NIGERIA’S poor policy regime, much of which is reactionary, has without doubt adversely affected the business environment. This includes poor currency control measures, inability to provide basic infrastructure, non-strategic approach to diversification of the economy and incapacity to improve on the country’s export levels.
Additional bottlenecks created by regulatory authorities in the tech space including the unfortunate Twitter ban and the Fintech clampdown (first by the Securities and Exchange Commission and more recently by the Central Bank of Nigeria), also add to the volatility of the Nigerian business environment; and the reason prospective investors may continue to be cautious in their choices between Nigeria and her more business-friendly neighbours.
Recent ratings do not leave any room for excitement. According to the World Bank Ease of Doing Business index, Nigeria ranks 131 in the world on that score. Other ratings show that the country is 169 on getting electricity, 183 on registering of property and 179 on trading across borders, among others.
Gloomy as it might seem, the situation is not irredeemable. Just as there are challenges, they are also ample opportunities for the discerning. Business challenges are often great opportunities of growth. The problem with Nigerians might just be complacency in the comfort zones rather than the much touted lack of opportunities.
This position can be defended because when Nigerians are thrown outside of their comfort zones, they quickly regain stability, build confidence, see opportunities and recognise their strengths. It can be spotted in business leaders and entrepreneurs who encounter constant streams of challenges but who often turn such circumstances into positive engagements.
Those who have been forced by circumstances around them to venture out of their comfort zones have made remarkable successes with stories that are compelling, worth telling and worth emulating. Some of them have developed local solutions to address local needs and fill critical gaps within the country and across borders.
They have become pioneers in their fields and have opted out of the poverty circle. For instance, the following young Nigerians decided to venture into virgin areas because of circumstances they encountered; and have become shining examples of innovation and enterprise.
On a routine research work in 2016, Temie Giwa-Tubosun was horrified to learn that thousands of people in Nigeria die due to poor access to oxygen and blood. The issue was not unavailability but inefficient transportation system. So she harnessed the power of blockchain and artificial intelligence to create Lifebank, an app and motorcycle network that connects blood banks to hospitals that are in urgent need of blood and oxygen.
To scale quickly, LifeBank enrolled in the incubator program at CcHUB and also in Google for Start-ups Partner dedicated to accelerating the application of social capital and technology for economic prosperity. During their tenure at CcHUB, which focuses on smart infrastructure, healthtech, digital security and education, LifeBank signed up over 160 hospitals, made over $90,000 in revenue, and delivered over 9000 pints of blood to hospitals. Upon exit, LifeBank raised $200,000 from Growth Capital fund by CcHUB, EchoVC and Fola Laoye.
LifeBank uses a Google Maps API technology to deliver supply chain sensitive medical products such as blood, vaccines and oxygen. Doctors can now request a blood type and immediately access a map that tracks the journey of the delivery. The model has been so successful that today LifeBank delivers medical supplies to Hospitals in Africa using technology and a multi modal distribution platform. LifeBank has over 500 plus hospitals on its network in Nigeria and Kenya.
Another is the set of Onyeka Akumah, Akindele Phillips, Ifeanyi Anazodo, Tope Omotolani and Jimoh Maiyegun who set up what is Nigeria’s first Digital Agriculture Platform, FarmCrowdy. They focused on connecting farm sponsors with real farmers in order to increase food production while promoting youth participation in Agriculture. Their mission is to end poverty in Africa, one farmer at a time.
By focusing on empowering farmers with inputs, know-how and access to markets, FarmCrowdy has improved food security and access to food, thus increasing farmers’ income and improving the livelihoods of millions of farming communities and families while reducing hunger and poverty across West Africa.
Using digital financial technology it provides alternative financing channels for the locals to invest directly in agriculture. Also, in 2017 a Nigerian veterinary doctor, Abiodun Adereni, and his friends from the University of Ibadan went into a nearby community to enlighten pregnant women about diseases usually contracted through animals. He had no idea he was about to be exposed to an even bigger problem: preventable infant and maternal mortality. During the mission, he discovered that women in a particular community had absolutely no access to modern medicare and were patronising a local birth attendant who used unorthodox methods, a situation that contributed largely to the high maternal and infant mortality rates in the area.
Learning that these women never heard of nor immunised their new-borns was the big nudge he needed. He developed a solution tailored to the needs of these rural women which was able to deliver a reasonable quality of care during childbirth. That was how HelpMum2017, was born and Adereni became a social entrepreneur.
Before the COVID-19 pandemic, Adereni and his teamhad expanded their work beyond the birth kits to include training for traditional birth attendants (TBAs) and a proprietary vaccination tracking system to remind mothers to immunise their new-borns.
HelpMum distributes the HelpMum Clean Birth Kit,which contains 10 maternity pads, a sterilised delivery mat, two sterilised gloves, antiseptic soap, methylatedspirit, a pack of gauze, cotton wool, scalpel blade and disinfectants. To date, they have trained 1,700 birth attendants and more than 44,000 mothers are registered on the HelpMum vaccination tracking database, increasing immunisation outcomes for thousands of mothers in the process.
Adereni has been awarded the 2021 Waislitz Global Citizen COVID-19 Response Award for the incredible impact he was able to achieve through HelpMum. The 2021 Waislitz Global Citizen Awards recognise and support extraordinary individuals around the globe for their work to end extreme poverty.
Ola Brown, a medical doctor, helicopter pilot and the healthcare entrepreneur had a traumatic experience which pushed her to set up the first air ambulance service in West Africa, Flying Doctors Nigeria. Her mission was to bring trauma care to the most remote parts of Western Africa. She was motivated to start the company after her younger sister died in Nigeria due to lack of emergency medical evacuation service to takeher to a hospital.
A graduate of the University of York and member of the American Academy of Aesthetic Medicine, Ola’sstart-up story is remarkable. She was born in London and grew up in a foster home with her sister in the small seaside town of Lowestoft in the south-east of England. With a passion for medicine, she studied at the University of York and qualified as a medical doctor at the incredibly young age of 21.
The turning point in her life and career was when her sister who had a sickle cell condition died while on holiday in Nigeria. When the sister suffered a relapse, the family could not find an urgent means of taking her out when the capacities in Nigeria were inadequate. A search within the West African region also failed. And the sister died.
That experience pushed her studying evacuation models and air ambulance services in other developing countries. The result was the establishment of Flying Doctors Nigeria Limited. Her mission was to find an effective way of transporting critically ill patients to the right facility and to see the right doctor within the right time frame for that particular illness. Today Flying Doctors Nigeria is the first air ambulance service in West Africa to provide urgent helicopter, airplane ambulance and evacuation services for critically injured people. The World Economic Forum has recognised her considerable achievements and named her amongst its prestigious Young Global Leaders class of 2013, a group it describes as the best of today’s leaders.
Nigeria, just like most countries of the world, is indeeda tough place to live in and do business; but there are ample opportunities and enough potential for an innovative mind to key into and make remarkable success, just like the few examples highlighted above. It is worth stressing that those who make it through life are those who transform the challenges of their immediate environments into opportunities through innovative thinking and determination to face the odds.
The real story is not the challenges, but how we see them, how we react to them and whether we have the presence of mind to respond to them as opportunities for change, growth and new possibilities.
