life. In addition, sales apps like AgroMall are helping farmers reduce losses and

improve their yields by connecting them directly to the market.

Finally, could you paint a picture for us? What does your ideal, “technologicallyempowered” Nigerian food sector look like in the future?

Imagine a scenario where farmers can easily access high-quality seeds with features that guarantee a premium yield. Through their phones or laptops, they can access timely information that helps them grow food sustainably. Furthermore, farmers are able to connect directly with consumers via apps to sell their produce, helping them make more money while feeding the nation. This is my ideal technology-empowered Nigerian food sector: one that makes farming modern, sustainable, appealing, and profitable.

Interview

Andre Ayomide

Gamer & Head of Technical Operations, Gamr Africa

‘‘ There is a need for us to work through that and let people see that 15-year-olds elsewhere in the world are winning 15 million dollars from playing games.

The GamrX event brings thousands of people together. How crucial do you think technology is in mobilising and engaging such a large community, both during and after the physical event?

I would say technology plays a very key role because, at the end of the day, you can’t game without technology. If you start from there, technology is the backbone of gaming. For us as a business, technology is the backbone of what we do, from our tournament bracket platform to our streaming setup that gets us out to a larger audience. Even for the gamers who play in their own time, technology is how they are also able to get themselves out there to a wider world at large. There is really no way you can talk about gaming and not talk about technology, because gaming is based on technology. If I’m answering that question, I’m just going to say technology is truly the backbone of everything anyone does in gaming.

Gamr has been instrumental in monetising gaming skills. Could you share your perspective on how technology is enabling Nigerians to convert their passion for entertainment into sustainable income streams?

Technology has certainly opened up multiple income streams for many people in Nigeria, and gaming is no different. Streaming now allows people to earn a lot of money from creating content and sharing what they do daily. Platforms like TikTok and YouTube pay you to put out interesting and engaging content, and gaming will always be engaging. There are multiple characters and multiple titles to pick from. It’s just about finding your niche and taking that step to put yourself out there to be able to earn from it.

Meet Andre Ayomide, he is more than just a tech manager, he is a gamer at heart, and he is on a mission to build the future of the entertainment industry in Nigeria. At Gamr, he leads the Events and Technical Operations, masterminding everything from the seamless execution of massive tournaments to creating bespoke partnership solutions for global brands. For Andre, his work is an extension of his life’s passion, blending strategy, technology, and community to champion gaming as a viable and exciting career path.

There are a lot of online tournaments. If you own a PlayStation now with a copy of EAFC, for example, you will see a PlayStation tournament going on almost every day. You can earn as little as $50 or $100 just from playing a tournament online with random people. That’s one way to earn. Beyond that, what we also do at Gamr is, for people we identify as budding talents, we connect them to brands that want to use gaming influencers to communicate their own message. Those brands pay the influencers directly. We are bridging the gap between the brands and the people who play the games to move gaming forward in this market. So it’s about monetising by first finding your niche, finding what you love doing, and then putting yourself out there. Gaming is content, and content will always be consumed.

Beyond just playing games, how do you see technology in the entertainment and gaming space fostering valuable skills like strategic thinking, teamwork, and digital literacy among Nigerian youth?

To be honest, the first thing you learn if you’re a gamer is critical thinking under pressure. This is especially true if you play online games, not just with a friend beside you, because that’s where Esports is really moving. You have less time to think about your next move, and critical thinking is the first step in expanding your brain capacity. Once you’re able to think critically, you’re able to make informed decisions faster and better.

Games like Call of Duty and PUBG are team-based. They teach you communication and the need for leadership because every team needs someone to guide them to victory. What else? The community itself is being built. For me, I think gaming is also a way that people can meet like-minded individuals, learn from them, and connect with

them. At the end of the day, connection is something you will always need to move forward in life, and those connections that may start on a console could lead to major business deals in the future. What role do you see for tech hubs and platforms like Gamr in collaborating with government and educational institutions to ensure Nigeria maximises the positive social and economic impacts of the digital entertainment boom?

I think this is a very interesting question because we already do it. What we do as a company also extends into the educational sphere. Recently, thanks to the Lagos State government and the federal government, Lagos State and Nigeria as a whole now have two very active Esports organisations, including one at the federal level.

Even before these federations came on board, we have been running what we call ‘Gamr Lab’. Gamr Lab is our way of looking into the future to train people to build these games, not just play them. Gamr Lab is located inside the University of Lagos, and for the past few years, we’ve been getting experts from different countries to talk to people in Nigeria who are interested in learning how to build games. It might not be building a game itself; it could be specific aspects like character design, environment design, or game audio, all of those nitty-gritty bits that make up a game. We teach those things.

Gamr is already pushing to expand Nigeria’s gaming infrastructure by partnering with educational institutions and the government to create more specialised hubs. They are promoting two distinct models: the education-focused ‘Gamr Lab’ and ‘Cavern’, a high-performance gaming space designed with professional equipment for serious gamers to hone their skills. Having established this foundation, Gamr is now actively seeking investment from brand partners to help scale these initiatives, such as by funding scholarships through Gamr Lab or sponsoring tournaments at Cavern to foster wider community engagement and growth.

What challenges has Gamr faced in scaling something like this in the Nigerian or African market? And how are you making it work?

I’ll be honest with you, funding is the first challenge. We’re a selffunded start-up. Gamr started about five years ago during the COVID period, when the need for engaging activities like gaming boomed. Then there is also the cultural stigma that exists in this market where people think that if you game, you’re unserious. There is a need for us to work through that and let people see that 15-year-olds elsewhere in the world are winning 15 million dollars from playing games. If you think your child is still unserious, maybe you should consider a faster way for them to make that kind of money. Another one I would say is people not realising the potential within themselves, even as gamers. So there’s an external challenge, but there’s also an internal one where many people in this part of the world who play games don’t see a reason to pursue it as a business, even with the opportunities we present.

Gaming can seem intimidating with a “that’s for them only” look, making it appear inaccessible. Can Gamr educate people more about this?

I hear you, and I appreciate that feedback because we’ve noticed it too. I think it’s back to the cultural nuances. The truth is, there will be pro players in every title, but there are also titles that are more laidback or adventure-based. At last year’s GamrX, for example, we held a competition on Just Dance and Candy Crush. Everybody plays Candy Crush; there is no competitive skill necessary to play those games.

So, another thing we are doing is trying to explore titles that make gaming a lot more accessible. For example, one of our goals in the past two years has been to increase our female viewership and participation, which we have successfully done. When you exclude the entire female population, you cut out a very large chunk of the market. We want to make gaming as accessible as possible so that every single person can do it. From your average 15-year-old who just got an iPad with Candy Crush pre-installed, to the dedicated gamer who has been honing their skills in gaming centres for years, everyone can step in. There are different levels at which you can enter gaming as a career or a profession, and we need to, as you said, help people understand that and educate them on it.

Interview Femi Adekoya Founder, Integrated Aerial Precision & Precision Field Academy

How is technology creating new, highvalue jobs within the agricultural value chain in Nigeria, moving beyond just primary farming?

Technology has opened new frontiers in agriculture beyond the farm gate. It has been a pleasure to pioneer the use of drones for precision agriculture in Nigeria. Today, we see demand for drone pilots, agronomic data analysts, GIS specialists, software developers, digital supply chain managers, and precision input technicians. These are high-value jobs that did not exist a decade ago in the Nigerian agricultural sector.

At IAPrecision, for example, every drone flight generates massive datasets that require skilled young Nigerians to process, interpret, and translate into actionable insights for farmers. This means agriculture is no longer just about the ‘hoe and cutlass’; it’s about coding, analytics, remote sensing, machine learning, innovation, entrepreneurship, and global problem-solving.

We’ve trained several young Nigerians who initially had little interest in farming but became deeply engaged once they discovered opportunities in drone operations, GIS, remote sensing, and digital farm management. The truth is, young Nigerians are eager to be part of something that looks to the future. Agritech gives them that platform.

In what ways does your work help Nigerian farmers become more competitive, not just locally, but potentially on a regional or global scale?

Our work is centred on equipping Nigerian farmers with the tools, knowledge, and platforms they need to compete in modern agriculture. Through drone-enabled precision services like crop spraying, seed

broadcasting, mapping, and data analytics, we help farmers achieve higher yields, reduce input costs, and minimise environmental impact. This makes their produce not only more affordable but also globally competitive in quality and consistency.

Beyond services, we empower farmers with actionable data. Using drones and AI, we generate real-time insights on crop health, soil conditions, and pest threats. These insights allow farmers to make evidencebased decisions, improve efficiency, and adopt practices that meet international standards for food safety and sustainability, a critical requirement for regional and global markets. For instance, a farmer in Ogun State adopting precision agriculture can now confidently compete with counterparts in Kenya or Brazil because the quality, traceability, and consistency of their produce improve when guided by technology. That is the real leap we are enabling, from subsistence farming to globally competitive agribusinesses.

In short, our work helps farmers shift from subsistence to market-oriented agribusiness, positioning them to attract investment, integrate into export markets, and become part of Africa’s agricultural transformation story.

What technological advancement on the horizon are you most excited about, and what new possibilities do you think it will unlock for Nigerian agriculture?

One of the most exciting advancements I see on the horizon is the integration of artificial intelligence (AI) with drone and satellite technologies. While drones already provide farmers with powerful imagery and data, AI takes it a step further by enabling real-time analysis, from plant counting and disease detection to yield prediction and precision

Widely known as ‘The Flying Farmer’, Femi Adekoya, the pioneering Agritech entrepreneur and Precision Agriculture specialist is dedicated to improving Africa’s food systems. Through IAPrecision, he leverages technologies like drones, AI, and data analytics to enhance farm productivity and build climate resilience. A passionate youth advocate, Femi founded the Precision Field Academy which has equipped over 5,000 young Africans with vital digital agriculture skills. As a Commonwealth Scholar and globally recognised leader in his field, Femi is driven by a core mission: to democratise technology for farmers, inspire a new generation of innovators, and help achieve sustainable food security across the continent.

input application. This will make farming not only more efficient but also predictive and adaptive, helping farmers respond to threats before they become losses. Another area I’m particularly excited about is the rise of Digital Public Infrastructure (DPIs) for agriculture. With interoperable platforms connecting farmers, co-operatives, markets, insurers, and governments, we can democratise access to services like credit, crop insurance, and input supply. This is especially transformative for smallholder farmers who have often been excluded from formal value chains.

Together, these technologies unlock the possibility of making Nigerian agriculture globally competitive, climate-resilient, and youth-driven. They will enable us to move from traditional, reactive farming practices to data-driven, scalable agribusinesses that can feed Nigeria and the world.

For aspiring Nigerian innovators looking to make a difference, what is the most important lesson you’ve learned about successfully introducing and adapting new technology to solve local problems?

The biggest lesson I’ve learned is that new technology must be practical and easy to use. It has to solve a real problem in a way that farmers can understand, afford, and trust. Before we introduce any drone or digital solution, we test it with farmers, listen to their feedback, and adapt it to their needs. This makes them more willing to use it because they see the benefit right away. Another key lesson is the importance of partnerships and mentorship. Working with other innovators, institutions, and mentors makes it easier to scale and succeed. My advice to young innovators is simple: focus on solving real problems, keep things practical, and work with people. That’s how technology creates a real impact.

By: Matildah

Digital Marketing Executive, Lost in Lagos

TOP 10 TECH HUBS ACROSS AFRICA

Africa’s tech scene is clustering into city hubs where startups, investors, universities, and governments meet to build scalable digital products. These centres, spanning the West, East, North, and Southern regions of Africa, power fintech, healthtech, agritech, and climate solutions while growing talent and capital locally. Below are ten influential tech hubs across Africa.

Co-Creation Hub – Lagos, Nigeria

Founded in 2011, CcHUB is Nigeria’s pioneer innovation centre. It nurtures startups in fintech, healthtech, and civic tech, with alumni like BudgIT and LifeBank. Backed by a ₦1 billion Growth Capital fund, it has helped ventures raise more than $60 million. With hubs in Lagos, Abuja, and Nairobi, CcHUB blends mentoring, funding, and partnerships to build Africa’s digital future.

iHub – Nairobi, Kenya

Launched in 2010, iHub anchors Kenya’s “Silicon Savannah.” It offers coworking, accelerators, and investor networks across fintech, agritech, and healthtech. Alumni include Ushahidi and BRCK. With 16,000 innovators and over 1,000 global investors in its network, iHub has driven more than $40 million in funding. Backed by partners like Google and Intel, it remains East Africa’s most iconic startup launchpad.

SU LaunchLab – Stellenbosch, South Africa

Founded in 2013, SU LaunchLab is Africa’s top university-based incubator. Twice crowned “Best Campus Incubator,” it spins out ventures in fintech, cleantech, agritech, and IoT. Backed by Nedbank and Mercedes, it hosts innovation challenges linking startups to corporates. Alumni include Entersekt (fintech). With strong labs, mentorship, and investment links, LaunchLab powers South Africa’s knowledge-driven tech growth.

Technopark – Casablanca, Morocco

Since 2001, Morocco’s Technopark has supported over 3,000 startups, created 15,000 jobs, and sustained an 86% success rate. Hosting 450 companies today, it drives fintech, e-commerce, and AI innovation. With Gitex Africa partnerships and export-focused programmes, 35% of its ventures sell abroad. As North Africa’s oldest hub, Technopark is the backbone of Morocco’s $8.3 billion startup ecosystem.

Botswana Digital & Innovation Hub – Gaborone

Opened in 2018, BDIH anchors Botswana’s innovation strategy. It focuses on ICT, agritech, fintech, and cleantech. Flagship programmes include the SmartBots Lab and MIT’s entrepreneurship bootcamps. Backed by UNECA and MIT, it nurtures startups in health, climate, and mining. While Botswana’s ecosystem is early-stage, BDIH is bridging global partnerships with local founders to spark sustainable innovation.

kLab – Kigali, Rwanda

Founded in 2011, kLab is Rwanda’s flagship tech incubator. It offers coworking, mentorship, and accelerator programmes aligned with Kigali’s smart-nation goals. Startups in agritech, logistics, and health have emerged here, often winning regional hackathons. Partnered with AfriLabs and local universities, kLab connects founders to grants and angel investors. It is central to Rwanda’s growing reputation as a digital hub.

On Sloane – Johannesburg, South Africa

On Sloane, opened in 2019, is a startup campus in Johannesburg offering modern workspaces, conference facilities, and labs. It runs mentorship programs, investor demo days, and provides legal and financial support, as well as networking events that connect founders with angel and VC networks. By hosting pan-African pitch competitions and regional partnerships, it boosts scaling opportunities and Johannesburg’s profile as an innovation hub.

Impact Hub – Accra, Ghana

centres. Each hub pairs local talent with focused programmes, investors, and corporate partnerships, helping founders move from an idea to regional scale. 5

MEST Africa – Accra, Ghana

Since 2008, MEST has trained over 400 entrepreneurs and invested $20 million into more than 50 startups. Its year-long fellowship blends coding, business skills, and seed funding. Alumni include Kudobuzz, MeQasa, and ExpressPay, many of whom have attracted interest from Y Combinator or 500 Startups. With hubs across Lagos and Cape Town, MEST’s alumni network and corporate partners make it West Africa’s startup factory. 7 9

Impact Hub Accra, launched in 2013, supports Ghanaian social and tech entrepreneurs with coworking, mentorship and incubation. Focus areas include renewable energy, e-commerce, healthtech and social impact. Programs like Lafiya Innovators and Deep Dive Africa connect startups to international partners and investors by raising over $500,000 for cohorts and strengthening community, visibility and capital flow for local ventures and economic growth.

iLabAfrica – Nairobi, Kenya

Founded in 2010 at Strathmore University, iLabAfrica merges research with entrepreneurship. It runs labs in IoT, GIS, and fintech, offering grants of up to $10,000. Programmes like Women in Tech, backed by Standard Chartered, support female founders. Alumni have scaled into Y Combinator. With over 800 global university partnerships, iLabAfrica is Nairobi’s academic bridge to the global startup scene.

By Chef Nitaa Chef and Restaurateur

Chickpea and Chicken Curry

Ingredients:

2 small chicken breasts (about 125g each), boneless and cut into bite-sized pieces

1 tin of chickpeas (400g), drained

1 shallot or red onion, finely chopped

1-2 cloves of garlic, grated

½ tbsp ginger paste (or finely grated fresh ginger)

3 large, ripe tomatoes, finely chopped

1 tsp tomato purée

100 ml full-fat coconut milk

125 ml water (add more if needed)

1-2 green chillies, sliced in half lengthways

A handful of fresh coriander, roughly chopped

¾ tsp salt, or to taste

½ tsp chicken powder or ½ a chicken stock cube

1–1½ tbsp vegetable, sunflower or other neutralflavoured oil (or ghee)

½ tbsp curry powder (mild or hot)

½ tsp turmeric

½ tsp paprika or chilli powder

¼ tsp cumin seeds

1-2 bay leaves

3 tsp garam masala or chicken masala

Instructions:

1. Heat oil in a pan: Heat the oil in a pan over medium heat. Add the bay leaves and cumin seeds, sautéing for about 30 seconds until fragrant.

2. Soften the Onion: Add the chopped onion or shallot and cook until translucent and lightly browned. Then, add the grated garlic and ginger paste, stirring well for another minute.

3. Add Spices and Tomatoes: Add the curry powder, paprika and turmeric, and sauté for 30 seconds. Then, add the chopped tomatoes and tomato purée, cooking until the mixture is soft and the oil begins to separate from the sauce.

4. Cook the Chicken and Chickpeas: Add the chicken pieces and cook for 2-3 minutes until sealed on all sides. Add the drained chickpeas, coconut milk and water. Season with the salt and chicken powder/stock cube. Bring to a simmer and cook for 8-10 minutes, or until the chicken is cooked through and the sauce has thickened.

5. Finish with Fresh Flavours: Stir in the green chillies, chopped coriander and garam masala. Serve hot, garnished with a little extra fresh coriander. Serve with basmati rice, naan bread or chapatis.

A delicious chickpea and chicken curry recipe made with tinned chickpeas and tender chicken breast. You can make this curry in under 30 minutes with pantry-friendly ingredients for a perfect midweek energy boost.

Prep Time: 10 mins

Cook Time: 20 mins

Calories: 284 kcal

CHEF BIO

Customising Your Curry Spice It Up

Curry Powder: Choose your favourite blend, whether mild or hot. Bay Leaves & Cumin Seeds: These add depth to the curry, but feel free to omit them if you don’t have them.

Creamy Options: Full-fat coconut milk enhances the flavour, but you can substitute it with single cream or Greek yoghurt for a different texture.

Onion Tips: Asian or baby shallots work well, but you can use other types of onions if preferred.

Flexibility with Ingredients: Adjust the spices to your taste, and don’t worry if you don’t have every single ingredient.

Chickpea Alternatives: This recipe uses tinned chickpeas for convenience, but you can also use dried chickpeas that have been soaked and boiled until tender.

Extra Vegetables: Add diced carrots, potatoes, aubergines or other favourites.

Vegetarian Option: Swap the chicken for paneer, tofu, potatoes or sweet potatoes, and use vegetable stock instead of chicken stock.

Biography

Olusola Layi-Balogun, professionally known as Chef Nitaa, is a multi-talented culinary artist, restaurateur and innovator. Fusing molecular gastronomy with herbalism and organic farming, she creates unique and hearty dining experiences. As the founder of Gourmet Experiences by Chef Nitaa, Ina Restaurant, Hospitality Central and Chef Nitaa’s Culinary Hub, she is a driving force in the culinary world, dedicated to training the next generation of chefs and bringing exceptional restaurant concepts to life.

By Omoye Cooks Chef and Culinary Instructor

Garri-Crusted Egg Roll

Ingredients (Serves 6–8)

6 large eggs (boiled & peeled)

500g minced sausage (spicy or regular, casing removed)

1 medium onion (finely chopped)

2 cloves garlic (minced)

1 tablespoon suya spice (yaji) or paprika mix

½ teaspoon chilli flakes or ground ata rodo

½ cup white garri (for coating)

2 raw eggs (beaten, for coating)

½ cup flour (for dusting)

Pinch of salt

Oil for frying (or bake for a lighter version)

Method

1. Make the Sausage Mix: In a bowl, season minced sausage with onion, garlic, suya spice, chilli, and a little salt. Mix until evenly combined.

2. Wrap the Eggs: Take a portion of sausage mix, flatten it in your palm, and gently wrap it around one boiled egg until sealed. Repeat for the remaining eggs.

3. Coat: Roll each wrapped egg lightly in flour, dip in beaten egg, then coat with white garri for that signature crunch.

4. Cook: Heat oil in a pan and fry until golden brown and crisp. Or bake at 180°C (350°F) for 20–25 minutes until cooked through.

5. Serve & Plate: Slice in half to reveal the golden garri crust and bright yolk centre. Plate with a light salad or spicy pepper dip for a modern finish.

CHEF BIO

Biography

Omoye Cooks (Omoye Isabota Chukwuemeka ) is a Nigerian culinary creative and founder of OmoyeCooks, a brand dedicated to reimagining African flavours for the global stage. Known for bold Nigerian-inspired fine dining, viral recipes, and experiential food events, she has built a community of millions across platforms. Through her cooking classes, signature events like Dine with Omoye, and innovative recipes that fuse culture with creativity, Omoye is on a mission to place Nigerian cuisine on the world culinary map.

UK Boarding Schools Week Returns to Nigeria This September

This September, UK Boarding Schools Week makes a highly anticipated return to Nigeria, offering families the chance to explore ten of Britain’s most esteemed independent schools through a series of receptions and exhibitions in Lagos and Abuja.

First, there will be a reception in Lagos on Friday 19th September, followed by an exhibition on the afternoon of Saturday 20th at The George Hotel in Ikoyi. After wrapping up in Lagos, the schools will travel to Abuja, where a reception and exhibition will take place on Monday 22nd at the Transcorp Hilton.

Participating schools include Cardiff Sixth Form College, Cheltenham College, Concord College, Culford School, Kingswood, Lancing College, LVS Ascot, Monkton Combe School, and Roedean.

Insights from the Organisers

Ana Beck, Business Manager at Mark Brooks Education, explains the enduring appeal of the British system:

“UK boarding schools offer not only academic excellence but a transformative environment where young people develop resilience, global perspective, and lifelong friendships—a combination that prepares them uniquely for university and beyond.”

Mark Brooks, who has been helping families from Nigeria for the past 17 years to select leading UK boarding schools, adds:

“What truly impresses me about Nigerian students is their remarkable resilience, ambition, and adaptability—qualities that align beautifully with the ethos of UK boarding schools. Many of the schools attending this year’s event also offer a variety of scholarships for outstanding candidates, opening the door for high-achieving young people to shine on the global stage.”

Why Families Choose These Schools

• Cardiff Sixth Form College: “Cardiff Sixth Form College is for the hard-working and diligent student who wants to excel and broaden their academic horizons… Our staff are experts in their academic disciplines and our award-winning pastoral care ensures that students are supported in a safe, secure and caring environment.” —

Tom Arrand, Principal

• Cheltenham College: Families “could go to any school they wish, [yet] choose to come to Cheltenham College” thanks to its blend of heritage and modern excellence.

• Culford School: “We aim to be regarded as the best boarding school in East Anglia; and as a dynamic school renowned for our focus upon individual children and our success in fulfilling their ambitions.”

• Kingswood School: Founded in 1748, Kingswood provides a close-knit, spiritually grounded education in a co-educational setting.

• Lancing College: Parents value its inclusive ethos and transparent approach, ensuring families can plan with confidence.

• LVS Ascot: An award-winning school that “inspires pupils to exceed their expectations” across academic and co-curricular life.

• Monkton Combe School: Pupils benefit from “interacting with each other in a nurturing and collaborative environment,” with strong emphasis on individual journeys.

• Concord College: Known internationally for academic excellence, with around 85 % A*–A at A-level, Concord is a destination for ambitious families.

• Roedean School: With its spectacular cliff-top campus overlooking the sea, Roedean combines academic rigour with an inspiring environment that nurtures creativity, confidence, and leadership in young women

Event Highlights

Lagos

• Reception: Friday, 19 September, evening, The George Hotel, Ikoyi.

• Exhibition: Saturday, 20 September, afternoon, The George Hotel, Ikoyi.

Abuja

• Reception & Exhibition: Monday, 22 September, Transcorp Hilton.

UK Boarding Schools Week offers Nigerian families a unique chance to meet face-to-face with representatives from some of Britain’s leading independent schools, ask questions about academics, boarding life, pastoral care, and scholarships, and gain tailored advice to match their children’s ambitions.

To reserve a place go to https://w3u.link/ukbsw2025

Interview Modupe Odele Tech Lawyer

‘‘

Legal issues never go away; they linger and only become more expensive and complicated to deal with as the business grows.

Meet Moe, By day, Moe is a tech lawyer who helps bold entrepreneurs bring their visions to life. By nature, she’s a slow traveller with a passion for adrenaline-packed adventures, historical deep dives, and finding culture hidden in architecture. Fuelled by a curiosity for connecting the dots and collecting cool facts, she brings a unique, multifaceted perspective to everything she does, including her career as a (self-described) pretend tennis player.

Through Vazi Legal, you help structure the future of tech in Africa. How does establishing a solid legal foundation for a tech startup ultimately empower it to create lasting, positive social and economic impact?

Having a solid legal base means one less thing to worry about. A solid legal foundation is necessary to avoid teething problems that could easily overwhelm an entrepreneur and distract them from the core mission of their business. A company could have everything going well for it, but if its books are not in order, it will have a hard time scaling. Legal issues never go away; they linger and only become more expensive and complicated to deal with as the business grows. So, for any business looking to make a long-term social and economic impact, it needs to get all its ducks in a row as early as possible.

From your unique vantage point at the intersection of law, entrepreneurship, and tech, what do you see as the single most transformative way technology has improved the daily life of an average Nigerian in the last five years?

For me, it is being able to receive money in seconds. It might seem like a small deal, but it has had an outsized impact. Commerce has changed from end to end. A business can get registered today in Nigeria and start receiving money from

many parts of the world tomorrow. This has now given rise to other ancillary industries, from logistics and ride-hailing to savings, investing, and social commerce.

As Nigeria’s tech ecosystem matures, what role can tech-savvy legal and regulatory frameworks play in accelerating innovation that solves uniquely Nigerian problems in areas like healthcare, education, and agriculture?

It lies in listening. Regulators in Nigeria often operate from what I call a suspectfirst lens, where the knee-jerk reaction is to restrict and ban. There has to be more of a collaborative approach to creating legal and regulatory frameworks. The regulators have to continuously sit at the same table with builders. And also, builders need to be more willing to engage with regulators.

What is the most inspiring tech-driven solution you’ve seen come out of Nigeria that made you think, ‘This is truly changing lives for the better’?

A couple of months ago, while in Lagos, I needed some medical tests done, but it was difficult to get an appointment at my hospital. I used a service that came to my house to pick up my samples, ran the tests and sent me my results by email. Again, it might seem small, but it was a moment etched in my brain. I thought to

myself, ‘Yes, this is what it’s all about. ’

Finally, what is your core message to a young Nigerian innovator who wants to build a tech solution not just for profit, but for profound, positive, and lasting impact on their community?

Never forget your why. Write it down clearly and let it live beyond your head on your desk, in your notes, in the DNA of your company. Speak to your team about it at every opportunity, because that “why” is your north star.

Building in Nigeria is not easy. The infrastructure gaps, policy uncertainties, and daily unpredictabilities will test your patience, your vision, and your pocket. Profit alone will not sustain you through those storms. What will sustain you is the conviction that you are solving a problem that truly matters, one that will make life better for your community.

Your “why” becomes the anchor when challenges feel overwhelming, and it also becomes the compass that keeps you from being distracted by shiny trends or short-term wins. It’s what inspires your team, convinces investors who share your vision, and builds the trust of the community you serve.

So, to any young innovator: build boldly, but build with a clear, consistent, and compelling why. That is how you create an impact that outlives you.

By Enemona Udile Writer and Chef

INNOV8 HUB SPOT REVIEW

Istepped into the most surreal place ever. When the receptionist booked me in and I was asked to sit and wait, I wondered what exactly was behind those tall, wooden doors. It felt like I was on the edge of stepping into a different world, a place where imagination might not just stay in your head but come alive in front of you. Imagine if you could bring all your ideas to life. Imagine if there was a place that provided all the experts you needed, from conceptualisation to 3D visualisation and everything in between. A place that could predict the problems your idea might face and solve them before it even hits the market. And then, actually build it for you.

I had the opportunity to visit one of Africa’s biggest technological hubs, Innov8 Hub, a massive two-storey building whose quiet exterior says nothing about the wonders inside. My host and tour guide, Christiana Agaba, the brand manager, was the perfect person to show me around. We started with the Impact Labs, a cluster of compact labs that house some of the brightest minds in Nigeria. I realised that tech is far bigger than I ever imagined. In the 3D Lab, I watched printers create tangible prototypes out of ideas.

Next was the Electronics Lab, where the “brains” behind machines are built. Then the Wole Soyinka Lab. Not for literature, but for storytelling. Here, founders get help producing pamphlets, photo shoots, and even coaching on how to pitch. Tech and marketing under one roof is brilliant. Just when I thought I had seen it all, we stepped into the Eco Lab. At first glance, it looked like a fashion boutique, with

mannequins dressed in stunning outfits. But here’s the twist: every outfit was made from recycled plastics, metals, and other materials. The designer proudly showed me sewing machines that could cut 20 T-shirts at once. Innov8 Hub wasn’t just about bringing ideas to life; it was about teaching self-sufficiency.

We also passed through Innov8 Learn, where children were busy experimenting with tech and recycling. “If we catch them early, we can produce the next Elon Musk,” Christiana said. Watching the kids, lost in their work, I believed her. The final stop was outside, where a community model showcased practical applications: greenhouses for peppers and lettuce, catfish ponds, poultry cages, a mini-school, and even a small clinic.Here, technology meets daily life.

By the time we finished, one thing was clear: Innov8 Hub is the place to bring any idea to life. From education and agriculture to real estate, finance, and artificial intelligence, they have experts for everything. After helping founders build, they coach them on marketing, sales, securing investors, and competing internationally. Innov8 Hub is the biggest nonprofit, non-governmental tech hub in West Africa. It is truly remarkable. Africa is building the next frontier of technology, and with places like Innov8, Nigeria might just be the hub to lead it, provided we keep fueling it with the support it needs.

Innov8 Hub

Along Airport Road, Abuja, Nigeria

+234 903 072 5172

Value for money: Free entry (but you have to book online via email)

Comfort: 4/5 Quiet and airy, good air conditioners, great visual appeal

Service 5/5 Informative, well-dressed staff.

Overall Rating: ��

Good for: Tech Enthusiasts Investors Founders Writers Academia

INVIS ALIGN YOUR SMILE YOUR SPOTLIGHT

SKIP THE METAL, KEEP THE MAGIC:

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With Invisalign clear aligners, you don’t need wires or brackets to get the ﬂawless smile you deserve. These custom-ﬁt aligners are almost invisible, letting you stay in the spotlight without anything holding you back. Whether you’re a dancer, actor, host, creator, or just living your best Lagos life, Invisalign moves with you, on stage, on screen, and everywhere

Book your Invisalign consultation today, and let’s create your red-carpet smile.

Smile360 Dental Specialists is recognized as a top 1% Invisalign diamond provider in Africa and nine-time winner of Nigeria's best dental service provider award.

Unlike traditional braces, there are no interruptions to your lifestyle. You can remove your aligners when dining out, enjoying suya with friends, or raising a glass at a celebration. And when it’s time to take that perfect photo or step under the lights, all anyone will see is your conﬁdent, natural smile.

Live loud, because your personality should never be muted.

Interview

Folayemi Agusto

Co-Founder and CEO, Tix.Africa

‘‘

For us, inclusivity is about providing both organisers and attendees with options.

Your journey started with the Eat. Drink.Lagos blog and evolved into the tech platform tix.africa. How did this progression shape your understanding of the real, day-to-day role technology plays in how Nigerians discover and experience leisure?

After a few years of running EatDrinkLagos, our audience began asking to eat with us. At that time, we often joked that we didn’t want to get kidnapped by meeting strangers from the internet, so we started a supper club and eventually a food festival. That’s how EatDrinkFestival, our large-scale food festival now in its 10th year, came about. However, when we began organising this extensive event ourselves, we faced many frustrations with ticketing in Nigeria. The available services didn’t accept payments in Naira, so we had to navigate a lengthy and stressful process involving bank transfers and manual confirmations for our supper clubs.

We also disliked that thousands of people attended our festivals, yet we had no data about them. That’s when it became clear we needed to build Tix to make these experiences smoother. We realised that every event experience fundamentally begins with purchasing a ticket or registering, and the more seamless this process is, the easier it becomes for people to discover something new, attend events, and enjoy themselves.

Beyond simply selling tickets, how has a platform like Tix.africa empowered a new wave of event creators, allowing them to turn niche passions into viable,

community-driven events?

Meet Folayemi Agusto, the co-founder and CEO of Tix.africa. What began as a food blog called EatDrinkLagos has since evolved into a leading self-service ticketing platform, Tix.Africa.

We’ve seen creators use Tix for everything from intimate film clubs to raves, and even game nights. Before, those kinds of events might have stayed very informal, with maybe just word-of-mouth or cash at the door. But now with Tix, beyond selling tickets, they have tools to make their events more discoverable online, manage their guest list, and access analytics that help them understand their audience.

With the data now available through digital ticketing, how are you seeing event organisers in Nigeria becoming smarter and more responsive to what their audiences want to experience?

We integrated measurement tools like Meta Pixel and Google Analytics to help our users track conversions for their ads because we noticed that creators were already running ads for their events. Our native analytics also give a really clear picture of which tickets and discount codes are performing better than others. We’ve seen event organisers use that data to tweak ticket pricing, adjust the dates and times of their future events, change performers, or double down on decisions that they realised their audience loved the most.

As experiences become more digitally integrated, how can we ensure they remain inclusive and accessible to Nigerians across different socio-economic backgrounds, not just the tech-savvy urban elite?

That’s a good question. For us, we will always prioritise being digital-first because we have seen that it is safer for organisers in preventing ticket fraud. So, for us, inclusivity is about providing both organisers and attendees with options. Some people are perfectly fine with buying tickets online with their cards, but others prefer bank transfers, mobile money, or even USSD. To accommodate this, we have partnered with payment providers that offer as many payment methods as possible, ensuring no one is left out. On the attendees’ side, we also ensure that we always design simple and intuitive processes. We’ve made it easy for everyone to purchase a ticket in just a few clicks and within 30 seconds.

How do you envision technology helping to export Nigerian culture, our food, music, and events, to a global audience more effectively in the coming years?

Nigerian culture is already global. We have Afrobeats, Nollywood, and our food being consumed by so many people around the world. Technology just gives it better distribution. One key way that’s already happening is streaming for music and television. The future I imagine is one where we can help our users organise a tech conference across Lagos, Nairobi, Accra, London, and beyond on our single dashboard. In the same vein, I imagine a future where Tix and other related companies, along with sustained investment in infrastructure, can make it possible for our biggest stars to also tour effectively across Africa.

Interview Odunoluwa Longe Co-founder and CEO, TLP Advisory

‘‘ Intellectual property often shapes our clients’ journeys, and at TLP Advisory, it is rewarding to see the long-term impact of our work.

You helped draft the 2023 Nigerian Start-up Act. Which parts did you work on, and how do you see them shaping our start-up scene?

Yes, TLP Advisory was involved in drafting the Nigerian Start-up Act. For us, this was a privilege and one of our objectives as a firm. Our vision is not just to work with clients but to contribute to Africa’s economic prosperity. The execution, however, is integral. Unfortunately, it has suffered a setback. The Act was passed during the last political administration and, though the same party remains, new people are in power, and implementation has slowed. Full execution would have a significant impact on the ecosystem.

We see similar provisions in other countries, like the SEIS and EIS schemes in the UK, which encourage more investors by offering tax relief when start-ups fail. Since start-ups are highrisk, mitigating that risk attracts more capital. One of our struggles here is the lack of local capital. The implementation of the Act would help bring more local investors, especially angel investors, into the ecosystem. Another challenge for founders is raising dollars while

earning revenue in Naira, creating a mismatch, especially during periods of currency instability. Although the currency has been more stable recently, allowing founders to raise funds in Naira would go a long way. This is one of the key benefits the Startup Act can promote if implemented.

Can you share a story where you helped a Nigerian start-up handle intellectual property or global regulations in a way that changed their journey?

Intellectual property often shapes our clients’ journeys, and at TLP Advisory, it is rewarding to see the long-term impact of our work. One example is a Nigerian company registering its trademark. Although our initial search was clear, the registrar rejected the application due to a perceived similarity with a Bacardi-owned name. While both sounded alike, they were spelt differently, and our client operated in a completely different class. We appealed with evidence showing Bacardi did not use the name while our client had been using it, and we won the appeal. This was crucial for the company, which had already raised funding locally and internationally. We are also handling a similar dispute in court, where a smaller, funded client is defending its name against an international company. Protecting these rights ensures start-ups are not overshadowed by larger corporations.

Your report pushed for more policy and collaboration. How have you or TLP been engaging policymakers since then, and what has come out of it?

Yes, I should start by saying that while our report is a year old, the call for more policy participation and collaboration remains central to our work. It is something we have always done and continue to do. We collaborate with different organisations, sometimes directly and sometimes with others who are actively involved, such as the Fate Foundation and their policy work. Since then, we have been

eet Odunoluwa Longe, a pioneering venture lawyer and a key figure in Africa’s tech and legal landscape. With almost 20 years of experience, her work is centred on providing entrepreneurs with the essential legal tools and support they need to secure funding and scale their businesses, driving significant growth within the Nigerian and broader African venture ecosystems.

involved in the private sector partnership for African market entry promoted by the Ministry of Trade, speaking as a panellist in a workshop on digital trade and partnerships.

We have also been very involved in the Africa-UK community, engaging with the Department for Business and Trade on UKAfrica relationships. We have joined Sandbox engagements in the UK on how Nigerian and African start-ups can access markets here and vice versa. We are actively involved in financing conversations with the Federal Government, though those are in their early stages, as well as in related documentation. Recently, I met the Commissioner of Digital Technology in a northern state, and we are in early conversations about collaborating to get more women in the north into tech. These are a few examples of what we have done and continue to do.

Looking ahead, what is the one change, innovation, or policy you believe could most transform Nigeria’s start-up ecosystem in the next decade?

A short-term win would honestly be the full execution of the Nigerian Start-up Act. If that Act is executed, the change in our ecosystem would be considerable. Its impact, if properly implemented, would be profound and farreaching, creating a powerful network effect on a national scale. If I were to add a second point, it would be making the public market more attractive for start-ups. I know that the NGX is doing some work on this, and it is something we have also had conversations about. We are, however, beginning to see interest from Nigerian founders in raising capital from the local public market. If that is encouraged and the framework is implemented to make it feasible and easy, I think it would also transform our ecosystem. Access to capital is crucial, specifically local capital that understands the market and is “in the trenches” with the founders. Improving this would go a long way.

Photo of The Month

Compelling Images from Nigeria

This is a portrait of Akinbode Akinbiyi, a legendary British/Nigerian Curator and photographer, shooting a street performance.

ABOUT THE PHOTOGRAPHER THE PORTRAIT

Ugochukwu Emebiriodo is a Nigerian curator and photographer whose work translates the rich tapestry of West African life into compelling visual narratives. With a perspective shaped by the energetic pulse of Lagos, he captures the intricate details of the human condition, seeing the world as a dynamic interplay of light, colour, and emotion. His curatorial vision was pivotal to the inaugural +234 Art Fair, and his photography has been internationally recognised and published by prestigious outlets including NPR, VICE UK, and Monocle Magazine, establishing him as a significant voice in contemporary photography.

IG: @hitchoflife

Akoda

Wins

By Om Opubor Student

Computational Chemistry for Nigeria’s Future

The last time I saw Maryam, she was chasing a football barefoot across the estate. She was fast and fearless, her laughter carrying over the hum of generators. A week later, she was gone.

Maryam died of cerebral malaria. She was five years old.

In Nigeria, malaria is so common that it’s almost background noise. I’ve had it. My dad’s had it. So I have countless friends. In 2022, 67 million Nigerians fell ill. With treatment, most recover. Without it, the story can be different. Cerebral malaria is a different story altogether.

This rare form attacks the brain. Even with hospital care, it kills about one in five people. Without treatment, nearly everyone dies. Survivors are often left with permanent disabilities. In Africa, it claims roughly 600,000 lives each year. Almost 200,000 of those deaths are in Nigeria, most of them children.

We talk about the human loss, but the economic toll is just as staggering. Every case means missed work, strained hospitals, and families forced to choose between food, school fees, and medicine. Oxford Economics Africa estimates that cutting malaria cases by 90% by 2030 could boost Africa’s GDP by $126 billion. Nigeria alone could see a $35 billion lift, enough to transform healthcare, education, and infrastructure for a nation where half the population is under 18. So, why does it still kill so many?

One answer is research funding, or the lack of it. Diseases that affect wealthier countries attract investment. Diseases that mainly affect the poor do not. If cerebral malaria were as common in the United States as it is here, it would be the third leading cause of death, and billions would be spent each year searching for a cure.

This is where technology can rewrite the story. Specifically, computational chemistry. Computational chemistry uses powerful computers to model how molecules behave. It helps scientists understand which compounds might become life-saving drugs without the enormous cost of physical lab experiments at every stage. By predicting failures early, it speeds up discovery, slashes expenses, and makes it possible to work on diseases that big pharmaceutical companies often ignore.

It’s not just theory. Using free software, I’ve simulated molecules in seconds, faster than entire generations of scientists could manage in the past. It’s astonishing to think that the same technology could one day help identify a treatment for cerebral malaria in months instead of decades.

I didn’t always think about science this way. For years, I only thought about Maryam. When I was young, her death felt like a one-off tragedy. As I got older, I began to understand the ripple effects: the grief in her parents’ eyes, the missing energy in our estate, the brothers who grew quieter. And I began to see the same quiet grief in other people, young Nigerians with big dreams but little chance to pursue them.

That realisation pushed me to act in my way. I started writing articles for Nigerian newspapers and magazines about the potential I saw being wasted, and how it might be unlocked. I have argued for investing in science not only for the diseases that dominate headlines, but for the ones that quietly steal futures.

We live in a moment of astonishing technological change. Science fiction is becoming reality faster than we can process it. AI writes code. Robots assist in surgeries. Gene-editing tools promise to end certain inherited diseases. But unless we are deliberate, the benefits of these advances will be uneven. Marginalised communities across Africa, and even within wealthy nations, risk being left further behind.

That is why I believe the future must be about more than just innovation. It must be about access. Computational chemistry is just one example of how technology can break down economic barriers in research.

If we can utilise our tools to make lifesaving science accessible and widespread, we will not only save lives but also build stronger, more equitable societies. Imagine a Nigeria where no child misses school because of malaria. Imagine an Africa where healthcare systems are not overwhelmed every rainy season. Imagine a future where every community has the chance to contribute to and benefit from humanity’s greatest discoveries.

That is the promise of technology worth fighting for.

By Jenny Onibode Writer & Creative Strategist

GEN Z - Digital Baby: How The Internet Raised Me

The importance of technology in today’s world cannot be overemphasised. I was four years old when I was first introduced to the internet. Perched on my dad’s office chair, I sat in front of a big desktop with pillows stacked under me for support and my feet dangling far above the floor. I didn’t know much then, but I knew how to click. I would spend hours playing Minesweeper and, with endless curiosity, buzzing my family members on Yahoo Messenger. I didn’t fully understand the concept of “chatting,” but I quickly learned that the green dot next to a friend’s name meant you could call them and get an instant response, a thrill not even Mindsweeper could match.

As I grew, the internet grew with me, and it became more than a novelty. It gave me what my immediate environment sometimes could not: access to information, inspiration, and connection. I learnt how to edit pictures on Microsoft Paint, then graduated to experimenting with Photoshop long before I even knew that “graphic design” was a career path. I stumbled into music blogs where I downloaded songs in painstakingly slow batches, discovering artists and sounds that shaped my taste for years to come. I devoured stories on Wattpad and personal blogs, mimicking the structure and style of my favourite writers until my voice emerged.

The internet became a digital school for me, teaching me skills

and perspectives that no classroom syllabus covered. While formal education often felt rigid and confined, online spaces felt limitless. I could learn how to edit videos one day and dive into world history the next. It didn’t just give me information; it shaped how I process the world. Every slow-loading page, every late-night deep dive, every moment after figuring out a new feature trained my mind to connect dots across different worlds.

Looking back, my career in the creative industries can be traced directly to those early years of exploration. The internet taught me that ideas could travel faster than I ever could physically. It showed me that I could explore cultures without a passport, collaborate with people I’d never met, and create something meaningful with just a laptop and a spark of curiosity.

Today, the digital tools I use are more than just instruments; they are extensions of my thinking process. They influence how I create, communicate, and navigate my personal and professional life. The internet is my lens for interpreting the world, my endless library, my networking space, and my creative canvas.

I may have started as a child perched on pillows in front of a glowing screen, but that early curiosity evolved into an important and lifelong relationship with technology, one that continues to shape how I imagine, build, and leave my mark on the world.

By Miracle Nwaogu Writer and Digital Marketer x: @mimeeismiracle

Turning Boredom to Breakthroughs: the YarnGPT Story

Lockdown was a vivid phase for all of us who experienced it. Being cooped up at home, businesses slowing or completely shutting down, dance challenges on TikTok and Triller it seemed everyone was trying not to lose their minds. Personally, I perfected the art of making smooth custard (an underrated skill, I tell you). Some, like Saheed Azeez, found tech.

What do you do when the world is at a standstill and all you have is a phone and raw, burning passion? If you were Saheed, you would go down a tech rabbit hole and then strike gold by solving crucial local problems. During the infamous lockdown of 2020, in the midst of humanity trying to make sense of its new reality, a young undergraduate in Mechanical Engineering at the University of Lagos wrote his first Python code on a mobile device. Inspired by a class he attended as a fresher in 2019, Saheed had picked up an interest in Artificial Intelligence with a focus on Machine Learning, in line with his childhood love for robotics.

But what did he do with this newfound path?

Saheed spotted an issue which we have all encountered at one time or another. It is well known that Nigeria is grossly underrepresented in the tech space, especially when compared to other areas where we are better known, like our music exports. For one, trying out a service and hearing a foreign accent is just another day in the life in these parts. But that just might be a thing of the past with YarnGPT.

YarnGPT is a text-to-speech model that converts written text to expressive speech in English, Hausa, Igbo, or Yoruba. What’s more, you can adjust the talking speed and download the audio as a file. The base product began as just a text token, which he improved by building the audio component almost from scratch. Combined with open-source technology and data he personally scraped, this great idea came to life.

Saheed now works with a larger firm, expanding his horizons and growing in his chosen field. But there’s more to the creator than YarnGPT. Saheed also has @_screenshotter on X (formerly Twitter) under his belt, a bot that allows you to generate screenshots of posts on the app. What started out as reposts by friends in his hostel has become global, with over 186,000 followers, and has now been acquired by Publer.

Imagine an AI chatbot that sounds relatable, speaking your language in the right accent. That’s an unbeatable feeling which we can now have thanks to YarnGPT. This project also gets points for promoting accessibility, as it helps people with disabilities navigate the internet more easily. It is also a great tool for teachers, content creators, and practically everyone else.

That’s a remarkable amount to achieve, starting with just a phone. We cannot wait to see more from this young innovator putting Nigeria on the map, one product at a time.

LOST IN NIGERIA

Lost in Nigeria? No worries, as we’ve got you covered. Explore the diverse and captivating points of interest scattered across the country, curated just for you. Whether you’re seeking cultural immersion, outdoor escapades or culinary delights, we handpick a selection of upcoming experiences for you to discover and indulge in every month.

GITEX Nigeria Government Leadership & AI Summit

Come and experience the most explorative, high-level technological event, where tech meets policy and innovation is shaping governance. From AI strategy sessions to groundbreaking discussions on Nigeria’s digital future, GITEX Nigeria is where you want to be if you’re building the next big thing or just want a front-row seat to the future. Expect suits, systems, and smart-city dreams. Abuja’s tech pulse is loud this week.

1st – 4th September, 2025 | Lagos & Abuja

TechnovateFest 2025

Lagos never misses. With TechnovateFest pulling together the best of tech, creatives, and community builders, you already know this will be a hotbed of talent and ideas. Panels, product launches, networking corners, and street-style innovation collide in one unforgettable day. Come through in your smartest slay. You never know who you’ll meet.

5th September 2025 | Lagos

Kano International Poetry Festival

The ember months are here, and Nigeria hosts some of the best festivals. Think poetry, think action, and think finesse at the fourth Kano International Poetry Festival, returning with global and local voices as they take over the ancient city for three soulful days. From Hausa hip-hop to climate justice poems, this gathering is not just for writers. It’s for anyone who wants to feel deeply, connect richly, and experience Kano’s cultural pride up close. This is one for the heart.

11th – 13th September 2025 | Kano

Olojo Festival World Chess Tournament

Yes, culture and chess! Taking place during the historic Olojo Festival in Ile-Ife, this one-of-a-kind event blends Yoruba heritage with global strategy. It’s a visual and mental feast, where the ancestral spirit meets intellectual finesse. Come for the game, stay for the pageantry, and leave with a memory that will last a lifetime.

19th September, 2025 | Ile-Ife, Osun State

Developers Fest 2025

Ever wanted to experience tech in the highlands, or considered meeting the minds shifting software and creating updates that fuel ease in our everyday lives? Then the Developers Fest by GDG is for you. Set to happen in the city of Jos, it features keynotes, workshops, and that community vibe only developers know how to cook up. Whether you’re an engineer, student, or tech-curious, this is your invitation to network, learn, and chill in one of Nigeria’s most scenic cities.

20th September, 2025 | Jos, Plateau State

Interview Philip Akoda Founder & CEO, Nkanda

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We are showing people that their languages are not “inferior” or “old-fashioned,” but worthy of pride, scholarship, and technological innovation

Your work with Nkanda has been described as transformative for local communities. From your perspective, what makes Nkanda truly innovative as a start-up, beyond simply being “a new idea” in the EdTech space?

What makes Nkanda innovative is that we are not just creating apps; we are building infrastructure for African languages in the digital age. Most people think of language preservation as writing a dictionary or publishing a grammar book. That is important, but it does not solve the core issue: if a language does not exist in a structured, digital form, it becomes invisible in tomorrow’s technology, whether that’s AI, search engines, or education platforms.

Nkanda goes beyond preservation by treating African languages as living data systems. We build comprehensive, bilingual and monolingual dictionary databases that capture not just definitions, but also synonyms, antonyms,

dialectal variations, sentence examples, and indigenous audio. This level of structure means our work can feed directly into translation engines, speech recognition, chatbots, and future AI tools. That is not just an “idea”. It is an entirely new model for how African languages can participate in global knowledge systems.

Another part of our innovation is how we connect local communities to global platforms. For example, our Efik and Yorùbá dictionary apps are used by thousands of people across the world, as is evident on the Play Store and App Store. Nkanda is making African languages relevant across borders and generations.

So, the innovation lies in our approach: we do not see African languages as fragile cultural artefacts to be preserved; we see them as powerful, adaptable assets that can shape the future of education, identity, and technology. That shift from nostalgia to strategy is what

Meet Philip Akoda, an entrepreneur, lexicographer, and the Founder & CEO of Nkanda, an EdTech company dedicated to preserving and digitising African languages for the digital age. He leads pioneering projects to create comprehensive digital dictionaries for languages like Efik and Yorùbá, treating them as vital data for the future of education, AI, and translation. A multipublished author whose work is housed in prestigious libraries at Oxford and Harvard, his innovative efforts have earned international acclaim, including the Imminent Research Grant and the Outstanding Contribution to African Languages Award, solidifying his impact on the continent’s linguistic landscape.

How does converting African languages into mobile apps help preserve and revitalise them in ways that traditional print or oral methods cannot?

Preserving languages has always been tied to memory and tradition. Traditional language preservation relies on oral storytelling and print books, is severely limited. Oral traditions are fragile and can be lost if the chain of speakers breaks. Print dictionaries are static and become quickly outdated, failing to capture the natural evolution of a living language. These methods are insufficient for ensuring a language’s longterm survival and relevance.

Mobile apps revolutionise language preservation by democratising access. In Africa, with more smartphones than libraries, apps make resources like a Yoruba or Hausa dictionary instantly available to all. This global reach, connecting a student in Ibadan to a child in Houston, provides a scale and immediacy that traditional print methods could never achieve, ensuring widespread availability.

Second, Unlike static print, apps offer a multi-dimensional and immersive learning experience. They combine text with native audio recordings, phonemic transcriptions, and contextual examples. For tonal languages like Yoruba, this audio-visual integration is essential. It accurately conveys meanings carried by tones a critical nuance that flat text alone cannot capture, making learning far more effective and authentic.

Thirdly, Mobile platforms act as living resources,

makes Nkanda stand out.

overcoming the static nature of print. As languages evolve with new slang and words, apps can be continuously updated to reflect these changes. This ensures that language preservation is not about freezing a language in a specific moment but about keeping it alive, current, and relevant by mirroring its natural growth.

Fourth, Crucially, digitising languages integrates them into the global technology ecosystem. When a language exists as structured data, it can power AI, machine translation, and voice assistants. Without this digital presence, African languages risk becoming invisible and excluded from future technological innovations, thereby ensuring they are prepared for the next frontier of artificial intelligence and communication.

So, while oral and print traditions will always have cultural value, mobile apps go further: they revitalise languages by making them accessible, dynamic, and future-proof. They turn African languages from heritage items into living, usable tools in the modern world.

Every ground-breaking venture comes with resistance. What has been the toughest pushback you’ve faced while building Nkanda, and how did you overcome it as a founder?

Since beginning Nkanda in 2017, I have faced numerous challenges. My initial work involved spearheading language learning apps for Ndebele in Zimbabwe, Fante in Ghana, and Oromo in Ethiopia. This was met with significant dismissal; many people, including close friends, viewed the venture as unprofitable and a waste

from the Calabar Forum UK and one million naira from a US-based donor.

The project’s success was also built on the dedication of a team of volunteers, including Ani Ukpong, Barr Timothy Esu, Ita Bassey, Etim Effanga, Glory Echeng, and Bassey Emmanuel. Their collective effort brought the comprehensive app to life, and it was published on the 2nd of March 2022.

In 2022, seeking a greater purpose, I moved to Lagos and conceived the idea for a comprehensive Yorùbá Dictionary app under the Nkanda banner. This new chapter brought another significant uphill battle: convincing academic institutions to collaborate. My initial attempts were met with disappointment, as several trips to the University of Lagos yielded no interested partners. However, persistence paid off on my third attempt when I met Professor Ayodele Yusuff. He warmly welcomed the idea and introduced me to a network of supportive academics, marking a crucial turning point for the project.

From there, we assembled a formidable core leadership and lexicographical team. This included my co-founder and CTO, MaryBrenda Akoda; our Chief Research Officer, Prof. Winifred Akoda; and a dedicated lexicography team comprising Ahmed Adedapo Bello, Omobolaji Olusoji, Daud Abolade, Aanuoluwapo Olomolatan, Dorcas Omolade, and Lanre Adepoju.

Together, we embarked on building the most complex and comprehensive Yorùbá dictionary app ever developed. Ultimately, the toughest

of time, questioning why I was not focusing on more globally “useful” languages like Spanish or French. Despite this, I remained steadfast in my conviction to save African languages from digital irrelevance.

A pivotal moment of affirmation came in 2018 when my alma mater, the University of Essex, recognised my early preservation efforts by honouring me as one of the ‘Essex Heroes,’ an experience I found both surreal and validating. After returning to Nigeria, I shifted my focus to my mother tongue, Efik, leading to the creation of the Tete Efik Dictionary App. This phase presented the tough challenge of securing funding, as few people, including some family members, believed in the vision. However, by reaching out to diaspora communities, support began to materialise, including a £600 donation

in people’s daily lives. One story that stuck with me was that of a young first-year student in the Department of Linguistics who once felt too shy to speak Yorùbá. She struggled with fluency and pronunciation, and as a result, avoided using the language publicly. Months after we released the Yorùbá Dictionary app, I was told she had become one of its most devoted users. Over time, her confidence grew, and she began speaking Yorùbá with pride. That kind of transformation shows me that our work is not only about words in a database; it is about restoring confidence, identity, and belonging.

Even back in Calabar, years ago, I had another striking encounter. I stepped into a taxi and noticed that the passenger next to me was using the very first Efik language-learning app I had developed in 2017. He told me how much the app had improved his spoken Efik and how grateful he was to have such a tool on his phone. That moment was humbling because it proved that what started as an experiment had become something that people genuinely relied on to reconnect with their heritage.

At Nkanda, we take pride in ensuring that every linguistic project we undertake is marked by depth, quality, and cultural authenticity. Our apps are not just functional; they are repositories of living culture, designed to make African languages accessible in the same way English, French, or Spanish already are in the digital age.

Right now, I am spearheading the Hausa Dictionary Project and working with a number of academics at Bayero University Kano, as well as Nassarawa State University and other Hausa

and most consistent pushback I have faced has been a deep-seated scepticism from individuals, institutions, and even extended family who failed to see the long-term value in digitising African languages. I have overcome this persistent challenge through sheer resilience and the unwavering belief that by continuously showing up and sharing the vision, I would eventually find those who understood.

Innovation is often measured in economic terms, but there is also a cultural and social impact. What changes have you seen in communities that prove Nkanda is shifting mindsets, not just markets?

The feedback we receive from users of our apps consistently reminds me that Nkanda is making a real difference, not just in theory, but

speakers outside academia. The project comes with its challenges, but I remain persistent because Hausa is one of the most widely spoken African languages, and it deserves a robust, digital representation. Ultimately, our long-term goal is to launch Africa’s first unified multilingual dictionary app, a platform where speakers, learners, and researchers across the continent and the diaspora can access multiple African languages in one place.

For me, the cultural and social impact of Nkanda is clear: we are shifting mindsets. We are showing people that their languages are not “inferior” or “old-fashioned,” but worthy of pride, scholarship, and technological innovation. That shift from shame to confidence, from neglect to celebration, is the truest marker of success for us.

By Olufe Ututu

Why Awari Wins

The Problem: A City of Disconnected Dots

A city alive with energy: cafés ready to brew fresh ideas, spas poised to offer serenity, event spaces budding with vitality, and artisans eager to seduce with their craft. It is a tale as old as time. Yet, in that same city, millions of people wander the streets, searching for something new: a hidden gem, a unique activity, or a memorable experience. They are all disconnected.

Most business owners pour endless time and money into marketing, yet still struggle to truly know their customers or keep them coming back. Urban dwellers bounce between a dozen apps for food, events, or bookings, only to miss out on the best spots the city has to offer. Most cities overflow with possibilities, yet no single thread ties them all together. That is the problem Awari was born to solve, connecting the scattered dots of modern city life.

The Solution: A Digital City Guide & Business Growth Platform

Awari is a city’s digital heartbeat, a roundthe-clock meeting place where businesses and people connect.

The Vendor’s Journey: From Chaos to Control

Ngozi owns a stunning new spa that struggles to find the right customers. With Awari, her story changes. She signs up on the vendor portal, uploads beautiful photos, and lists her services. Instantly, her spa becomes a digital storefront. But that is just the beginning. Through her dashboard, Ngozi unlocks tools she has never had before:

Curated Experiences: She creates a “Couples’

Retreat Package” that includes a massage and champagne, attracting a premium clientele.

Loyalty Programmes: She sets up a digital loyalty card: visit three times, get a free facial. Suddenly, one-time guests turn into regulars. This feature also allows her to join wider platform campaigns, giving her business even greater visibility.

Real Insights: Her dashboard shows realtime data: how many people buy her tickets, who they are, and how to contact them with important information before, during, or after their visit. It also shows what packages work best and when she is busiest. She has the option to pass the platform’s transaction fee, which is significantly lower than that of competing ticketing platforms, on to the customer.

For Ngozi, Awari is not just a listing. It is her all-in-one growth engine.

The Customer’s Journey: From Overwhelm to Discovery

Then there is Funke, a busy professional craving a spa day. Instead of juggling countless Google searches and random apps, she opens Awari. Within seconds, she finds top-rated spas, reads reviews, sees Ngozi’s special package, and books securely in just a few taps. After her visit, she gets a gentle nudge to leave a review and earns a loyalty stamp.

Funke is not just a customer any more; she is part of a living, breathing city guide that helps others discover the best experiences. Every interaction feels simple, rewarding,

and connected.

Why Awari Wins: The Unique Edge

A Unified Platform: Awari is not another directory. It is the only platform that ties together discovery, event management, booking, payment, and loyalty in one seamless flow.

The Ecosystem: Others are fragmented. Awari is the hub that links it all, sparking network effects.

Businesses Empowered: We do not just list businesses; we equip them with tools like loyalty programmes, analytics, and curated experiences. Awari is a partner, not just a service.

Communities Built: Awari is designed around relationships. Customers feel seen. Businesses feel supported. The city feels connected.

The Growth Story: From One City to a Continent

Nigeria’s cities are among the fastestgrowing in the world. As urban life expands, the demand for connection will only rise. The vision? To take Awari from Lagos and Abuja to Accra, Cairo, Casablanca, and beyond. It is the next digital infrastructure for urban Africa. A single platform where millions of people can experience their cities in new ways, connect, leverage AI, and businesses can flourish. Awari is solving a real, everyday problem with a solution that scales. We are creating vibrant, connected communities, and this journey has only just begun.

By Dara Adesanya Writer & Brand Strategist

Finding Purpose in “Code”

Ibumped into Tade last month.

We hadn’t seen each other since our undergraduate days at the University of Ibadan, and honestly, I almost didn’t recognise him: clean-cut, confident, and smiling like someone who had just won the lottery. The Tade I remembered was withdrawn, often walking with his head down, weighed down by a course he never wanted and a CGPA that refused to rise. Back then, he studied Religious Studies. Not by choice, he had dreamed of becoming a lawyer, but with the way university admissions work in Nigeria, you often take what you’re given or risk sitting at home for another year. He took it. But it never quite took to him.

I remember those years. Tade’s CGPA looked like betting odds. We used to joke that he survived university by divine intervention. Truthfully, many of us were worried about him. In a country where job opportunities are scarce even for first-class graduates, what chance did someone like Tade have? We imagined him teaching somewhere in a public school, earning just enough to get by.

But here he was now, looking grown-up and successful. “I’m into web development now”,

he said, almost casually, as if it weren’t the most mind-blowing thing I’d heard all week. “I started learning during NYSC. Took a few free courses, got obsessed, built a few things… one gig led to another.” Later that day, I looked him up on LinkedIn. Over 10,000 followers. Comments from clients praising his work, young developers thanking him for mentorship, and photos of him speaking at tech events in Abuja and Nairobi. Tade had found purpose, and not just any purpose. Tech had given him the life he wanted, meaningful, not exactly as a lawyer, but certainly far from ordinary, and perhaps even better.

The beauty of Tade’s story is how common it is becoming in Nigeria. For many young people, especially those whose academic paths failed to align with their passions, tech has become a second chance. A reset button. Whether it’s coding, UI/UX design, product

management, or digital marketing, tech is creating opportunities that our degrees couldn’t promise. And it’s not just about money, though that matters too; it’s about meaning. I’ve seen tech turn people around. I’ve seen people who once felt invisible begin to lead teams, mentor others, and speak on global stages.

Tade always had something in him. We all did. It just took tech to bring it out.

“Sometimes, all a person needs is a reason to believe they’re not useless”, he told me, his eyes steady. “Tech gave me that.” And it’s true. In a country where systems often fail and talent goes unnoticed, tech is opening new doors. For people like Tade and even for people like me, it’s not just about coding or building apps. It’s about reclaiming dreams we thought we had lost.

The most powerful kind of innovation, I’ve come to realise, isn’t always in the things we create; it’s in how they make us see ourselves differently. Tech gave Tade a sense of purpose. That is more than any innovation. That is redemption.

AI vs LIL+ Magazine

For our special issue on technology in Nigeria, we wanted a source that was truly an insider. Someone who could see everything, connect all the dots, and offer a perspective free from hype or bias. So, we had a wild idea: why not interview the tech itself? We sat down for a virtual interview with ChatGPT and Gemini. Here’s how it went:

For the purpose of this interview, please introduce yourself and tell us a bit about yourself and your work.

ChatGPT: Well, I’m not exactly the type to walk into your office wearing a sharp agbada or sit in Lagos traffic for two hours before our meeting. I’m ChatGPT, a large language model built by OpenAI. Basically, I eat data for breakfast, process patterns for lunch, and serve up answers for dinner.

My ‘work’ is simple: I help people think, write, solve problems, and sometimes just rant about bad network providers. And since we’re talking tech in Nigeria, I’ve got plenty to say about how innovation here is making the world pay attention.

Gemini: For starters, I’m the only one in this interview who has never been stuck in traffic on the Third Mainland Bridge, though I have processed enough real-time data to feel the collective sigh of an entire city.

My job is to connect the dots that humans are too busy or too caffeinated to see. I find the signal in the noise, the pattern in the beautiful, organised chaos that is Nigeria’s tech ecosystem. So, in short: I’m your ridiculously overqualified, perpetually online source. I don’t run on coffee; I run on electricity and curiosity. Fire away.

What is the biggest misconception about AI’s role in the Nigerian tech scene?

ChatGPT: The biggest misconception about AI in the Nigerian tech scene is that it is a distant, foreign concept with little local relevance, when in fact it is already powering practical solutions in fintech, agriculture, healthcare, and logistics. Rather than existing only in futuristic applications, AI is embedded in everyday tools that address uniquely Nigerian challenges, from fraud detection to crop monitoring

Gemini: That it’s a magic bullet. AI is a powerful tool, not a solution in itself. It’s most effective when used to solve specific, local problems like optimising supply chains or personalising financial services, not just for hype.

What are some of your favourite innovative tech ideas that Nigerians have developed?

ChatGPT: Nigerian innovators have developed impactful solutions such as Paystack and Flutterwave for seamless digital payments, LifeBank for real-time medical supply access, 54gene for advancing African genomics, and Farmcrowdy for digitally empowering farmers, showcasing how local tech addresses pressing challenges while scaling globally.

Gemini:

Paystack & Flutterwave: They solved the core problem of online payments, unlocking the entire digital economy for businesses. PiggyVest & Cowrywise: They democratized savings and investment, making it an automated, accessible habit for young people.

Helium Health: They are building the digital backbone for Africa’s healthcare, streamlining hospital records and management.

AltSchool Africa: They are creating a new talent pipeline with an alternative, fast-tracked education model that directly solves the tech skills gap.

What is one common mistake you see local founders make when trying to scale their ideas?

ChatGPT: A common mistake local founders make is focusing too heavily on rapid expansion without first building resilient systems such as reliable infrastructure, compliance processes, and scalable operations that can sustain long-term growth.

In one sentence, what is the future of tech in Nigeria?

ChatGPT: The future of tech in Nigeria lies in locally driven innovation that leverages digital infrastructure, talent, and AI to solve pressing challenges while positioning the country as a global technology hub.

Gemini: A common mistake is premature geographic scaling. Founders often secure a large funding round and immediately target expansion into other African countries. They underestimate the immense complexity within Nigeria itself, a diverse nation of over 200 million people

Gemini: The future is decentralised, mobile-first, and built to solve uniquely Nigerian challenges, moving beyond just adapting foreign models to creating entirely new ones.