Samuel Anyaele regularly tells his students that everything they need to write a software code can be found on their mobile phones.
He writes HTML codes on his phone, which are displayed on a monitor in a tiny classroom in Lagos, Nigeria’s megacity. His students look up at the big screen and down at the smaller one in their hands.
“We are effectively giving them a tool to work whether they have a PC (personal computer) or not,” said Anyaele, who runs three-month courses.
Coding skills are seen by many young Nigerians as a way to earn money from clients based anywhere in the world. Job opportunities are scarce in Nigeria, a country of 200 million inhabitants where two-thirds of people aged 15 to 34 are either unemployed or under-employed.
Anyaele, who runs free classes for beginners and charges $210 for courses aimed at professionals, works for one of many Lagos companies offering to teach aspiring software developers. The most widely known is Andela, a software training company, that has received funding from Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s foundation.
“If you don’t find jobs locally, there are international jobs,” said Joseph Agunbiade, founder of Univelcity, which also provides training.
Last year’s $200 million acquisition of Nigerian fintech firm Paystack by Silicon Valley giant Stripe, and the $1 billion valuation of local payments company Flutterwave, have shown what is possible.
Chinonso Okafor, 20, one of Anyaele’s students who is now building websites for clients, said using his phone means he can continue working after his laptop runs down when the electricity cuts out.
But some people struggle to see phones as anything more than an entertainment device, said Anyaele, who identified that perception as a mental block that many fail to overcome.
“They’re assuming it’s something childish, or something that isn’t professional,” he said.
By Angela Ukomadu
Wednesday, May 26, 2021
Startup teaches young Nigerians to code on smartphones
Friday, May 21, 2021
HBO explores Nigerian human rights in “The Legend of the Underground”
HBO is set to debut The Legend of the Underground, a 90-minute feature doc that examines systemic discrimination in Nigeria.
In 2013, Nigeria enacted the anti-LGBTQ law, the Same-Sex Marriage (Prohibition) Bill (SSMPA), and in the years since, it has been used to harass, imprison, extort and commit violence against anyone seen as not conforming to Nigerian societal and cultural norms.
In August of 2018, 57 men who attended a party in Lagos, Nigeria were rounded up by police, arrested and forced in front of news cameras. One of the men, James, defiantly spoke out against the government while still in handcuffs.
Meanwhile in New York, Micheal Ighodaro is part of the Nigerian diaspora and an LGBTQ rights and HIV prevention advocate. As he works in advocacy for the people and communities he left behind, James and his circle of friends struggle with the option to seek security abroad, or to stay and fight a discriminatory system.
The Legend of the Underground is directed by Nneka Onuorah and Giselle Bailey, and executive produced by Mike Jackson, John Legend, Ty Stiklorius and Austyn Biggers of Get Lifted Film Co. For HBO the senior producer is Sara Rodriguez; with executive producers Nancy Abraham, Lisa Heller.
By Kim Izzo
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Nigeria's military investigates reports of Boko Haram leader's death
Nigeria's military is investigating reports that the leader of militant Islamist group Boko Haram may have been killed or seriously injured following clashes with rival jihadists, an army spokesman said on Friday.
Abubakar Shekau has been the figurehead of an Islamist insurgency that has since 2009 killed more than 30,000 people, forced around 2 million people to flee their homes and spawned one of the world's worst humanitarian crises.
A number of reports published on Thursday in Nigeria media, citing intelligence sources, said Shekau was seriously hurt or killed after his insurgents clashed with members of Islamic State in West Africa Province (ISWAP), which broke away from his group in 2016.
Reuters has been unable to independently verify the claims.
A Nigerian Army spokesman, Mohammed Yerima, said the military were investigating.
"It's a rumour. We are investigating it. We can only say something if we confirm it," said the spokesman.
Shekau was said to have been killed on several occasions over the last 12 years, including in announcements by the military, only to later appear in a video post.
ISWAP was previously part of Shekau's militant Islamist group before its split five years ago, pledging allegiance to Islamic State. The schism was due to religious ideological disagreements over the killing of civilians by Boko Haram, to which ISWAP objected.
Shekau's death, if confirmed, could potentially end of fighting between the two groups, enabling either to absorb the others' fighters and consolidate its hold on northeast Nigerian territory.
Leader of Boko Haram Abubakar Shekau mocks Nigeria army
Boko Haram leader Abubakar Shekau apparently alive - releases new video
Wednesday, May 19, 2021
Nigerian Passport Nigeria Immigration suspends accepting new applications for passports
Nigeria will not accept new applications for international passports until old applications are attended to, the Nigeria Immigration Service (NIS) has said.
While addressing journalists in Abuja on Tuesday, the comptroller of NIS, Mohammad Babandede, said the agency would commence the accepting new applications from June 1.
Mr Babandede said the directive was given by the Minister of Interior, Rauf Aregbesola.
“The process of receiving and processing all fresh passport applications nationwide is suspended till 1st June 2021, when the new passport regime would have taken effect,” he said.
“The suspension of receiving and processing of fresh passport applications is to allow for clearance of every passport application that was received before 17th of May 2021.”
He said all payment portals have been closed till June 1 and a task force will be sent to passport offices to clear the backlog.
Mr Babandede said deputy comptrollers have been deployed to all passport centres to monitor the process and ensure the directive is followed.
New applications will be granted in six weeks from the time of application, he said.
Mr Babandede decorated senior officers of the NIS who were recently promoted.
By Oge Udegbunam
Nigeria is quietly rewriting fintech’s rulebook
It all started with a tweet on New Year’s Day, 2016. Joshua Chibueze, a computer scientist and entrepreneur based in Lagos, Nigeria, floated the idea of digitising the kolo, a wooden box similar to a piggy bank, used in many Nigerian homes to save money.
Chibueze had heard that, with enough persistence, people could set aside significant sums, but when he started using a kolo himself he realised how easy it was for upwardly mobile young Nigerians like him to forget – or simply lack the discipline – to save every single day. Worse: as Nigeria’s economy was getting increasingly cashless, an old box did not sound like an effective saving device – and was a security liability.
Hence the idea of a digital kolo. Odunayo Eweniyi, a fellow entrepreneur (and Twitter friend of Chibueze’s), was the first to reply to his tweet on the subject. “The conversation progressed from digitising to automating the kolo,” Eweniyi recalls. The pair teamed up and – alongside a third co-founder, Somto Ifezue – built an online savings platform to help medium-to-low-earning Nigerians save small amounts daily, weekly, monthly, or annually. Launched as PiggyBank.ng in February 2016, today it is known as PiggyVest.
Marketing solely on social media for the first couple of years, PiggyVest was able to help Nigerians sign up easily using their smartphones, automate savings and earn interest, with rates between six and ten per cent. By the end of 2018, PiggyVest had helped over 53,000 users save close to a billion Nigerian naira (£2,000,000).
In 2015, two per cent of Nigerians controlled 90 per cent of banks’ total deposits, according to the Nigeria Deposit Insurance Corporation, a government-backed financial agency. One year later, Nigerian financial inclusion advocacy group EFInA found that only 36.9 million adult Nigerians – out of a population of over 195 million – had access to a bank account. Nigeria was grappling with a huge unbanked population and PiggyVest set to cater to this demographic blending technology and traditional saving methods.
“The thing about the unbanked is that they’re actually banked, they’re just not formally banked,” says Eweniyi. “Banking is necessary to them but the banks themselves haven’t proven to be.” She believes that Nigeria’s financial exclusion problem will be solved by working with people rather than offering top-down solutions.
That is why Piggy`vest has decided to borrow well-tested models from Africa’s financial history: after its debut as a digital kolo, in May 2018 the company launched a new feature – called Smart Target – modelled af
ter the traditional saving practice of ajo. First recorded in the 19th century, but rumoured to have been around for longer among the Yoruba ethnic group, an ajo consists of a group of colleagues, friends, or religious peers, each contributing the same amount of money at an agreed frequency to hit a financial target. At the end of each savings cycle – typically, a month – one member of the group receives the entire saving pot; the ajo goes on until everyone has received their payout.
“My mum belonged to at least four ajo groups, one of which was at the university where she was a lecturer,” says Eweniyi, whose parents were both academics. “My parents relied on ajo to pay their way through our education and this is how most middle-class families I know survived.”
PiggyVest’s take on ajo, however, tweaks the tradition to fit the times: Smart Target lets people save towards a common goal together as an online community, but unlike ajo, users are in control of how much they contribute and where the payout goes.
PiggyVest is just one of a new breed of Nigerian fintech companies. “Companies like PiggyVest have moved to push savings and budgeting consciousness, by gamifying the process and including a reward system for users who follow through,” says Modupe Odele, a lawyer and startup consultant based in Washington, DC. She predicts that in the near future, Nigeria’s fintech industry will start broadening its scope.
“We have payments, we have savings and these are great, but there's still a lot of financial technology that is ripe for exploration,” Odele says.
By Kiki Mordi
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