Oga, you're very right. The Nigerian startup scene is flooded with "nonsense" problems... from endless delivery apps to beauty filters to numerous copy fintechs for "the already-banked," while the real crises abound.
Insecurity continues to kill livelihoods, with hunger driving crime & desperation.
20M kids remain out of school, and our health care system is broken, costing lives.
Unreliable power continues to cripple production, while transportation eats up productive hours and money daily - read someone from the reply talk about Uber/Bolt... smh.
The real questions we should be asking are:
Why are there so few founders attacking these fundamentals?
Why do so many chasing shiny, urban, low-friction plays?
Because, like every otherthing Nigeria, the incentives are misaligned:
1. Foreign VC chases fast, scalable, low-regulation returns (fintech wins, infrastructure loses), and they really don't care.
2. The local VC that are supposed to bring the balance are all opportunists too, towing the line of the foreign VCs - I'm fishing funds currently and documenting all the shockers I've seen so far.
3. Paying customers are mostly urban middle-class → convenience > impact
4. Solving real pain means regulatory hell, long timelines, and high risk of harassment.
5. The ecosystem celebrates big rounds & "unicorns," not quiet grinders fixing villages or the basics.
Technology isn't code, buzzwords, or polished pitch-decks. It's a better way to solve real problems.
"If your solution doesn't meaningfully touch security, education, healthcare, food systems, jobs, cost of living, or transportation," for me, it is either a "pick-me" approach or simple Nigerian copycat mentality.
We don't need more cool startups, but useful ones that hit the root causes.
Some are quietly trying: LifeBank (health logistics), ColdHubs (food preservation), Hello Tractor (agri-mech), Releaf (processing), and a few low-key security plays. But they're exceptions.
We need a reset:
• Investors: fund the "boring but necessary" (even if exits take 7–10 years)
• Government: real incentives for impact-first startups
• Founders: Ask early, "Does this actually address a basic problem? Does it make Nigeria better, or is it just more convenient for the comfortable?"
• Media: celebrate the grinders as much as the round-raisers.
Back to basics, indeed. Solve what hurts most.
Create communities like what the hikersclub is doing with random topics/debates, but where deeper reflections on ventures are held and discussed.
