Building Africa’s Next Generation Of Global Digital Companies From Nigeria

By Bola Ahmed Tinubu

Nigeria has the talent, enterprise, and ambition to build companies that can compete anywhere in the world. Our responsibility as a government is to ensure that Nigerians do not have to leave Nigeria or rely on other jurisdictions to realise that potential.

For too long, some of our most promising young entrepreneurs have felt compelled to establish their companies and intellectual property abroad to access global capital and markets. I do not accept that this must remain the case.

I want the next generation of African technology, finance and service companies to be built, headquartered and scaled to the world from Nigerian soil.

In the Renewed Hope Agenda, I promised Nigerians a digital economy that creates opportunities at home and puts our young people at its centre. That thinking led me to establish and chair the Presidential Steering Committee on Digital Free Zones. I directed the Committee to take our free zone framework, created more than three decades ago for a very different economy, and modernise it for the digital economy we are building today.

That work is now taking shape.

Nigeria’s first Digital Free Zone, Itana, is now licensed by the Nigeria Export Processing Zones Authority (NEPZA) and already provides a platform for global and pan-African digital and service businesses to establish and operate in Nigeria.

Companies are showing interest, and the Africa Finance Corporation @africa_finance is backing the $500 million Itana Innovation project, Lagos, which will bring together the ideal policy environment. This innovation campus will serve as a home for startups to build at scale, access capital, and access the ecosystem services needed to help African startups grow and retain more of the value they create on the continent.

Our ambition is bigger than technology parks.

We are positioning Nigeria to become Africa’s premier destination for digital innovation, technology investment, high-value services and knowledge industries, in the way Delaware and Silicon Valley serve companies in the United States.

We want African companies to be incorporated in Nigeria, financed here and governed from here, while serving markets across Africa and the world.

I want a young Nigerian in Kano, Enugu, Warri, Minna, Maiduguri or Ibadan to be able to work for a global company without leaving home, and I want our founders to raise capital globally while their companies and intellectual property remain in Nigeria.

When these businesses grow here, they employ Nigerians, use Nigerian professional services and retain more of the value they create in our economy.

The Committee’s work continues across regulation, taxation, banking, immigration, arbitration and the digitisation of government processes within our free zones.

I have further directed the Minister of Trade and Investment, Dr Jumoke Oduwole @joduwole who is also the Vice-Chairman and Implementation Coordinator, to work with Itana and the Presidential Steering Committee to develop a roadmap in preparation for a full launch within 180 days.

Africa’s digital economy will be enormous. As more trade under the African Continental Free Trade Area moves online, Nigeria has an opportunity to become the home from which digital companies are built and scaled.

Nigeria has the talent and the market to reshape Africa’s place in the global technology and digital economy value chain. 

This is what our Renewed Hope commitment to a digital economy looks like in practice, and this is how we transform reform into opportunities.

We made a promise to Nigerians. We are keeping it.

Bola Ahmed Tinubu, GCFR

President