E-Business
Alerzo Believes they Can Build Another Lagos in Ibadan
By Sam Adeoye
At this moment in time, long, hot traffic jams are becoming a thing in Ibadan. The folks who live in that city are half-proud of this congestion because it sorts of presents them with a shared experience with the too-cool-for-school Lagosians. On the other hand, however, they desperately hate it because the whole point of Ibadan is that it’s less insane than Lagos — hustle-wise.
But my point with this article isn’t about the hustle or the bustle. It’s about the likelihood of replicating the vibrant tech ecosystem of Lagos in another Nigerian city. In this case, Ibadan.
You might think I’m only being delusional with this idea, but one brilliant start-up is suggesting that it is indeed possible to build a tech giant from over there. This start-up, ladies and gentlemen, is called Alerzo.
If you’ve never heard of Alerzo, consider yourself forgiven. I myself only knew of it last week when I had a conversation with the serial entrepreneur and start-up mentor known as Opeyemi Awoyemi. As you may recall, Mr Awoyemi has been a cofounder of some tech juggernauts, namely Jobberman, Whogohost, TalentQL, and Moneymie.
In the course of our chat, I asked Opeyemi this question: Now that Lagos has attained this reputation as Africa’s most vibrant start-up hub, is it possible to replicate the success of Lagos elsewhere within Nigeria?
As it turned out, this was a question he’d been giving a lot of thought. So, to me, he immediately said, Well, it depends. “Name a city and let’s talk about it.”
To which I said, “Ibadan.”
“Brilliant,” he said.
See, Ibadan has a lot going for it. One, it is West Africa’s largest city. It is also close to Lagos — just about 120km. Besides, one of Nigeria’s most active universities, as far as tech entrepreneurship is concerned, is only 75km away from Ibadan. I’m talking about the Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile Ife, aka OAU. Some of Nigeria’s best-funded tech companies were founded or cofounded by OAU alumni. Nomba (formerly Kudi), Farmcrowdy, 54Gene, SlimTrader, and PropertyPro are some of those companies.
Two, operating in Ibadan is considerably cheaper than it is Lagos. For instance, a four-room duplex in suburban Ibadan will rent for N1.8 million per year. Take a similar location in Lagos and the same property won’t cost you less than N3 million.
Then, there’s the new rail line that makes it easy to be headquartered in Ibadan and never miss ecosystem meetups and corporate meetings in Lagos. When the Lagos-Ibadan expressway is finally completed, it too should further shorten the distance between the two cities.
In the meantime, no other company is making better use of Ibadan’s remarkable standing than Alerzo.
Founded by Adewale Opaleye in 2018 to help small retailers stock their shops directly from manufacturers, Alerzo has raised more than $20 million in its seed and series A rounds. And it got some pretty savvy investors behind it, too. Big names such as the Africa-focused accelerator, Baobab Network; the Singapore-based Signal Hill; the London-based Nosara Capital; FJ Labs; and several family offices from Europe, Asia, and the US have put major money behind Alerzo, according to reporting by TechCrunch.
Opaleye, who is himself a native Ibadan man and the son of a mom-and-pop shop owner, has said his big idea for Alerzo came from watching his mother’s “many challenges”. The old lady, he said, ran two stores while raising four kids. So, Opaleye told TechCrunch, “I decided to start a business that uniquely catered to the needs of retailers just like her.”
While solving a problem close to home might sound pretty cool, the coolest part of this man’s idea is that it doesn’t even bother to recruit clients from Lagos, at least not yet. Yes, it does have a “Lagos Hub” in Victoria Island, but it has concentrated its business on Ibadan, Abeokuta, Ekiti and other towns like them in Southwest Nigeria. The company refers to these locations as Tier-2 to Tier-4 cities.
In just three years, Alerzo says its customer base has now expanded into about 100,000 small business in these towns. Through Alerzo, these retailers receive supplies from mega consumer goods manufacturers like Dangote, Nestlé, Procter & Gamble, and PZ Cussons.
Isn’t that something? Who would have thought that a billion-dollar tech-enabled logistics and FMCG supply company could spring from slow-paced Ibadan? I mean, for years, if you’d asked any of the thousands of young people relocating from Ibadan why they were hightailing it to Lagos, Nigeria’s most crowded metropolis, their answer was always direct and fast: “there’s no money in that town.”
Now, thankfully, it appears that things can be different. It’s just that for things to actually change, people would have to make them… change.
This is what Opeyemi Awoyemi was talking about. “Each State [of Nigeria] can look at the situation of the economy and decide what they want to be,” he said to me.
That’s indeed true. And pretty straightforward, too. There’s just so much that Lagos can do for Nigerian entrepreneurs. Because its resources are limited, competition for those resources will continue to drive up the cost of starting, and running, a business here. Which then presents an extraordinary opportunity to neighbouring States — for a start, Ogun and Oyo (which has Ibadan as its capital). These States can choose what role they’d like to play in this flourishing tech economy.
In this new era of WFH and remote employment, for example, all barriers to talent location are crashing down. Both TalentQL— the tech staffing recruitment portal, and uLesson — the on-demand tutoring company — have proven that, if you can set up Wi-Fi there, you can situate your software engineers and designers there. It doesn’t matter if it’s the pristine locality of Ile-Ife down in the south or the chilly hills of Jos, near the country’s centre.
And with Alerzo, the eye of the government should open to the truth about enabling environments for tech enterprise. Sometimes all it takes to encourage new ventures is an acceptance of new thinking. That and a transportation system that works, dedicated real estate layouts, and (or) tax breaks. When you make your place conducive for creators, and make sure they hear about it, and they’ll come.
Today, we talk about Nigerian start-ups being Delaware (USA) companies. There’s a reason Delaware became the go-to American state to register new corporations. As Mr Awoyemi said, Delaware decided what it wanted to be and it went straight for it.
Hopefully a Nigerian governor or one of his aides will read this article. Hopefully, it will start a conversation in their cabinet. Hopefully, they will do something life-changing with it.
President Bola Tinubu said that his administration has initiated a project to install fibre optic cables across the country, aimed at enhancing the socio-economic development of Nigeria.
His plans were contained in a speech he delivered at a joint session of the National Assembly in commemoration of Democracy Day on Thursday, June 12.
He said the fibre optic layout is part of other projects being embarked on.
“In addition, we have embarked on an ambitious project to lay fibre optic cables across the nation, a transformative step toward bridging the digital divide and fostering greater connectivity.
“This initiative promises not only to enhance the speed and reliability of internet access but also to revolutionise how businesses operate, how students learn, and how communities stay connected,” Tinubu stated.
He maintained that by extending this critical infrastructure, his government is empowering entrepreneurs, enabling digital education, and providing the tools for our youth to compete in a globalised world.
In a most recent report on Internet connectivity, The ICIR pointed out how Nigeria has faced setbacks in its deployment of fibre optic cables and needs a transformation.
The challenges revolve around vandalism, inadequate coordination between road construction and telecom infrastructure, and varying right-of-way (RoW) charges across states.
Among industry experts, these issues impact network outages, increase repair costs, and hinder broadband expansion efforts.
It has also further threatened the digital economy, leading to slower Internet speeds, dropped calls, and unreliable connectivity among others.
African startups raised more than $345 million across 65 deals in May, more than double the amount raised in the same period of last year, according to a report by Briter, a research and business intelligence firm.
The report disclosed that both the number of deals and participating companies declined, confirming a growing trend of fewer companies raising funds in larger sizes.
It said fintech attracted the highest share of funding in May, accounting for 34 percent of the total, while cleantech followed closely, driven by a debt deal from Sun King. The company raised $80 million (in local currency) to expand clean energy access in Nigeria.
“Equity remains the primary instrument in terms of total value. There’s no doubt about it; in fact, equity deals with disclosed amounts captured more than half of the total funding volume in May.
“However, debt financing is increasingly proving its weight. Although it accounted for only 8 percent of all deals, it represented 32 percent of the total funding, highlighting the typically larger size of debt transactions. With the rise of specialised vehicles targeting early-stage businesses, debt is becoming an increasingly important part of Africa’s innovation funding landscape,” it said.
Briter’s report added that grants continued to play a vital role in early-stage support, especially in the education technology (EdTech) sector. The Mastercard Foundation led the pack in grant activity, funding a new cohort of EdTech innovators in Nigeria and Kenya. Each selected startup is set to receive $100,000 in grant funding, in addition to mentorship and business development support.
Multilaterals also made a strong showing in May, it said. The Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency (MIGA), a World Bank Group member, issued a $179.6 million guarantee to CleanTech firm KOKO Networks. The support will help scale its clean energy solutions across Kenya.
“This deal not only demonstrates growing international confidence in African climate ventures but also signals a promising pathway for other asset-intensive startups in clean cooking, agriculture, and renewable energy,” the report said.
From a geographic perspective, Egypt emerged as the continent’s fundraising powerhouse for the month, contributing 51 percent of all funding raised. The country recorded 12 deals across equity, debt, and bond instruments. Notably, FinTech platform MNT-Halan raised $50 million through a bond issuance, further illustrating the diversification of capital-raising mechanisms in the region.
Outside Egypt, funding was distributed across Africa’s three other key markets, which are Egypt, Nigeria, and Kenya, with limited activity recorded in countries such as Ghana, Tunisia, Morocco, and Uganda, each registering between one and three deals.
In terms of exits, the African tech landscape continues to mature. Three companies—Baobab+, Qardy, and Shopa—were acquired in May, bringing the total number of exits this year to 22. This already surpasses last year’s count for the same period. Qardy was acquired by Catalyst Partners Middle East (CPME) in a disclosed deal valued at $23 million, the report added.
By Nancy Werteen
When you get anti-hacking advice, you’ve probably heard “Don’t use a simple password,” or “Don’t plug in that USB you found on the ground.”
But there’s one form of hacking that doesn’t always require a computer, and it costs businesses about 4.88 million dollars a year.
Modern hackers aren’t trying to get into your computer; they’re trying to get into you.
“They’ll try to learn about you a little bit, and they’ll try to use that information against you to try to get you to complete some action, maybe to send somebody some money,” said Kevin Moran, PhD, Assistant Professor of Computer Science, Cyber Security and Privacy Cluster, University of Central Florida.
IBM calls this human hacking, because it exploits human error instead of system error.
“With people just being busy and maybe not very carefully checking some of the emails or the phone calls that they get, can be something unfortunately that people can fall victim to,” said Moran.
Also known as social engineering, this often takes the form of phishing, where the hacker tries to “fish” the information out of you by impersonating family, friends, or even your bank.
There’s also baiting, where the hacker baits you with something of value. Remember the Nigerian prince scam?
That’s a famous example of baiting. There’s also pretexting, where the hacker will claim the victim has already been hacked, and that the hacker can fix it if you just send over your passwords. So, what can you do?
“Just as a rule of thumb, instead of clicking on links and emails, just go to the website yourself. And that will prevent, a lot of these types of attacks from happening,” explained Moran.
Phishing can take many forms.
Spear phishing targets people with access to confidential information, often to get access into an entire business, and whale phishing targets CEOs or political figures.
Search engine phishing is when hackers create fake websites promising services or goods you’ll never receive.
Angler phishing is when hackers create fake social media accounts impersonating famous people or companies.
Finally, vishing and smishing is phishing done through phone calls and texts respectively.
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