When you read MultiChoice's annual report, you get a good understanding of the African consumer market.
For example, using MultiChoice's subscriber base as a proxy, one could estimate that the total addressable market for subscription-based D2C edtech services in Nigeria is ~5M. It's a decent proxy: DStv/GoTV is the most expensive recurrent monthly payment in the average Nigerian household. And despite the growth of digital payments in the country, renewing a DStv subscription is not exactly seamless. You need to remember to pay and really want to pay.

I've been thinking a lot about Nigeria's labour force and the future of work. It's a no-brainer, a cheap way to develop a highly skilled workforce for the long-term is by properly educating young kids. Once the foundation is solid, at least, they'll have a better shot at life. In this information age where many of the new jobs being created can flow anywhere globally, having a digitally literate and English-speaking population is a huge plus. Nigeria has this linguistic advantage but is slightly deficient in skillsets.

Any anti-trust effort that doesn't break up the app store monopoly of Apple and Google is incomplete. Allow smartphone users to decide what app store for a particular OS they want to download from. I imagine users will stick to the default, but having options is important. Apple already exerts way too much control over its devices, which is not bad. However, when it begins to make demands such as mandatory use of the App Store payment system (which collects 30% of an app's revenue), then Apple is crossing the line.

Import-substitution vs export-led growth are macro level stuff that focus on economic growth, wealth distribution and job creation. Entrepreneurs care less about this topic. They're looking for opportunities, and if export or import will do the trick, that's where they'll turn. I feel this is important because most of the people leading and having this macro level conversations may not be looking at the entrepreneurial environment.

Nigeria is not a capitalist society. An okada man buys a motorbike to transport people. He hustles morning and night moving people around Lagos, only for some dudes to stand at every junction and collect N500 from them for no reason.

This is worse than communism. Everybody in Nigeria complains about high oil prices. The government knows. But it won't fix refineries to handle domestic demand. 🤷‍♂️