The arrival of Mark Zuckerberg in Lagos, Nigeria on August 30, 2016 caused quite a stir. A picture of boyish Zuckerberg in sports wears jogging on Ikoyi Bridge with some tech entrepreneurs created a wave of excitement that swept through Nigeria’s social media stratosphere like a hurricane. The country’s disproportionate youth population was in understandable frenzy. Nigeria had seemed an unlikely place for Zukerberg. Although Bill Gates had visited a few times before, but Mark was special.
Mark’s appeal is stronger than youthful looks, though. Out of 3.07bn Facebook users worldwide, Nigeria has 41.6m of them, accounting for 18.5 percent of global users of the app. Similarly, 51m Nigerians are on WhatsApp while 12.4m are on Instagram. This indicates that over 100m people use Mark’s apps in Nigeria. He was only 32 when he visited.
In 2021 alone, the ICT sector, driven largely by the startup hubs contributed 15 percent of the Nigerian GDP. The Nigerian startup hubs raised over $1.8bn funds which accounted for 35 percent of the startup funds pooled together on the continent for that year. That is impact. They have also impacted on the job market, creating thousands of jobs within their short period of existence.