The Game Plan for Waterways Transportation in Lagos

Lagos has over 5 million cars and 200,000 commercial vehicles on the roads. Where the national average is 11 vehicles per kilometer, Lagos daily records an average of 227 vehicles per every kilometer of road being used by its 25 million people residents. About twelve million commute daily, meaning 65% make daily use of road transport making its resources over stressed. 

Game Plan: If Lagos can focus on the remaining 35% utilizing water transportation, setting a standard fee of 200 Naira per trip as the lowest fare to commute between two places via the waterways, and making a profit of 50 Naira on each trip per passenger;  if we put a target of 1 million trips daily for 12 months, it’s simply equates to 50,000,000 Naira daily in revenue multiplied by 365 days which equals to 8.3 billion Naira. Considering staff salary, maintenance and other running cost at 10 billion yearly, we still have a whooping 8.3 billion Naira as profit being generated by fully utilizing the water transportation system. (This does not consider the cost of equipment yet which is treated as fixed cost.)

Type of boats: we could get really good ferries at very good affordable prices that make use of solar energy or we could still incorporate the local wooden boats thereby giving more jobs to the local manufacturers of such wooden boats attached to a speed engine.

Additional Features: Aside from the main feature of transportation via an Uber like application, we would be incorporating the following features:

1. We put together a well planned logistics menu platform for utilizing the waterways In Lagos where we have an Uber like application for boats where you can book to transport yourself, goods etc from one place to another. 
2. We get people who have boats for lease to list them on the platform, we would also list our own boats available with their corresponding daily routes and fares for different destinations and services being offered. 
3. There would also be a tourism menu on the application where they can book a local boat cruise and book international shipping trips, cruise and voyage.
4. Users can also make use of the application to list their yacht and other luxurious boats for hire by musicians for various purposes like video shoots and picnics.

The game plan above has two components which I think are critical for modern startups: technology and renewable energy usage. Yes, for any startup to succeed in this modern 21st century business ecosystem, I feel two factors must be in play here which are:

• Technology: Starting up a business without incorporating technology in it is like building a dinosaur business; it’s already extinct. Ease of process, sophistication and ease of access should be the major keys and decider here.

• Renewable Energy: you must seek to go clean in terms of energy generation as soon as possible, this is to be climate compliant and to reduce recurrent expenditures geared towards maximum capital efficiency. If you don’t incorporate renewable energy in your business, then you are building Rhino Business, it’s soon to go extinct.