For many, 2019 is/was (some people have finished the year already even though there are a few more days, lol) a year of mixed emotions. Like soup, life is a little bit of sweet and bitter, pepper and salt. Thinking back at how the year went, the little victories and the small fails along the way, I have compounded a list of the top 5 tech news in Nigeria for 2019. Some are good news while others come with bittersweet emotions.
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The Andela Lay Off
In September 2019, the tech space received a piece of shocking news when the Vice President of Global Operations, Seni Sulyman, explained the need to lay off most of the junior engineers in the company due to a surge in the number of junior engineers available in the US which is their primary market. Although this came as a shock and seemingly bad news, the tech community in Nigeria were able to reach out and employ some of the junior engineers out of job. This may have come with little benefits compared to what Andela offered but it came as a ray of sunlight in the dark. Read more about it here.
Team Brain Squad Win
Nigeria’s own Brain Squad team which consists of five 10 and 11-year-old girls from Standard Bearers Schools, Lagos, represented Nigeria and Africa at the Global Technovation Program which held in Silicon Valley. With their own designed app – Hands Out, they were able to solve a national problem. It was their medium of contributing to the tragic news of a building which had a primary school within it at Itafaji Lagos collapsed. With the app, they were able to create an avenue for people to donate irrespective of their location to help more children access education beyond the happenings at Itafaji. Here is more about them.
Lifebank’s Double Award
Lifebank, a Nigerian-based medical logistics startup won the Africa Netprenuer Prize Initiative (ANPI), an initiative of the Jack Ma Foundation flagship entrepreneur program in Africa. From the $10 million total awards, Lifebank came in first with $250,000 amongst 9 other African entrepreneurs. Also, the founder of Lifebank, Temie Giwa- Tubosun, won the award of emerging Africa Business Hero. Read about it here.
Publiseer’s Triumph
Publiseer is a Nigerian digital content distribution platform founded by identical twin brothers that avail independent African writers and musicians, typically from low-income communities to publish, protect, distribute and monetize their creative works on over 400 well-established digital platforms in 100 countries, at no charge, with just a single click. In May 2019, they got into the Cohort 11 Halcyon Incubator’s Fall 2019 Fellowship. The Halcyon Incubator Fellowship equips early-stage social entrepreneurs with the support they need to transform audacious ideas into scalable and sustainable ventures and change the world and has partnered with some of the leading firms in the community to advise and directly support the fellows’ ventures. Read more about it here.
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Twitter’s Jack’s Visit to Nigeria and Dara Oladosu’s Hire
November 2019 welcomed the visit of Twitter’s founder, Jack Dorsey and some of his executives to prime locations in Nigeria. Several meetings were held in tech hubs in Nigeria – Techpoint office in Lagos and Ventures Platform office in Abuja. The discourse was on twitter plans for Africa and Nigeria and how they hope to increase the number of users in the country. Consequently, the creator of the viral Twitter-based bot, Dara Oladosu, shared how the built the twitter bot Quoted Replies as a solution to a problem. After his presentation, Kayvon Beykpour the product lead and co-founder of Periscope, offered him a job on the spot to help build a native “quoted tweet” feature for twitter. Here is more.
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