[TheHeasman]

There's some pretty exciting stuff happening in the startup scene in Nigeria, most famously Zuckerberg's PR visit to Lagos a few months ago.

Konga (a Nigerian company) is trying to upset Joomla (a South African company) to become the Amazon of Africa, and co-working spaces are starting to sprout all over the place.

There are over a hundred different mobile payment solutions, not just in the micro-payment sector, but for traditional middle class spending.

There's also been a recent boost for Nigeria to get back into agriculture (~80% - 90% of produce is imported. Welcome to the Resource Curse), there are some entrepreneurs trying to approach this field with the advantages tech can bring to the African agriculture landscape.

[petercooper]

I'm seeing quite a few Nigerians becoming prominent in the JavaScript space as well. I didn't realize English was so prevalent there but having a pretty well developed economy and speaking English makes me think there's a lot of good stuff to come from Nigeria.

[Lordarminius]

> I'm seeing quite a few Nigerians becoming prominent in the JavaScript space as well. I didn't realize English was so prevalent there...

And Ruby as well. Don't overlook Ruby!

Anyway, English is the official language of Nigeria

[carlmungz]

A lot of African nations speak a decent to very good level of English. My home country of Zimbabwe has one of the highest literacy rates on the continent. I'm not sure about now but I know our education system used to mirror quite closely that of the UK in terms of curriculum, exam material etc.

[mekicha]

Nigerian techies are making great strides in the sector, overcoming challenges the environment and the system poses on them to shine among their peers. Great efforts have been made in the ecommerce and fintech sectors, but I will also like to mention Andela(https://andela.com/what-we-do/) which is doing a great job training and exposing African tech talents to the outside world. There are other platforms of that nature now, springing up across the nation.

[Lordarminius]

I'll be contentious here.

Andela's business model is to scout for young talent and train them as developers. They rent them out to companies in the developed world essentially exploiting the gap in wages that exists between the West and Africa. Not bad in the sense that it gives young people a job and exposure, but hardly an innovative idea and not a startup if you go by the common understanding of the term .

[oblio]

I'm joking a bit here, but I was expecting that Nigerian entrepreuneurial spirit to actually turn to the light side for a while now, so it's not a suprise that Nigeria is developing a thriving startup scene.

Before anyone says that I'm mean or anything, I'm Romanian. Our IT scene started with people pirating software and hacking servers left and right. We were banned from Paypal for quite a few years...

[frankzinger]

> Konga (a Nigerian company) is trying to upset Joomla (a South African company) to become the Amazon of Africa, and co-working spaces are starting to sprout all over the place.

I think you meant Jumia instead of Joomla, and it's also a Nigerian company. The South African company that seems to usually be mentioned in the same breath as these two and Amazon is Takealot.com which is a South African company.

[Lordarminius]

Jumia is not a Nigerian company. It was founded by a Nigerian and Ghanaian duo but acquired by Rocket Internet a while ago

[frankzinger]

Wikipedia says[1] Jumia is headquartered in Lagos and also:

  In 2012, Jumia Group was launched with the
  support of Rocket Internet, MTN, and Millicom.
  In March 2016, Jumia Group secured over €300M
  of funding from MTN, Rocket Internet, AXA,
  Goldman Sachs, Orange and CDC

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jumia

[Lordarminius]

Well wouldn't be the first time Wikipedia would be inaccurate. Tunde Kehinde and Raphael Afaedor started Jumia in 2012 and got bought out c.2014. It belongs to Rocket Internet now long with its partners. HQ is in Berlin, Germany. https://www.rocket-internet.com/companies/jumia

[frankzinger]

May be, but at least it seems they're aware of problems in this case:

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