Young Boy, New Internet

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Today, you’re reading the story of how tech took over Nigeria - from the perspective of a 24-year-old (me) who lived through it all.

Let’s get into it!

Over the last 20 years, I’ve lived through a massive tech boom in my home country, Nigeria:

• The mobile revolution took off one year after I was born

• I saw smartphones become commonplace

• And Lagos - where I grew up - is now home to 600 startups and raised $4.4 billion in the last five years alone

Yaba, a district in Lagos, Nigeria, is home to many of the country’s biggest startups - like Paga, Omnibiz, and Kuda Bank

Next month, I turn 25, and my life has been a front-row seat to Nigeria’s tech growth.

Today, I’m telling the story of that growth through the eyes of a 20-something who watched it all happen.

First, we’re going back to…

1999: The Canon Moment

In 1999, Nigeria’s government made a law that changed its future forever.

It let private telcos get licensed and operate locally.

Before then, NITEL (the government-run telco) was the only way to get a phone connection.

And the country barely had 400,000 lines at the time.

That’s one phone line to every 375 people.

If you had a phone in your home, you were either rich or influential enough to get NITEL to run the cables into your house.

Because of this, “call centers” were good business.

Back then, my parents used to have fixed times to call each other at call centers when my dad was away from home.

But that all changed when the first telco launched.

2001: The “Everywhere” telco

In May 2001, a phone call was made at the Maritime House in Lagos.

And for the first time in Nigeria, it wasn’t on NITEL.

This time, it was on MTN - a private network that started in South Africa.

MTN launched with a plan to cover everyone. They:

• Set up cell towers in every major city to keep (most) people connected

• Sold branded feature phones to connect people who’d never used phones before

• And they sold SIM cards to everyone

  

But getting connected was still expensive.

My dad bought his first phone (and SIM card) for ₦35,000 ($280).

And the SIM card alone cost ₦25,000 ($200).

Skip forward to today, and MTN SIM cards are almost free.

MTN hit 92 million users in Nigeria last year.

Looking back, the foundation MTN laid in 2001 built Nigerian tech today.

But my first brush with technology didn’t come until five years later.

2006: Boy meets world tech

My first phone was a hand-me-down Panasonic flip phone.

It was small, round, and lowkey looked like a makeup case.

And I was so fascinated, I spent all my time with it.

At age seven, I became my family’s unofficial tech guy, helping older relatives fix their basic phone issues.

For my eighth birthday, my parents got me a desktop PC.

It looked sleek back then but now, it feels ancient.

The best part — I could finally use the Internet.

But not in the way you might think.

2008: Let’s dial up the internet

By 2008 when I got on the internet, MTN had competition from guys like Starcomms, Multilinks, Glo, and Celtel.

At home, we had a Multilinks landline that doubled as a modem.

We’d load up airtime on it and connect it to our PC to go online.

And suddenly, my world got bigger

• I got my first email

• Signed up for Facebook (I was probably the youngest Nigerian around)

• And started “shitposting” around the time I got into secondary school

It was a fun time, except the internet was slow.

The best you could get was 1G - far slower than today’s 5G.

But things changed pretty soon.

A better internet

In 2010, being online got better.

I quickly stumbled on some popular local websites like

• Waptrick for games like Prince of Persia and Die Hard 4

• TooXclusive (Nigeria’s version of Napster) for downloading Nigerian music

• And Nairaland (Nigeria’s Reddit) for arguing in forums with other Nigerians

All these sites still exist today and are as lively as ever.

Nairaland for example, started in 2006 and still has 3 million monthly active users today.

And it wasn’t just local sites.

Eskimi - a Lithuanian dating site - was popular in Nigeria.

Turned out that it had 25 million users worldwide, and 9 million of them were from Nigeria.

Thinking back now, Nigeria was always a hotspot for tech.

But it became even hotter when one phone company came on the scene: Transsion.

Made in China, for Nigeria

In Ikeja, Lagos, there’s a market the size of Time Square in New York that sells $2 billion worth of computers every year.

It’s called Computer Village.

It’s a bustling market for people who want to buy, sell, or fix phones and PCs.

And it was ground zero for Transsion - a Chinese phone maker.

Transsion had started off many years earlier making feature phones under brands like Tecno and Itel.

But in 2013, they brought new, cheaper smartphones to market.

And everyone wanted one.

In 2014, I got my first smartphone — a white Tecno P5. But I wasn’t special.

By then, everyone in school had one - because Tecno was cheap and easy to use.

And having a smartphone was like your passport to being a cool kid.

We spent the year being glued to apps like 2go and WhatsApp.

Then that same year, I heard the word “startup” for the first time.

What’s a startup?

In January 2014, I stumbled on an article from a young website called “TechCabal”.

It was about a certain Konga.com raising $25 million to build Nigeria’s version of Amazon.

To me (and seemingly everyone else), that was a big deal.

And I dug through the entire TechCabal website to learn about more companies.

That’s when I realized that names like Paga, Konga, IrokoTV, and Hotels.ng — names I’d seen on billboards and posters — were actually startups.

So, I fell into a rabbit hole, following the news and keeping up with the early days of Nigeria’s startup scene.

But I was still very removed from it.

Until I found a community of people building these companies.

TechCabal had built Radar - a small online community where everyone interested in Nigerian tech could talk.

And it was ground zero for the best conversations - we shared insights, had arguments, and even shared predictions.

One wild prediction was someone betting in 2017 that Paystack would be the first Nigerian startup to get an exit.

Three years later, they were right.

Looking back, many of the people on Radar went on to start familiar companies - like Brass, Flutterwave, and Buycoins.

And that builder spirit that defined that small community took the ecosystem very far.

I grew up, and Nigerian tech did too

Since 2019, Nigerian tech has grown up quite quickly.

Companies have raised mega-funds, and the country’s tech scene had everyone’s attention.

But it’s not just about validation. There’s real impact:

• Neobanks like Opay and PalmPay changed how Nigerians keep and handle their money

• Moniepoint processes 50% of Nigeria’s GDP in payments

• And Andela sparked a developer revolution that pushed many youths into tech and even caught Mark Zuckerberg’s attention

Looking back, it’s clear to me that while Nigerian tech has changed, how I use tech has also changed.

I now have an Opay neobank account to hold money and make payments.

I use Bolt to order rides and get around.

And I can order breakfast on Chowdeck with a few taps on my phone.

But it’s not just my reality.

It’s everyday life for millions of young people in Nigeria.

And I’m glad to tell the story of how it’s unfolding.

It’s surreal to think that all this barely existed 10 years ago.

But it’s proof that so much more can happen in the next ten years.

So, when I look ahead, I’m super excited about the next ten years.

If you live in Africa, how has tech changed your everyday life in the last decade?

Let me know here.

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