Nigeria does not have much success in keeping wholly indigenous technology firms in the stock market, for long, unless you include local variants of the oil giants and conglomerates as ones. But when it comes to truly home grown companies, statistics are not that great. Japaul – an oil company did get there, but over the years is trying to stay there as everyone does, we must add.
In the ICT sector, Omatek Computers proved very successful. It went public and is still there – yes, the stock is struggling and who is not? But that is still a well funded company since it takes a lot of resources to get a hardware company like Omatek to get off the ground.
But in the core social media and mobility, which company will be successful to get to the stock market could be cloudy. The reason being that few are indeed been funded very well. With all the many firms in Lagos, Pagatech appears very promising if it can execute on its mobile payment. It is well funded and can easily scale to the level that will enable it to be admitted into the stock market.
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Yet, Pagatech has got a lot of funding from outside Nigeria. From Draper to venture funds, this company is highly externally funded. So, it is in another league.
Other startups are not lucky in Lagos as access to capital is still limited. How many social media firms that will mature to stock market is something one cannot predict because Nigeria does not have a good history of nurturing technology companies to stardom. And without that, investors do not see exit paths and that stifles the risk appetite to even invest in the nation. Until that exit pathway is developed, attracting funding into the market could be difficult.