My thoughts on BarCamp Nigeria
On Saturday I was fortunate enough to attend BarCamp Nigeria 2009 in Lagos. Despite various concerns about going to Nigeria (more on that in another blog post) I must say I had a fantastic time and met some amazing people along the way.
Loy Okezie from Startups Nigeria has a really nice summary of the events that transpired over here and there’s another in depth look by Possicon over here as well so I won’t rehash what’s already been said.
What I will say is that this room, filled with about 80 Nigerians, was a true eye-opener for me. They all have university qualifications, all have an online startup (mostly ecommerce focused) and are all extremely well educated and experienced in the online space.
The big question in my mind has been that if a country like Nigeria is filled with such talented individuals in the largest Internet penetrated country in Africa (currently more than 10 million users) then why hasn’t Nigeria produced any world-class Internet startups yet?
This seemed to be a general question and a reason why the event took place in the first place and while there were a lot of theories flying around such as poor connectivity, electricity problems, Government support and regulations, etc., I was left with a strong sense of what’s been lacking – a community.
Up until BarCamp Nigeria most of these 80 people had never met in real-life before. Some have interacted online but for the most part each one has been left to his own devices and they’re all trying to grow their businesses with very little help along the way.
This is the core difference to say South Africa where we do have a pretty strong online community and while it’s often incestuous, contrived and filled with so-called rockstars this community does help drive products online. I can testify to this with my experiences with Afrigator – without the community we’d be nowhere.
South Africa’s online community, or early-adopters, may well be small in the greater scheme of world markets but it all has to start somewhere and in Nigeria’s case this hasn’t really begun yet. I could see that after BarCamp the guys were hungry for more and so they should be. The more they meet, interact, share ideas and create partnerships along the way the more we’ll see online innovation thriving out of Nigeria.
In addition to my observation I also had to do a presentation and to be honest I didn’t really feel qualified to do so. I am the first to admit I don’t know much about Nigeria so I decided to share my experiences of running an online startup in South Africa, shared some of our most detailed social media trends and finally launched our latest baby Gator – Gatorpeeps.
Have a look at the presentation below and let me know what your thoughts are!