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I spent several weeks in Lagos at the beginning of this year for my work at stellar.org; I was struck by how excited all of the developers were to talk with someone who works in silicon valley. I'm a nobody, but the guys at iDEA Hub, CC Hub, and Andela rolled out the red carpet for me and it seemed like they hung on my every word with regards to tech.

I met many smart, driven entrepreneurs while there, but as a new friend said while I was there: "It's tough to be Nigerian on the internet". The number of obstacles that a Nigerian web developer has to fight through even for something so trivial to us like getting a webhosting account, is shameful.

Additionaly, it's tough for the Nigerian developer community to get taken seriously by the outside world... I had several stories related to me about tech companies promising then balking at trips into Nigeria, in one specific instance for totally bullshit reasons. Google apparently does a great job with the developer relations in Lagos, but it seemed like that was about it.

I hope that in the future we get to really see what the Nigerian entrepreneurial community can really do; If they can chip away at their road blocks I think someone from there will eventually build something really special for all of us.

I also hope I get to go back and work with their community some more.