Nigeria's Businesses Struggle to Stay Afloat
Tomi Ayorinde and his team at MobileForms are collecting data on the prices of tomatoes, fish, cooking oil and fresh cow meat in an open area food market in the Nigerian capital of Abuja.
The prices are entered as data and digitally compiled on mobile phones before they are analyzed.
“We’re trying to solve two problems. No reliable data in Nigeria for businesses to make plans, and we have unemployed youth who are viable people who want to work,” says Ayorinde. “We realized that if we adopt a mobile phone strategy to gather reliable data, we can solve these problems once and for all.”
Ayorinde, a 30-year-old IT developer, is the co-founder of MobileForms. He conceived the business idea last year and employs young people to go into the field to conduct polls and surveys.
Nigeria is facing its worst recession in two decades. Inflation began rising in the first quarter of 2016. Now, it has reached 18 percent. The local currency has been devalued. The economy is still shrinking.
Ayorinde started MobileForms in September when the recession had already begun taking a toll on businesses. He says it was probably a crazy idea to start when he did.
Some startups have found ways to profit from the recession. PayConnect is one of them.
Company co-founder Victor Jibro used his personal savings to offer microloans to applicants.
“As more and more people don’t have enough money, they’ll definitely look for other alternatives and PayConnect happened to be that alternative. So the recession boosted our business”, Jibro says.
WeSabi is a service that connects users to a pool of reliable handymen and artisans. Users visit the WeSabi website to find a trade laborer, perhaps a carpenter or a plumber.
The WeSabi team is still learning how to navigate the recession. No one knows how long the recession will continue.
That’s why the Ventures Platform (a company that links startups with investors) founder, Kola Aina, is advising the government to give tax incentives to startups. He says he knows many companies have already collapsed within the past few months, but he’s optimistic. Research shows that the IT sector tends to perform better than other industries during recession periods.
Back out in the market, Ayorinde talks to the chairman of a butchers’ collective trying to learn more about how meat is priced. Ayorinde has paid a huge price for operating a business during a recession; yet, he believes the service he is providing is priceless and hopes his business will survive.
