Nigeria as a country despite it many problems seem to be thriving so well in the startup technology industry. I must say the entrepreneurship spirit among Nigerians is on the rise, many startups in areas of fashion, media, E-commerce and other small scale businesses are being launched.
Nigerians are now putting that touch of innovation to existing business
models and turning them to promising startups. Lagos has always been at the fore front of anything new that strikes gold in Nigeria, with other cities like Abuja, Port-Harcourt following closely behind.
Startups are borne out of the need to solve huge problems through innovative ways and in Nigeria there are lots of problems to be solved.
Despite the positive outlook for startups in cities like Lagos, Abuja and Port-Harcourt, Nigeria as a whole can’t feel the impact of the booming startup sector if other major cities like Ibadan, Kano etc don’t join the bandwagon. I must say that Ibadan as the biggest city in Nigeria in terms of land mass is booming with entrepreneurs that are beginning to wake up to solve problems and that huge opportunity in Ibadan has been recognized by major stakeholders like startup incubators and institutes who see Ibadan as the next big market to operate in. I was opportune to attend the six weeks pre incubation program last year at Wennovation hub a new startup hub that opened its office at Samonda, Ibadan last year. During the course of the program I got to meet wonderful entrepreneurs in Ibadan. They had the desire to solve Ibadan local problems through innovation.
One entrepreneur I met is Gbolahan of Lemz Delivery which currently operates on campus. Another individual I met is an experienced blogger entrepreneur in person of Mr
Paul Adepoju who runs IBPulse.com coupled with writing articles for various tech journals. These are all strong evidences that Ibadan has a lot of entrepreneurs that are willing to impact the society but as to any new venture there is a lot of challenges entrepreneurs face.
I must say Lagos based entrepreneurs have been able to use the power of collective will to solve several problems and overcome challenges, this collective will of theirs have been metaphorsed into a startup ecosystem like that of silicon valley. It is now dubbed Yabacon .
Ibadan entrepreneurs can borrow a leaf from their Lagos counterparts and come together to develop an ecosystem that would make easier for them to solve problems and challenges. In the second part of this article I shall be suggesting how an Ibadan startup ecosystem can be built and how the University of Ibadan entrepreneurs can key in.

Written by Kenkore

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