The first form of formalized apprenticeship training I had seen in Nigeria was with my classmates who were engineering students mandated to do industrial training and provide reports afterward as part of SIWES. Even in the 80s, they struggled to find suitable placements. Unsurprisingly, 100% of my engineering classmates at that time ended up in banking and other professions like information technology. I remember one of them, an engineer at Xerox, coming to meet us at school once during our MBA and just returning to resign. This was early 90s

I caught up with my cofounder in Australia this morning and discussed current tech trends. As he shared his experience of being acquired by a global tech company, I realized that if shared publicly, the conversation could have been better than 99% of tech podcasts today. We also discussed his daughter, who is just entering the job market as a developer, and the challenges she faces thanks to the current AI wave. His son, who is still in school and learning from those challenges, is doing things differently. I am also priming my kids for it too.

One thing that will never be discussed or exposed are the cults behind politics and power in Nigeria. The struggles we see outside are far less than the fights unseen. My grandfather was almost a victim of those cults and was caught in between them. He was lucky to survive. All political assassinations are sanctioned by these unseen cults. Most are to serve as a deterrence. There was a case where the man was shot many times and the car was burnt s while those who killed him waited to be sure that the job was completed. It was a message.

When I was living in Nigeria, I was so ignorant.
This guy used to go drinking with us and spent a fortune every night. We were trying to find out what he did for a living and discovered he was running an outsourcing company. Outsourcing, we asked. Was it that profitable?? Yes!!! It was profitable because it was ALWAYS an insider deal, and he was a front for the bosses. He didn't have one company alone but a group. Each subsidiary was an SPV with the insiders. I didn't grok this until I was on his side of similar deals and had a gun to my head.

I have always told people that the disposable cash thing we keep using to judge our markets is a myth. It is more about choice, wants, needs, options, and availability of credit.

I could afford another sofa but I decided to fix the old one. Why? Because it is my choice. Now, if I had been given the option of trading it in for a new one and paying the difference over time, my choices would have been vastly different. Plus, there was an upholstery guy recommended to me who had worked on my car and I saw that he was great. Those were my choices.

“Sell at a premium and don’t sell at desperation” - @mcuban

There is nothing that puts people off a service business more than desperation.

A lady came to our estate looking for houses to clean. I needed a cleaner but I didn’t hire her. I preferred one who was recommended. It is also the reason why people end up being poorly paid but remain at their jobs. Confidence is much more scarce than we imagine.

My problem is that all the desperate people I have helped have also turned out to also be terrible people. Maybe I’ve been unlucky, I don’t know.

My greatest lesson learned from watching SharkTank for over a decade is that people can still win in seemingly crowded spaces with uniqueness and simplicity. Scrub Daddy is a perfect example of this. It applies to everything also in Africa. Many never try to be different. I see people copying a strategy and branding or marketing exercise simply because it worked for others. They want to do exactly the same thing and in the end waste a lot of money while being drowned in the noise. I have been steering a founder away from influencers for months.

Breakups are painful, and heartbreak can do things to your self-esteem that you never thought were possible. Most people will go through one major breakup, and I tell younger people to prepare for it with some ground rules: 🧵 Rule 1. NEVER compare yourself to other people.

Comparison is not only the thief of joy but the root of all inferiority complexes. Every human being has unique advantages. Some find them in each other to complement themselves, while others remain searching. It is not you.

Alhaji is the most effective businessman Nigeria has ever seen. I laugh when people talk about his monopoly advantages in the past but it is the nature of all businesses to seek monopoly. You are not working to feed your competitors. That said, I think he pressed on too far. If your success creates so much imbalance in a system, there will always be efforts to counter your progress unless you have absolute control. This is what worries me about his new adversaries. Alhaji never had full control, he played all sides as businessman and avoided politics

I dated for many years and was a chronic bachelor before I finally understood the most important rule in relationships—they are between two people, not a crowd. I had always let others interfere, and it was the same on the other side. I left an 8-year relationship because of it. I had a girlfriend who would tell everything to her friend, who would, in turn, discuss it with her boyfriend, who was my friend. That was how I heard she was unhappy that I didn't have my place and was still living at my uncle's mansion in Lagos. I felt betrayed and unhappy.

Years before our saviors from the Valleys of Silicon and views of mountains came to bestow upon us the gifts of unicorns, we used to humbly do pilgrimage to their land to learn and also to see if we could get them to part with some coin. We suffered indignities yet persevered. I cannot forget a couple of humiliating encounters that made me determined more than ever to get that coin. I was told to my face by Naval at a Google I/O event (video still exists online) that a fish cannot survive in the desert. Meaning that our land was barren and fruitless.

A friend died of stomach cancer. Long before then, he would fart uncontrollably in front of me, and I saw nothing wrong with it. I guess that he had the problem a decade before but ignored it. Why? No proper checkups or, worst case, wrong diagnosis, as in the case of Gani. Another friend who was the exact age was being poisoned slowly by his wife. He investigated his frequent state of malaise until he realized what was happening and then had a very public divorce. He initially thought it was his drinking and stopped drinking. He did tests abroad.

Last year at Ashford, I witnessed a professional cleaner at work at my sister-in-laws’ place. She comes to clean once a month (the 15th) and we were notified a couple of days ahead to make plans not to be at home so she can work properly. I had a meeting, so we overlapped an hour First thing that impressed me was that this lady came in a brand new car. She also came with her cleaning equipment which she unloaded. Her services were not cheap and she had work all month because she was a professional. We chatted briefly as she had tea before she commenced.

People are focusing on the wrong things in the Moniepoint report. Firstly, I'm very happy that they did it, and secondly, it confirms all I've been saying about cooperatives and informal credit. Profit is nuanced. Most of them keep their value in goods, and they also lend.

Cooperatives are the dominant form of business organization and are more effective than banks or governments. This is true not just in Nigeria but in almost every African country. Cooperatives are how most people manage risk. They are also the best form of social insurance.

A friend asked me recently what I had learned most from all my years seeing us try to create impact with tech and innovation in Africa. My answer was simple. We haven’t learned anything because we keep looking for winners instead of understanding why failure is prevalent. The story about the image above is below in case anyone wants to learn more. It is a fascinating story about survivorship bias. Those who learn from those mistakes end up building more resilient and sustainable systems and ecosystems.

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivors…

We were promised a prosperous African middle class with cars but all we got were remittances, lending apps, airtime sales, savings apps, and POS agents.

Has African tech failed to live up to the promise of a rising Africa? How has tech created prosperity for those outside tech? I was writing an article that referenced older articles I had written on @GuardianNigeria but discovered that all my old articles had disappeared. I guess they couldn’t afford to pay for hosting in the cloud anymore. We can’t even provide enough local infrastructure for our tech.

Why African remains backward can be traced to two simple things. Lack of consistency and lack of quality. It cascades everywhere from private sector to governance. It hit home very hard this week with two events in my family. My wife’s birthday and my son’s graduation. My son is able to get the quality of primary education that is higher than what is currently provided by the government because a Syrian family decided to set up a school as a business many decades ago and have been consistent at it. Just a school but it is very profitable.

Can Nigeria ever industrialize? Had dinner with a Nigerian financier who thinks that hopes are bleak for the next couple of decades. I share the same perspective and wish I could be proven wrong. Something happened in December that made me realize that we won't make it yet. Roads are so bad that moving products from Lagos to PH is now seriously a barge business. It reminds me of the time America had no railroads and why the Panama canal was built to let people cross over to the Pacific side. We don't have railroad builders, only rent seekers.

What nobody ever tells you once you before you turn 40 is that your chances of making money through sheer effort and grit diminishes remarkably. You depend more on the effort and grit you were once known for and the relationships you had built before that time. NEVER waste your youth. Make friends and get alliances. All the posturing and bad talking I see people do today is sad. As a young person, your job is to build a reputation and collect allies. You should take no sides and give everyone a benefit of the doubt.

There are many people with money trapped in Nigeria, and they don't care about FX and Crypto because they can't even travel anywhere without setting off alarm bells. They are regularly scammed by their bankers and real estate agents, but they remain there. Why? Cashflow. So many individuals have unbelievable cash flow in Naira, but it isn't from things that they would want to make public. Shady contracts, extortion, blackmail—these are largely criminal or borderline criminal activities. They don't like to giving explanations; they just buy stuff.

A friend’s dad was a civil servant who died and left over 30 houses. They have all been sold and the kids no longer live in Benin City except for the eldest in their ancestral home. They are all hustling like us today. It made me see the ephemeral nature of value and existence. In a way, I am happy when I get financial setbacks as they help me recalibrate to know what is more important. Losing all my crypto made me stop trading and spending more time with my family. I didn’t realize how bad it was until my daughter mentioned something.