“Much has been made recently of recent high profile roll outs in Africa as new ‘Continental HQs’ and how Nigeria, the highest country by GDP on the continent by some margin, has lost out. The first was the high profile loss of Twitter to Ghana, and now just announced, the loss of Amazon to South Africa. Does this mean the slide in global thinking is running away from Nigeria and it’s apex position as the ‘obvious go-to’ is no longer assumed?”
John Mc Keown begins with those lines on a piece examining the state of Nigeria, trying to answer if that “dominance” connotation is real or ofeke. Personally, I do not think it matters: Nigeria remains the king because we wear the biggest suits and shout loudest even though South Africa budgets close to $100 billion more, despite having less than 30% of our population.
Nigeria is dominant and that position is unchallenged despite the paralysis. If Lagos is a country, it would have all these HQs by itself. But Nigeria diminishes it! Twitter is not a big deal; its products are not that catalytic. I am waiting for who will host Intel, AMD, Nvidia, etc design centers in Africa! We need more than sales offices.
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