More Wealth Will Be Created in Nigeria in Next 10 Years Than Was Created in Past Century

Tomorrow (Monday), I would deliver a big talk on Nigeria; my fees remain unchanged. I think the Cambrian Moment is just around the corner in Nigeria despite the paralysis we encounter daily. My optimism is anchored on the fact that Nigeria’s visioning problem is quadratic while the technology which is changing the world is exponential. When the subtractions are done, the outcome will remain exponential. The power of the convergence of technologies will be so huge that even a nation on stasis cannot get away from the impacts.

From the lagoons of Lagos to the mangrove of Calabar, from the beautiful plains of Sokoto to the plateau of Jos, all the way to the rainforest of Owerri, there is an entrepreneurial explosion in Nigeria, and it is unprecedented. Powered by microprocessors, mathematics, the beautiful science of numbers, is being transmuted by software, eating everything on its path.

And in the process, it is making a better sense of the nation, as entrepreneurs pursue the grand mission – fixing market frictions. Unlike the golden decade (the 1990s) of Nigerian entrepreneurship when amalgams of new generation banks were born, seeding a new age in the nation’s financial system, this moment cuts across sectors. From energy to healthcare, agriculture to logistics and even financial services, Nigeria is being redesigned by the combinatorial powers of software to arrange, re-arrange and make sense of atoms and bytes.

I believe that more wealth will be created in Nigeria in the next ten years than was created in the last 100 years. I believe that Nigerian entrepreneurs are emerging with capacities to transform their nation, and the moment will come without consideration of whatever Abuja does. As I noted, Nigeria will have GREAT private sector before we can experience better public institutions. Anything less will not work; that has been the way nations develop.

In the last 100 years, Nigeria has created a value of around $540 billion. In the next ten years, Nigeria will do far better. Super AI, quantum computing, sensors & IoT, blockchain, mobile telephony, synthetic biology, and global immersive connectivity, all in convergence, will unlock massive economic boom in the land.

After the talk, I will write a summary of the talk.

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