Business

TechNigeria: A weekly digest of what went down in Nigeria’s tech space

Published

3 years ago

February 20, 2021

The week can best be described as the big comeback week with how Jeff Bezos reclaimed the title of world’s richest man, displacing rival and tech titan, Elon Musk, to end his brief hold-on to the title.

In Nigeria, business continued for tech players, with the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) announcing that ICT’s contribution to Nigeria’s real GDP rose to 15%.

In addition, we recorded the news of Kwaba, a Nigerian startup helping low income earners split annual house rent into small instalments.
Below is a digest for the week, highlighting the major tech build up.

Kwaba house rentage plan

Kwaba, during the week, introduced to press its offering, where, as a Fintech player, it looks to help low and middle income earners split their annual rent into simple monthly instalments.

The startup was founded in 2019, but did not launch until January 2020.
Aside offering rental payment services, the startup also provides credit facilities for the purchase of properties.

TIME’s 100 most influential people

Nigeria’s Olugbenga Agboola, cofounder of Flutterwave, was featured on TIME’s 100 most influential people list.

The Fintech player was rated for leading one of Africa’s major payment gateway companies as an industry engineer and product development specialist.

His reign as CEO in Flutterwave goes on to add to his already rich career portfolio, having worked for big corporations such as Google, PayPal, Standard Bank, among others.

Opportunity window from Japan

A Japanese VC, Uncovered Fund, has opened another opportunity window for Africans, which Nigerian tech players can benefit from.
The Japanese firm launched the opportunity window with a targeted size of US$15 million.
According to the venture, its target focuses on early and seed stage startups in Africa, explaining that the scheme is designed to support the development of new businesses in the “uncovered” world.

15% contribution from ICT

Despite the resultant effect of the pandemic, the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) has revealed that ICT contributed 15% to Nigeria’s Real GDP.

Commendable for a sector as the ICT, which has largely been neglected for a long time without much investment from the government.

The report revealed that the sector had a total increase in growth of 12.9% after seeing positive growth in all quarters as reverse to the books of oil refining and air transport that slipped by -62.2% and -36.9% respectively.
Remarks

These stories, and many others, made headlines during the week. Join us next week for another edition of TechNigeria.

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