Nigeria's tech ecosystem needs to be fairer

Apr 22, 2022|Nnamdi Ifechi-fred

One thing you might notice from our articles at Stears is that we are bullish about the technology ecosystem in Nigeria (tech ecosystem). But this is just not blind excitement, the data backs this up. In this article, we showed how the Telecommunications and Information Services sector (the best proxy for the ecosystem in Nigeria) is growing faster than the overall economy, attracting new investments and creating high-paying jobs for Nigerians.

This excitement has also led us to look at other important issues, such as startup valuations and the question of who is building Nigeria’s startups. The article on the identity of those building Nigeria’s startups has some interesting insights that point to the existence of inequality in the ecosystem. The tech ecosystem with its potential to provide significant financial returns to founders and investors can widen existing inequality.

Key takeaways:

The Matthew effect refers to the tendency for initial advantages to accumulate over time and lead to subsequent advantages. In the tech ecosystem, this looks like people with favourable educational and economic backgrounds attracting more capital.
It is important for us to pay attention to the Mattew effect in the tech ecosystem because it can lead to greater inequality and exclude certain groups of people from attracting capital to grow their startups.
We can mitigate the effect through initiatives that increase the opportunities available to the excluded people