Vice President Yemi Osinbajo chronicles and celebrates the success stories of many young Nigerians in a speech at The Platform event of the Covenant Church, Iganmu, Lagos on May Day. He calls for the Nigerian bridge to connect ethnicities, dialects, religion, politics and generations and urges all Nigerians to contribute in profoundly transformative ways to changing our society by just doing our bit with excellence.
Nation-building in its classical sense refers to the formal and informal processes by which political leadership attempts to build a national identity, a national ethos, a national spirit, especially in ethnically and religiously diverse societies.
But it is my thesis that while government’s role is in casting the vision and creating the environment for nationhood, the real building of nations is done and best seen through the efforts and accomplishments of many outside of political leadership.
Men and women in business, agriculture, education, entertainment and the arts, who by just doing their business diligently, or serving faithfully or making sacrifices contribute to building the economies and social systems that ultimately build the nation.
This afternoon I will share some of the stories of young people many of whom I have met who by just doing their own work faithfully have contributed to building our economy, increased our national pride and confidence, created opportunities for others, as well as, inspired others to be the best they can be.
My point is that we can contribute in profoundly transformative ways to changing our society by just doing our bit with excellence.
Let me begin with the exceptional role of young Nigerians in innovation and technology . On the 17th of April, I did a tour of technology businesses and hubs in Lagos.
Paystack was my first stop, here is a safe payment system, which offers seamless money transactions between businesses and their customers. It was established in 2016 by two young Nigerian alumni of Babcock University; Sola Akinlade and Ezra Olubi. Within the first three months of 2018 they have processed over N3billion and generate about N40billion annually for Nigerian businesses.
The company is today powering over 9,000 businesses that did not exist two years ago, creating over 25,000 jobs. Paystack has over 50 employees all under 35 years old.
I was also at Andela , a multinational company specializing in training software developers, co-founded by Nigerian born Iyin Aboyeji, & others like Ian Carnevale, Jeremy Johnson and Christina Sass. The company estimates that in the next 10 years there will be 1.3million software development jobs and only 40,000 computer science graduates to fill them.
The company’s vision is to change the future of Nigeria and the African continent by developing talent and potential in Nigeria. Today, the company has 1000 employees world wide.
To enable that to happen government’s role is to mainstream technology startups to be able to benefit from the incentives of industry.
Kola Oyeneyin’s Venia Business/ Hub, is one of the earliest business hubs in Nigeria. Here, he has provided an effeicient environment for many startups. Most of who use each others skills and technology cooperatively.
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But the pioneer of Nigerian hubs is clearly the Co-Creation Hub or CC Hub founded in 2010 by two young social entrepreneurs, Bosun Tijani and Femi Longe. It provides a platform for using innovative technology to solve social problems. Nearly 50 Nigerian tech driven businesses were incubated in CC hub. Some include now famous and dominant players like Budgit, Wecyclers, Genni Games, Lifebank, Gomyway, Vacantboards, Traclist, Autobox, Stutern, Gritsystems and Mamalette.
But the pioneer of Nigerian hubs is clearly the Co-Creation Hub or CC Hub founded in 2010 by two young social entrepreneurs, Bosun Tijani and Femi Longe. It provides a platform for using innovative technology to solve social problems. Nearly 50 Nigerian tech driven businesses were incubated in CC hub. Some include now famous and dominant players like Budgit, Wecyclers, Genni Games, Lifebank, Gomyway, Vacantboards, Traclist, Autobox, Stutern, Gritsystems and Mamalette.
All these businesses were started by young men and women under thirty-five. One of the startups that came out of Venia Hub is Flutterwave founded” in May 2016 by Iyin Aboyeji and a team of engineers and former bankers. This is a payment technology company that has since processed $2billion worth of transactions on its payment platforms.
Tayo Oviosu‘s Paga, is in a class by itself. It is the leading mobile money transfer service in Nigeria. Paga has 11,000 agents across Nigeria and 6 million users. The company has a staff strength of 200. By facilitating payments for goods and services in this way, Paga has enabled several businesses and transactions.
In healthcare, many young people are solving huge problems with ease. Temi Giwa’s LifeBank and Ola Orekunrin’s Flying Doctors are two startups using technology and innovation to fill critical gaps in our healthcare industry. Lifebank works on the blood shortage problem in hospitals and save lives by speeding up blood donations and delivery to hospitals in Lagos. Their Lifebank app connects donors and hospitals and they ensure delivery of blood within 55 minutes.
Ola Orekunrin’s flying doctors, is the first air operated emergency medical service in West Africa. Her company provides air ambulances from a pool of 20 aircrafts and highly trained medical personnel for emergency evacuations.
The building of a self reliant nation must mean that the Nation should at least be able to feed itself. The response of many young Nigerians to the President’s call to “grow what we eat, eat what we grow,” and also diversify our economy is responsible for the phenomenal growth we have experienced in the past three years in the Agricultural sector.
The transformation in productivity and increase in investment that Nigerian talent and entrepreneurship have brought to agriculture is truly remarkable.
Farmcrowdy is a digital agriculture portal that crowdsources funding for farms across Nigeria. Founded in 2016 by Onyeka Akumah and three other young Nigerians, it operates like a mutual fund; pooling together money from multiple investors to establish farms and hire smallholder farmers to cultivate them, and then paying the investors dividends from the harvests from these farms. In December 2017 it succeeded in raising US$1m in funding. From November 2016 till date, over 3000 rural farmers have been able to keep a job, expand their farm operations and increase their revenue as a result of intervention by Farmcrowdy.
Such farmers include Sunday Ohimai who is a cassava farmer in Edo State, Esther a maize farmer from Dorowa-Babuje, just outside Jos, who recently improved her small acreage to a hectare and Uka Eje ‘s Thrive Agric in Abuja, who uses the same business model as Farmcrowdy also,with great success.
Four years before Farmcrowdy, in 2012, Yemisi Iranloye founded Psaltry, a cassava processing company in the rural town of Ado- Awaye. The starch it produces from the processed cassava is now used by several leading Nigerian food manufacturing companies, including Nestle, Unilever and Nigerian Breweries – as they increasingly replace imported starch with locally-sourced varieties. Psaltry was one of the companies that found growth opportunities in the midst of the recession, as companies cut down on imports and explored locally available substitution. In 2015 its revenues grew three-fold, and in 2016 it began building a second production line.
Abdul Fatah Sadiq Murtala, 25, is from Batagarawa local government in Katsina state. He founded Brio Green Agro Nigeria in 2016. It builds greenhouses and hydroponic systems. Hydroponics is a method of growing plants in the growth chambers without soil. Brio Green is producing Animal fodder feed in a climate-controlled facility year round using this technology,. Brio Green Agro supplies farms and ranches with fodder feed.
Kola Masha’s Babban Gona supports smallholder farmers in Northern Nigeria with financing, agricultural input, training and marketing. Masha is leveraging his experience in both the private and public sectors to deliver solutions that are changing the lives of thousands of struggling farmers like Umar Magaji, a 35-year-old farmer, who owns 1.5 hectares and, as of this year, leases another 2.5 hectares. He plans to lease a further 2 hectares next year.
Thanks to Babban Gona, he says, his yields are two to three times what they once were. He has refurbished his house, bought a motorcycle and enrolled his children in the village school. He is hopeful he can perform the pilgrimage to Saudi Arabia within the next two years.
Angel Adelaja, founder of Fresh Direct, has perfected an innovative approach to farming, in disused containers, without soil and with very little water. What she’s doing could very well be the start of an urban farming revolution in Nigeria.
Also while visiting the Workstation Hub in Victoria Island I had the pleasure of drinking Sola Ladoja’s fresh juice-‘Pick me up’ made by his start up Simply Green. Simply Green is a farm- to -bottle raw organic cold press juice company. Using organic and technologically harvested practices, meaning no chemicals or pesticides are used in growing their fruits and vegetables.
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