Man, it must be hard to run an online business from Nigeria. Huge stigma and lots of the internet ip-ban it, won't ship equipment and gear there, banned or at least heavily scrutinized on many banking/payment sites... must be a hassle to deal with.
Nigeria has 175m people, GDP grew 6.5 pct since last year. They have huge amounts of oil money and they are the financial hub of west Africa. Large middle class, skyscrapers, online shopping, massive film industry.
One day soon you will probably be trying to optimize your on boarding of Nigerian middle class users.
and 419 scams are an old tradition dating back to the 60s when they would write letters. So don't knock traditional culture ;)
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...
Nigeria gets a bad rap, because of all the scammers being the most visible thing people in the West know about the country. With regards to this Tomato lawsuit, this kind of BS takes place in the West too - I would make the case that the UK is similar, because of their libel laws. It probably didn't even occur to you that the UK is backward in some way compared to the US (it is). There's many ways the US is backwards compared to the UK as well, and even moreso the EU.
A big part of what is perceived as "backwards" are long term effects of British colonial rule, from which they are still recovering. There's a lot of ink spilt studying how the systems which colonial powers set up get left behind, which keeps in place a stratified society with the goal of enriching all the people in positions of power (read: corruption). That takes time to overcome. This is as true for Latin America as it is for Nigeria, India and all the rest.
It hasn't escaped my notice there's a lot of Nigerians in tech. (I work with a lot) I'm left with the impression that the language left behind (English) in former British colonies has given these nations an edge, because the de facto language of global business is English now. That's of course why there's so many Indians in tech as well. These nations see everyone trying to get as educated as possible, as quickly as possible to catch up with the highly industrialized West.
In a couple hundred years, Nigeria may look more like Wakanda, who knows?
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