As an entrepreneur who wants to build solutions focused on the fastest-growing tech ecosystem in Africa, an environment that encourages innovation is most desirable. Nigeria is leading the charge in the African tech ecosystem, especially in VC funding and equity rounds.
With Nigeria’s stride, anyone, any entrepreneur would expect that the government positions the country to keep staying ahead of the game.
Here comes the Nigeria Startup Bill. The question is why do we need it and how will it affect tech, funding, and innovation in Nigeria and Africa as a whole?
What is the Nigeria Startup Bill (NSB)?
The Nigeria Startup Bill project is a collaborative effort between Nigeria’s tech startup ecosystem and the Presidency to maximize the potential of our digital economy through co-created regulations.
The goal of the Bill is to ensure that Nigeria’s laws and regulations are clear, well-planned, and beneficial to the tech industry. Thus, creating an enabling environment for growth, as well as attracting and protecting investment in tech startups.
Since the inception of the bill in 2021, following President Mohammadu Buhari’s speech, there have been several focus groups and town halls across the country, learning series engagements, state rallies, and roundtable discussions, all with the agenda of gathering input from stakeholders from various backgrounds and regions within the country.
The Objective of the Bill
The NSB was designed to provide a legal and institutional framework for the development of startups in Nigeria, to:
- Provide an enabling environment for the establishment, development and operations of startups in Nigeria.
- Foster the development and growth of technology-related talent
- And position the Nigerian startup ecosystem as the leading digital hub in Africa having excellent innovators with cutting edge skills and exportability capacity
The Provision of the Nigerian Startup Bill
In order to maximize the full potential of the Nigerian tech ecosystem, the NSB will provide support such as:
- The council for digital innovation and entrepreneurship
- The startup support and engagement portal
- Startup labeling
- Startup investment seed fund
- Training, Capacity Building, and development
- Tax and fiscal incentives
- Regulations support
- Accelerators and incubators
- Clusters, Hub, innovation park, and technology development zone
When the NSB comes to realization, the Nigerian tech ecosystem and Africa is headed for unprecedented growth.
What to expect?
A great fraction of the Nigerian youth population is tech-savvy, so that means the population has a large chunk of youth who are innovative, hard-working, and driven to confront the problems in Nigeria and Africa using technology.
The NSB will see an increase in venture studios such as the one I’m building, Seraphim Venture Studios. Everything we do at Seraphim Venture Studios is to inspire people to turn Africa’s problems into global solutions, so that, together, each of us can change the lives of Africans for the better. It is beyond an accelerator and incubator hub and everything a startup needs at every stage.
We take a hands-on approach and personal guidance in building startup companies at each step of their life cycle so that starting risk is shared, the failure rate is reduced, and years of experience are provided to startups so that they can avoid the common mistakes that a lot of other new companies make.
At Seraphim Venture Studios, we build and run companies. We hand-build 3–4 companies a year and co-found and invest in select businesses.
Our venture studio model excels because of our resources, network, capital, and a proven process that supports entrepreneurs — allowing them to focus on what they do best — building companies. We provide the support that eliminates every distraction from a founder’s path, making it easy to build incredible companies.
This includes:
- Hands-on Team — Champion founders & studio skills across all business needs.
- Focused Investment — Hand-building software and tech-enabled companies and investing in Pre-Seed to Seed.
- Scalable Processes — Rapid ideation and business building across all phases — from seed to scale.
- Purposeful Thesis — We research macro changes & the resulting opportunities, mapping our thesis back to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.
The effect that we want to see is that a lot of young people will be motivated to try out their solutions because of the support that is customized for them with the emergence of venture studios instead of having a cookie-cutter mentorship package.
Access to capital will also be increased and venture studios will certainly have their hands full with incredible solutions pouring out from the Nigerian tech ecosystem to the world.
Better days are coming for technology, for solutions, for Africa.
