The Population Myth
What is Nigeria's Actual Total Addressable Market for Tech-enabled & Internet-based Businesses?
There are entire industries built on the myth that Nigeria has a population of ≥200m people. From NGOs to venture funds to start-ups, numerous actors in the economic value chain have leveraged, and continue to leverage, this myth to steer/justify economic policies, capital investment and business decisions. Given the faulty underlying premise, this means such policies and investments are at risk of not impacting economic growth as expected or, even worse, causing imbalances that can hamper same.
In addition to the population miscalculations, there is also a (wilful/negligent) lack of understanding of the real economic constraints of the vast majority of the Nigerian population, even if it was 200m. It could be 1b, but as long as 90%+ continue to make an average of $60/month (with periodic currency devaluations in an import-heavy environment) opportunities to generate significant economic value from said population is an uphill and extremely risk/capital-intensi…