Sandbox is a talent-matching platform built for product managers in the African tech ecosystem to find work locally and internationally. “It’s like Toptal, but for product managers,” Khadijah Atere, who works as product operations manager at Sandbox, told TechCabal over X (formerly Twitter) while trying to explain their unique offering.

Founded by Samuel Tobi, Princess Akari, and Ijaola David, the company started as a product within the People in Product (PIP) community, “a volunteer-driven community of product managers making a measurable impact and helping one another grow,” according to the PIP website. Ijaola David, Sandbox’s product lead, told TechCabal over a video call that a lot of the support for the company has come from the PIP community.

David, a project manager with over five years of experience, said he saw the need for Sandbox when he was starting professionally. “The issue was there weren’t a lot of jobs for product managers. I was lucky to stumble into this role that has become my career,” he said.

While the platform is still new, having only officially kicked off in 2023, David says they are “Africa’s first core product management matching platform.”

TechCabal asked how Sandbox matches product management talents with companies that need them and David explained that Sandbox has an assessment for all PMs on the platform. The assessment helps them segment entrants by experience, skill set, and specialisation.  “So anyone that wants to hire, all you have to do is go on our website, fill out the form, tell us what the JD looks like, and we will now go to our talent pool and find matching talents,” David said. 

Sandbox does not currently train newbies to become PMs, according to David and Atere. Their first phase of operations is focusing on helping existing talents to match with companies that need their services. Nonetheless, the platform currently hosts talents with as little as zero years of experience to as much as 10.

Although it’s still in its infancy, David confirmed to TechCabal that they are already a revenue-generating entity from companies that are hiring the PMs in their network. The revenue comes in the form of service charges and consultation fees at the moment, with plans to introduce other models in the future. 

Meanwhile, Sandbox is taking a slow approach to raising external funding. David said that because of the PIP community, operational expenses are low. “If we ever need to raise [money] from institutional investors, it should be because we’ve seen that there’s a potential revenue point that we need to invest in and we need to expand there. Maybe we need legal and compliance issues, or we need to expand into a market and they have compliance requirements and we know, once we are in there, we will blow up. Then it’ll make sense to raise money for such expansion.”

Eden Life was founded in 2019 as a home service company providing laundry, cleaning and chef-made meal services to Nigeria’s middle to high-income earners.

Ex-Andela employees Nadayar Enegesi, Prosper Otemuyiwa, and Silm Momoh started the company and have since raised $2 million in total investments. According to its LinkedIn, Eden Life has over 50 employees, some of whom joined after it announced plans to expand operations to Kenya.

A significant exit from the team is its former growth lead, Fu’ad Lawal, who worked with the team from 2020 until June 2023, during a time when employees reportedly took pay cuts to deal with unfavourable economic conditions.

As a response to a bad economic situation heralded by multiple inflations and soaring prices of foodstuff in Nigeria, Eden Life unbundled some of its services and started a fast-food delivery service.

In October 2023, Eden Life said it could become profitable in 12 months, a bold move in an uncertain market. As the company continues to work towards its sustainability, here are the people at the helm of affairs at Eden Life.

1. CEO & Founder – Nayadar Enengesi.
2. CTO & Co-founder – Prosper Otemuyiwa.
3. Product lead & Co-founder – Silm Momoh.
4. HR Lead – Diseye Amy Naasin.
5. Head of Marketing – Adedeji Adeleye.
6. Director of Operations – Sofiri Daminabo.
7. Ajoke Yusuf – Customer Sales and Success Lead.
8. Food Production Lead – Firi Adoki.
9. Jomi Oguntuase – Chief of Staff.
10. Brand and Content Lead – Olumide Yomi-Omolayo.
11. Operations Lead – Adebukola Alao.

At 10:20 a.m. on October 28, 2023, Professor Tayo Arulogun, Miva open university’s vice chancellor, mounted the stage at The Podium event centre in Lagos, Nigeria, and kicked off the university’s first matriculation ceremony. With 532 students in Lagos and Abuja, Miva was making history as Nigeria’s first fully accredited private open university.

Miva’s launch will contribute to solving the capacity problem in Nigeria’s tertiary education system. In 2014, for instance, almost 1.2 million candidates who sat for college-entry exams into Nigerian tertiary institutions didn’t gain admission. Nigeria’s 170 universities can only hold 1.8 million students, and there are not enough places for even those who pass college entry exams. 

“The traditional method of brick and mortar cannot address the demands of 50 to 60 million Nigerians trying to get into tertiary institutions at the same time,” said Sim Shagaya, the founder of uLesson Group, Miva’s parent company. “We have to be able to use the internet somehow.” 

Shagaya shared those thoughts in a 2014 interview when he was still CEO of Konga, Jumia’s e-commerce rival. He had a thesis for online education but would dedicate the next four years to building Konga before selling the company in 2018.

With time on his hands, Shagaya launched uLesson, an edtech company targeting the k-12 category, in 2019.  “I decided to revisit this education opportunity, which I had been thinking about for a while,” he told TechCabal in a virtual interview.

Unlike most businesses, uLesson refined its business model away from Nigeria’s economic capital, Lagos, and major cities like Port Harcourt or Abuja. uLesson started building in Jos, a city not bothered by traffic congestion while taking advantage of a lockdown that forced staff to work from one building. Within four years, uLesson would grow to birth Miva University in one of the fastest business expansions in the edtech space. Here is how uLesson did it.

uLesson’s Day 1 in Jos

uLesson’s focus on K-12 education was new and important. As K-12 education was changing globally with technology-assisted learning, ed-techs like uLesson helped Nigeria attempt to catch up. uLesson’s approach involved three phases: pre-recorded content, live content, and personalised services.

uLesson’s time in Jos (early 2019 to late 2020) was spent building the pre-recorded content library, which eventually became their best-selling product when they went to market in 2020. At inception, the learning content was accessible to students through USB dongles and an Android app which students could access without the internet. The live content had educators teach students in real time, and the personalised services allowed teachers to help students directly and also give them homework

Having all the staff in one place, and building a massive library of educational content, meant that, for a long time, uLesson couldn’t pursue revenue. “We were trying to teach academic principles in a way that’s fun and engaging through rich animation and interaction between live humans and animation, and to test efficacy while we’re doing that,” Shagaya said. “It was very tough. It took a year and a half before we could even reasonably go to market.” 

uLesson planned to go to market in February 2020 in Nigeria, Ghana, Sierra Leone, and Gambia. To achieve that, they went into overdrive.

First raise, COVID-19, and expansion challenges

Late in 2019, Shagaya was on the phone with an old friend, Omobola Johnson, a one-time ICT Minister in Nigeria and now a partner at startup investment firm, TLCom. He mentioned uLesson to her and she was excited to invest in uLesson, as its overall objective matched what TLCom was looking to invest in.

Johnson and her partner, Ido Sum, travelled from London to Abuja, from where they took a four-hour road trip to Jos, to see the uLesson team, discuss growth plans, and figure out how TLCom could support the company.

In November 2019, uLesson announced its $3.1 million seed round led by TLCom. Johnson was not just a friend of Shagaya’s; she was now on uLesson’s board of directors with Sum.

In 2020, months after uLesson brought all its staff to its Jos hub where they all lived and worked, and after it had raised capital, the COVID-19 lockdown started.

Abdulafeez “Penzu” Ojetola, who was the pioneering illustrator at uLesson said of those days that: “Work needed to keep going, the library needed to be completed, [so] we didn’t stop work at all. We had two different lockdown shelters. One was the [residential] mansion and the other was the office complex. We had people who were cooking for us. Work was going on. We were not commuting, we lived in the same place. We got our salaries. We got our allowances. We needed to work overtime because we weren’t going anywhere.” 

Two other former employees who did not want to be quoted shared similar sentiments about work not stopping and everyone in Jos working round the clock.

Ojetola said he “worked from 6 a.m. till 10 p.m. for weeks on end. There wasn’t much to be done because of the lockdown so we worked double time. The workload of six months was done in three months.”

In 2020, uLesson went to market as planned. “The first product was very basic and was Android only. We covered only senior secondary school sciences,” Shagaya told TechCabal. 

While they had initially hoped to benefit from growing internet usage, Shagaya said the market let them know convincingly that “for us to provide a compelling academic experience, there had to be a physical component because of the internet issues that continued to challenge us.” As uLesson made more USB dongles, they experienced new problems.

“It was buggy,” Shagaya told TechCabal. “They [the customers] would put the SD cards in their phones and sometimes they won’t work, and we’d have to ship out another one. But they were buying and we had a core base of users that were patient with us, and we tried very hard to make them happy and just focused on that base which was very small. There were less than 1,000 for the entire first year.”

Customers also complained that the USB dongles were susceptible to computer viruses. An insider said uLesson spent a lot of time resolving customer complaints instead of shipping new products. Despite the challenges, uLesson continued to expand its database through the lockdown.

Many people, including former employees, believe that the lockdown helped uLesson grow significantly. Ojetola told TechCabal that “the pandemic was the era where we introduced the online classes. The pandemic helped the company grow to new heights.” 

However, Shagaya has a different perspective: “I think what COVID did was, it set up the environment for our longer-term growth, but didn’t provide a short-term boost or anything like that.”

Whether it was a long-term boost or a short-term accelerant, the COVID-19 lockdowns soon ended, and so did uLesson’s time in Jos.

The curtain closes on Jos

As lockdowns started to ease and uLesson started thinking about expansion, it started looking outside of Jos to hire engineers. According to Shagaya, most of the talents they needed in that period were available in the south-west and south-south regions of Nigeria. uLesson would have to fly them to Abuja where they’d travel by road to Jos because there weren’t many flights available to Jos. In some cases, people refused to travel due to insecurity in the north-central region.

After the lockdown, the company’s leadership also needed to speak to more investors and pitch at events to get more people to support the uLesson goal. At this time, Shagaya said uLesson was mostly B2B as most of their products were being sold directly to schools, with a smaller fraction being B2C. The resources they needed to scale were elsewhere. So, uLesson started considering a relocation to Abuja.

“It was very difficult to broach it to the team,” Shagaya said. “It’s something I struggled with for a while because they were all settled in. Some of them started finding romantic partners and I said, look, we have to go to Abuja. Everybody protested.” Several early-day employees, including Ojetola, refused to make the relocation with uLesson at the end of 2020, although uLesson managed to retain a lot of talent and hired fast for replacements.

The company’s relocation did not stop its lofty plans. In January 2021 it announced a $7.5 million Series A raise, led by US-based Owl ventures. It modified its strategy and shifted from dongle hardware to focus fully on online learning. “The issues with that [SD cards] were just too much,” Shagaya said.

In July 2021 uLesson started operating physical centres across Lagos, Port Harcourt, Asaba and Abuja. But the company quickly realised that the model wasn’t sustainable as schools were back fully onsite and uLesson could only get the primary-secondary-level students for barely three months in a year. As revenues couldn’t carry the cost of operation, uLesson shut down the centres that same year.

Despite the challenges, Shagaya told Techcabal that uLesson is now cash flow positive. “Every financial goal that we set for investors we achieved.”

uLesson has evolved to a learning bundle model, selling tabs with pre-installed learning resources and a subscription that means students don’t have to worry about additional internet costs.

From uLesson to Miva

Having recorded success with the K-12 division, Shagaya and the board knew it was time to expand. So, uLesson tried opening offices in South Africa, Kenya, Uganda, and Ghana to grow the distribution of its bundled products and services. However, they faced several challenges, especially with K-12 syllabuses being different across those countries.

Shagaya told TechCabal in a virtual call that as an alternative, around this time, “I started interacting with the National Universities Commission (NUC), calling them and trying to explain to them what we could set up [an online university].” But the NUC didn’t seem to be ready.

The NUC, which regulates the creation of tertiary institutions in Nigeria, does not currently have guidelines for establishing online universities. However, it has one for open and distance learning (ODL), a learning method which doesn’t happen in real-time. The current NUC guidelines for ODL state that “For all academic programmes to be taught by ODL, interactive texts shall be at the heart of teaching and learning. These shall be supplemented with other resources such as: CD-ROM, DVD or USB sticks to deliver ebooks, simulations, assessment etc”, all of which uLesson excelled at with its pre-university clients.

Shagaya convened an emergency board meeting where he tried to make the case for Miva. “The thing about online universities or universities, in general,” he said, “is that the curriculum is the same everywhere.” This meant that if they made it work in Nigeria, they could easily replicate it elsewhere without having to build a new syllabus. He said that the business could either keep trying to figure out K-12 expansion or they could become a pan-African tertiary institution within months, applying the lessons they had learned from building large educational resources with uLesson.

The board unanimously supported a university expansion. 

In May 2023, after several meetings with the NUC, Miva Online University became accredited to provide open and distance learning education.

Miva University had two faculties at inception: the Faculties of Computing, and Management and Social Sciences. Months later, it added the Allied Health Sciences faculty. Together, they offer 10 bachelor of science degrees.

To gain admission into tertiary institutions in Nigeria, candidates have to have a minimum of five credits in the Senior School Certificate Examination (SSCE) before writing matriculation exams organised by Nigeria’s Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB). Afterwards, candidates who reach marks set out by both JAMB and the institution can then proceed to write another matriculation exam set by the institution. At Miva, the exams end at SSCE.

Arulogun, Miva’s first VC, told TechCabal over WhatsApp that “Miva Open University recognises the unique opportunities and challenges associated with using technology to bridge educational gaps in Nigeria and beyond. We are committed to addressing the identified educational gaps, which is critical to achieving the national education goals in the areas of access, affordability, and quality education.”

Fifteen years ago when Shagaya first thought about building an open university in Nigeria, Muneerat Shitta-Bey had just been born. Fifteen years later, she is matriculating as a Miva student. 

Shitta-Bey’s relationship with Miva started in 2020 during the COVID-19 lockdown, her mother, Mrs Shitta-Bey, told TechCabal at the matriculation event in Lagos. “During the COVID-19 pandemic, when everybody was locked down, they were doing online classes at her [Muneerat’s] school. But we needed extra lessons to help her focus and do better. It was difficult getting lesson teachers. I was wondering, why can’t we get lesson teachers from wherever? I went online and discovered uLesson.”

When Muneerat finished her secondary school education, she was looking forward to  gaining admission into university. In Nigeria, traditional tertiary institutions are not excited about giving university admission to students under 16 years old. As a 15-year-old, she would have had to wait one more year.

Speaking about her daughter’s matriculation and not having to wait an extra year, Mrs Shitta-Bey said, “When I knew that they [uLesson] had a university, we were so happy. COVID taught us that you don’t need to be there physically to learn.”

Muneerat, who is studying for a BSc in public policy for the next three years, as against four years in a traditional university, told TechCabal that “uLesson was very good for me because, in school, sometimes when teachers talk, it was difficult for me to pay attention. uLesson helped me because the lessons were broken down and well visualised. I had a private teacher monitoring my progress. Miva is almost the same. I wanted to do animation, but they don’t offer that yet.”

Another opportunity that Miva provides to people like Muneerat is that they can do multiple courses at the same time, experimenting with their preferences and settling on what they’re most interested in. Muneerat told TechCabal that she’s doing other programmes outside Miva, and she’s happy she has the opportunity to do other things. Her mother confirms that “she is doing software engineering as well”.

Shagaya said Miva will operate with a similar model as uLesson’s with pre-recorded sessions, live classes and personalised support, which will come from top professionals and professors globally.

While Miva seems a promising alternative to traditional universities, one wonders if Nigerians with a minimum wage of ₦30,000 can afford the ₦200,000 to ₦250,000 annual tuition. As uLesson has done, time will tell where Miva will go in the next few years.

On October 23, 2023, Shagaya announced on Twitter that he was transitioning out of his role as CEO of uLesson into a broader role as the CEO of uLesson group and chancellor of Miva University. 

He announced Ayooluwa Nihinlola, who has been at the company since 2019, as the new CEO of the uLesson K-12 division.

Nihinlola said, “By showing what’s possible via this expansion into tertiary, we hope to inspire other organisations in the ecosystem to leverage the resources at their disposal to

provide world-class education at scale.”

Constellr, a German-based satellite data company, is offering land surface temperature (LST) data to African farmers to help them plan for better harvests and face climate change. 

What is LST, and why is it important?

Land surface temperature is a measurement of how hot to the touch the land is, and how safe it is for planting crops over time. An understanding of this data can protect farmers from severe losses and boost food production, Rosa Schmidt, marketing project manager for constellr, told TechCabal in an email.

In farming, temperatures are one of the primary determinants of plant growth and availability of produce. Instability or lack of understanding of the soil’s temperature impacts the outcome for farmers.

As farming depends primarily on rain, LST will become “instrumental in drought monitoring by pinpointing areas experiencing water stress. This early detection empowers farmers to proactively adapt strategies, whether by adjusting planting schedules or opting for drought-resistant crop varieties. Farmers can also promptly detect abnormal temperature patterns indicative of other types of crop stress (e.g., from diseases) and adapt their approaches to ensure healthier and more productive crops,” Schmidt explained.

Africa’s agriculture industry, despite its promise of a bright future, faces challenges such as “unequal access to resources, climate constraints, lacking infrastructure, technologies that are not equipped to handle varying economic and ecological situations, increasingly competitive markets, and low remuneration,” according to consulting firm Morgan Philips.

Constellr is expanding into Africa, starting with Morocco, South Africa, and Zimbabwe.

“With Africa poised for the highest population growth and impact of climate change but also being the continent with the highest potential for a jump in agriculture productivity, this [expansion] holds even greater significance,” Schmidt said. 

Data for everyone

In Africa where a significant percentage of farmers are uneducated, LST data is inaccessible to the average farmer, despite its merits of helping farmers plan their planting and harvest seasons better.

Only 15 out of 54 African countries have launched satellites into space and can gather EO data. Countries like Nigeria and Ghana have used these satellites to aid farming, but the data is usually expensive and hard to obtain. Smallholder farmers who need it the most, can’t access LST data.

As water scarcity concerns continue to stand in the way of achieving $1 trillion in revenue in the African agriculture industry, companies like constellr promise to make the data available and affordable to support a sustainable and more efficient farming ecosystem.

Constellr’s plan to make LST data available to more farmers, according to Schmidt, involves a four-pronged partnership approach with commercial companies, intergovernmental remote sensing institutions, space agencies, and NGOs. By working with the four partners, constellr will share the cost of accessibility across partners so that the end users, farmers, will get it at affordable rates. When asked about their pricing model, Schmidt said the company will provide locally contextualised rates across different countries.

By using local NGOs and intergovernmental institutions, data will be available to farmers in summarised bits over different farming seasons, and may go as far as being read on the radio and in local newspapers to make it more accessible. For a start, Schmidt confirmed that constellr has “a handful of projects and partners in Africa for whom our goal is generating positive environmental and economic impact”. These partners will be their starting point.

Fake news in Nigeria affects election outcomes, security, and even banter among friends. Fake news has caused deaths during health emergencies like Ebola and misinformation leading to vaccine refusal as seen during the COVID-19 vaccination campaign.

A civic society organisation (CSO), Brain Builders Youth Development Initiative (BBYDI), through its new project FactCheck Africa, has built an AI-powered tool called My AI Factcheck, to help Nigerians tackle fake news.

The Global Director of BBYDI, Abideen Olasupo, told TechCabal in a virtual call that with their civic tech tool, My AI Factcheck, “we are covering disinformation and misinformation on governance and accountability, around climate change and SDGs.”

Alamin Musa, who leads product development for BBYDI mentioned during the call that “FactCheck Africa uses AI and credible news sources to verify claims.” 

How exactly does that work?

An ABC solution

FactCheck Africa’s mission is clear: to empower individuals with the tools to distinguish fact from fiction. To achieve this, Musa said they “harness a synergy of artificial intelligence and reputable news sources. Combining Google’s fact-checking API with the GPT-4 model, FactCheck Africa ensures its arsenal is robust and technologically advanced.”

At the core of FactCheck Africa’s solution lies a user-friendly web application. Users simply input a claim, and the AI engine springs into action. It combs the internet and scours top-tier news outlets to scrutinise the claim’s validity. The result? A resolute stamp of truth or an honest acknowledgement of uncertainty when the AI cannot provide a definitive answer. Transparency, they believe, is a cornerstone of trustworthy fact-checking.

TechCabal tried out the tool with a popular fake news about the death of Muhammadu Buhari, Nigeria’s former President, and the result returned within seconds, showing two primary sources, 18 secondary sources, a sentiment analysis, and a fake news verdict.

But it doesn’t stop there. The organisation pairs this technology with insights from trustworthy journalistic sources, creating a hybrid system designed for accuracy and reliability. 

While the solution seems a useful simple tool for people who can access it, there’s a concern for people who can’t access the internet for such a tool. To this, Olasupo explained that “FactCheck Africa is driven by a vision of accessibility. During the Nigerian elections, we did radio programs that reached more than ten million people. We’ll use the Radio to spread more fact-checks. We will also build USSD code solutions and provide a toll-free number where people can call us and our in-hour fact-checkers will verify news for the callers.” 

FactCheck Africa wants to ensure that anyone, from any background, can access fact-checking easily. One of the notable features of their FactChecking web tool is a translation feature including five languages: English, Hausa, Yoruba, Igbo, and French—languages predominantly spoken across West Africa.

FactCheck Africa’s future

At different times, BBYDI has set up projects to tackle misinformation and fake news. In 2020, BBYDI set up KnowCovid19Ng to educate Nigerians on COVID-19 misinformation. In the buildup to the 2023 general elections in Nigeria, the CSO started the Factcheck elections Ng project to validate claims from politicians to reduce the virality of fake news. When the elections ended and fake news did not stop, BBYDI, through what is now FactCheck Africa, started building the My AI Factcheck tool to house all their numerous projects under one solution for tackling fake news in Nigeria and West Africa.

“Last month [September 2023], we went for the US West African Tech Challenge and I’m happy to tell you that we were finalists in the competition. The financial support we will be getting from them will help us to expand into other West African countries easily,” Olasupo told TechCabal.

While Olasupo says they’re yet to know the exact amount, the competition promises $250,000 for finalists. One of FactCheck Africa’s plans for the grant is a new phase of media literacy which includes partnering with the Nigerian Union of Journalists body to reach more people, and a gamification model of their AI tool to onboard teenagers.

“We are building a gamified fact-checking platform that puts players in the role of a fake news writer and encourages them to get as many followers as they can without losing credibility. Our research has shown that more kids will be interested in learning about how to counter misinformation and disinformation if it’s gamified rather than discussing it in classrooms,” Oladupo further explained.

The civic tech tool’s future, while well-defined, will face several challenges, including adoption from users. However, the group is confident that their experience with civic advocacy gives them an edge in reaching people in different communities across Nigeria and West Africa.

As Nigeria’s small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) continue to grow, contributing about 48% of the GDP, Nigerian entrepreneurs face the pressing challenge of delivering goods to customers on time and well.

The logistics challenges range from concrete problems like the absence of infrastructure to abstract ones like lack of trust, or tardiness on the part of delivery companies. Shipbubble, a logistics and e-commerce aggregation company, is solving this problem.

Co-founded by Jordan Ajibola, the CEO, and Ayodeji Abon, the CTO, Shipbubble is creating a  one-stop API integration that allows e-commerce businesses to harmonise all their logistics needs on one platform, eliminating the need for multiple logistics partners. 

The e-commerce industry is projected to reach $3.64 trillion in revenue by the end of 2023. Only $9.02 billion (0.24%) of that amount is projected to be in the Nigerian e-commerce space. With a pressing logistics problem, Nigeria may fall behind, or fail to boost revenue in the e-commerce sector.

Ajibola and Abon sat with TechCabal at our office in Lagos to demonstrate how Shipbubble works. Ajibola was quick to mention that Shipbubble is helping companies “locate the perfect logistics partners based on cost, proximity, and performance, allowing for logistics partner assignment without the hassle of text messaging”.

A 2021 World Bank report notes that the cost of moving goods (per unit distance) domestically in Nigeria is about 5.3 times higher than in the US. Meanwhile, Shipbubble claims its aggregated platform will allow traders to have options to choose from a wide range of affordable companies that have been vetted for quality service delivery by the company, cutting costs and earning trust in the process.

This is in addition to creating a tracking page for each business, allowing traders and customers to follow the goods from start to finish accurately. 

Abon says an easier way to think of what Shipbubble is doing today is to think of Paystack and other payment aggregators, and how they helped e-commerce businesses to sell faster by supporting online stores with instant accounts where payments are validated within seconds. “Shipbubble is like that, but for logistics,” he says.

Shipbubble’s 10,000 steps to expertise

Ajibola and Abon built the Minimum Viable Product (MVP) in 2021, fully transitioning from an earlier version called GetDelivery to Shipbubble by May 2022. The founders then participated in the Startup Wise Guys accelerator program from October 2022 to March 2023, further honing their expertise. Shipbubble has since secured support from angel investors and venture capitalists, including Microtraction, a venture firm that invests in pre-seed startups. As of October 2023, ₦267 million worth of products have been shipped via Shipbubble.

But they’re still far from their destination. 

One of the fundamental aspects of Shipbubble’s approach, according to Ajibola, is “helping businesses scale internationally and having more options”. To do this, they need to onboard more logistics companies internationally; this will need more time and more money. The founders are confident that their product will attract the right funding to scale and bring in more partners.

Esther Ulueme, 28, a Nigerian entrepreneur spends her nighttime tracking orders and her daytime talking to clients for her skincare and perfumery brand, leaving her little space for adequate rest and to scale. Ulueme is optimistic about Shipbubble’s solution. “Putting logistics companies under an umbrella like Shipbubble’s will keep them in check,” she tells TechCabal over WhatsApp. “You won’t have to worry much because you’re sure the logistics companies under Shipbubble would have gone through checks and won’t tamper with or lose your product.” 

Abon assures business vendors like Ulueme that “[Shipbubble’s] streamlined approach means that entrepreneurs can set up e-commerce ventures with ease with Shipbubble, and Shipbubble will handle everything from inventory management to sales and distribution.” He is confident that this approach will help small businesses scale faster with fewer resources.

Ulueme, who is keen on expanding globally, tells TechCabal that knowing that Shipbubble has logistics companies that can deliver outside Nigeria will help vendors sell internationally without stress.

Bosun Tijani, Nigeria’s Nigeria’s minister of communications, innovation, and digital economy, announced at TechCabal’s Moonshot conference on October 11, that the ministry was going to train three million technical talents over the next four years. The minister said he would use a 1-10-100-model. This means training 1% of the three million in three months, then 10% over a defined period, then 100%. Days later, the 3 Million Technical Talent (3MTT) portal was launched.

TechCabal visited the 3MTT website, hosted by the National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA) and powered by Prembly, a Nigerian compliance and security infrastructure company.

The website is easy to navigate, with the three primary segments —about 3MTT, how to apply, and FAQs— hanging on the top right corner. A significant feature missing from the website is an accessibility tool. The white and green colour-themed website may be difficult to use for people with varying degrees of visual impairments.

While checking the website, we found some important information for applicants and anyone interested in the 3MTT program. Some of the information is inserted into extra documents embedded on the website. For instance, if you’re wondering where the tutors will come from, or what their registration is like, we have the answers.

Courses

In the first phase, 3MTT will focus on twelve technical skills, namely; Software Development, UI/UX Design, Data Analysis & Visualisation, Quality Assurance, Product Management, Data Science, Animation, AI / Machine Learning, Cybersecurity, Game Development, Cloud Computing, and Dev Ops.

These courses were selected in light of Bosun Tijani’s vision of positioning “Nigeria in the top 25% percentile in research globally across six pivotal Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR) technological domains, including artificial Intelligence (AI), Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs), Internet of Things (IoT), robotics, blockchain, and additive manufacturing”.

3MTT fellowship application process

The fellowship is a five-stage application process where applicants will be asked to submit bio-data, contact information, background skills & employment status, training program choices, and finally a confirmation page to ensure the accuracy of data.

It took us five minutes to complete an application form.

A useful feature while selecting the course on the form is that prospective fellows get to see a summary of what their program entails, while also filling in what level of expertise they currently have. Perhaps, this will be used to separate fellows when the program starts.

The process is completed after a candidate submits either their National Identification Number (NIN) or Bank Verification Number (BVN). An email is sent to candidates immediately, informing them that they’ll hear back if selected.

3MTT trainers’ application process

One of the technology minister’s objectives is to “increase the level of digital literacy of

our population to 70% by the end of 2027”. To support this, the 3MTT is looking to utilise as many talented people as it can access. Hence, it has a portal for trainers to join the 3MTT program.

The trainers will support the program’s first three months and help to define a model that will be replicated during the 10% and 100% phases. Trainers are expected across the 12 courses.

The 3MTT has a training providers requirements document which says trainers will create curriculum and training methods, provide proof of training experience, with a preference for trainers with internship model experience, be able to use a hybrid teaching system that’s inclusive, have the capacity to operate in chosen states or regions and create learning benchmarks with at least 80% completion rates among fellows.

While the process for the trainers is important to get the best, we wonder if Nigeria’s tech ecosystem currently boasts of enough trainers to handle three million people training on this scale.

Placement

One of the extra requirements for trainers is that they must have the ability to provide placement for fellows within their care. This means the ministry expects the trainers to be organisations and not individuals.

The 3MTT program demands that training providers should be able to place at least 50% of fellows in jobs that match their skill level within three months of completing the program. What this means for fellows is that the majority of them are assured of a job opportunity or internship at the end of their program. 

To ensure continuous growth, the 3MTT portal says providers have to “accurately evaluate the impact of the training on these individuals. It is essential for providers to have a system that periodically tracks the development of the fellows alongside their employers”.

Timeline

The program started with a call for fellows and training providers on October 13 and will move to the selection phase from November 1, 2023. The program will kick off on November 15, and will run for three months.

The program uses an iterative model that will take lessons from one phase to improve the next phase. While the first phase is expected to end by February 2024, a new timeline will be shared as the 1% stage ends. 

Partners can join the program

The program is calling for partners who want to sponsor the 3MTT program through direct or indirect funding, equipment, physical spaces and other infrastructural support, device support, local and international job placements, support for programme execution, and other forms of support possible.

Interested parties can apply to be sponsors here.

An easy guess is that where program trainers are unable to find employment for all fellows, the partners will support them by helping with placements.

FAQs

The homepage ends with an FAQ section for fellows and trainers. It answers questions like the form of financial support available, among other important things.

Launched in 2019, uLesson focuses on the K-12 learning category and was initially available through an Android app and a USB dongle. Students could plug the dongles into devices and access educational content without any internet connection. It seemed like the perfect online and offline strategy in a low-income market where affordable and reliable broadband connectivity remains challenging. It then went a step further, setting up physical learning centres in July 2021; it closed those centres in December of the same year. 

Two years after the short-lived experiment, Sim Shagaya, uLesson’s founder and CEO, told TechCabal that the physical centres were created to reduce the upfront cost of a parent acquiring or using its service. “So we would rent the space, provide the tablets, and then students can come and learn.” It rented spaces in Lagos, Port Harcourt and Asaba, using part of its Abuja office as another learning centre. 

The learning centres were supposed to be an improvement on the dongles uLesson sold at launch. Complaints from the users suggested that the chips on these dongles were vulnerable to viruses transmitted from smartphones and laptop computers used by students, the source said. This technical challenge meant that a lot of support time was spent solving issues for customers. Eventually, the dongles were phased out. Enter physical centres. 

Physical centres and running costs 

Most Nigerians who are in the University are familiar with tutorial centres that help students pass admission exams like West African Examinations Council (WAEC) and Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB). uLesson’s physical centres were partly based on these established models. 

One crucial difference was that uLesson’s physical centres were less about interacting with subject teachers and more about interacting with the tabs. For a while, the centres were a smash hit. “During holiday periods, the centres would get filled up [as] people would come to drop their kids off,” Shagaya told TechCabal over a virtual call. “The numbers would make sense.”

As the experiment continued, the company realised that its “revenue couldn’t carry the cost,” Shagaya explained. “Holidays in an academic term are about two weeks, and in a year, we would get about five to six weeks. In a year, we would get about two to three months of full capacity. [But] the fixed cost of rent, the electricity, all just for one student. The revenue couldn’t carry the cost,” Shagaya explained. 

Apart from life after the holidays, uLesson probably underestimated one cultural challenge: parents did not warm up to the idea of a learning space where young students are left with tabs and the internet. Usually, it could take businesses a long time to cut their losses on experiments like this but meeting customers in person helped the company make a quick decision. 

The company’s offline strategy is now a learning bundle that ships a uLesson tab with a subscription that means students don’t have to worry about additional internet costs. It also introduced a buy now pay later option for students, allowing them to pay for the tab on monthly. According to Shagaya, uLesson Group is now cash flow positive, perhaps suggesting that its new strategy was a step in the right direction.

In the end, Shagaya’s conviction that a physical component is essential for a compelling academic experience hasn’t changed. Only the form of delivering the experience has. 

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Late one night in September 2022, Ebube, a 23-year-old law professional, flew into Lagos from Abuja and, unable to get an Uber, booked a trip on Rida, another popular ride-hailing app in Nigeria. After several failed transactions, she discovered the next day that she’d paid him three times the fare. She contacted the driver, a man called Kehinde Ladi, for a refund, which he promised to send. What Ebube got instead was several months of constant calls and messages on WhatsApp from different numbers every other day. Ladi, who soon left Nigeria, uses new numbers to call Ebube several times despite her forgoing the money. Blocking him hasn’t stopped him. Complaining to Rida did not help the situation. A full year later, Ebube still gets WhatsApp messages from Ladi.

This is just one of many examples of cyberstalking that female passengers are subjected to after booking and going on trips with ride-hailing apps. These experiences affect the way women interact with these apps. Binyelum*, a 28-year-old lawyer who lives in Lagos and has been using ride-hailing apps for five years, has had to change her name on all the apps to a generic one because she was constantly harassed in-ride due to her unusual name. She changed her name on ride-hailing apps to avoid being stalked on social media by drivers. For Bola*, a student at the University of Lagos, this fear became a reality as a driver from Bolt used several Instagram accounts to hound and sexually harass her. Jessica* also faced the same problem after an Uber ride home from her office in Lagos, with the driver physically stalking her at work. 

Data protection lawyer Victoria Oloni, explained that Nigeria’s Cybercrimes Act of 2015 establishes criminal liability for various forms of cyberstalking, such as persistently sending offensive, indecent, obscene, or menacing messages via public electronic communication networks, which the activities of the ride-hailing drivers fall within. “Sending false messages, and causing annoyance, inconvenience, or anxiety to another person all fall within the reach of cyberstalking,” Oloni said.

While the companies in charge of ride-hailing apps set up safety measures to protect riders, it is not enough.

To protect users’ privacy, popular ride-hailing apps like Bolt and Uber have phone number masking features that enable riders or drivers to call each other in-app without revealing their phone numbers. However, there is also an option to place a mobile call to the SIM number of the user. On other ride-hailing platforms, often less expensive, like inDrive and Rida, users can only call directly on mobile. They reveal users’ phone numbers immediately after you press the call button. This is how stalkers can save the numbers to their devices and use them to contact and harass users.  

A spokesperson for Uber told TechCabal, ”We encourage riders and drivers to use in-app communication and not give their private details to ensure safety and privacy at all times.” 

Bolt explained to TechCabal that it does the same but finds it necessary to include the option of direct contact in cases where the internet connection is unstable, which is sometimes the case. “We constantly issue driver training materials to inform our drivers not to abuse this function. Any contact leads to immediate action against drivers or riders,” Bolt said in an email to TechCabal.

On the one hand, cyberstalkers may be fined between ₦‎7 million and ₦‎25 million and imprisoned for at least a year; on the other hand, according to Oloni, the absence of explicit reporting mechanisms for victims is a notable gap within the Cybercrimes Act. “While there is a cybercrime reporting portal established by the Nigerian Police Force (NPF), we all know the challenges associated with the effectiveness of the NPF,” Oloni explained. “Notably, the Act only outlines how law enforcement entities address these offences, rather than how these agencies can become aware of the occurrences of such offences.”

The ride-hailing companies often try to shift responsibility to the users, especially for stalking that happens after the ride. Additionally, there are arguments on whether ride-hailing drivers are employees of these companies or not. However, ride-hailing companies are service providers under the Cybercrimes Act and have a responsibility to aid law enforcement agencies in dealing with stalking and harassment and protecting data that’s sourced on their platforms.

Oloni told TechCabal that non-compliance by ride-hailing services could result in potential liability. “Upon conviction, ride-hailing services can be fined up to ₦‎10 million,” she said. Additionally, any director, manager, or officer of the service provider can be imprisoned for a minimum of three years or fined at least ₦‎7 million, or both. 

In the future, a cyberstalking victim may seek recourse in a court of law, and both the ride-hailing apps and their drivers might be coughing up a lot of money and some jail time. But for now, unfortunately, the status quo remains.

Oloni suggested that a possible solution is creating a shared reporting database among ride-hailing apps. This way, deplatformed drivers cannot rejoin under different services due to prior behaviours being flagged. One wonders how long it might take the ride-hailing companies to consider this and create an extra layer of safety for female users.

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“He doesn’t look like a tech bro,” my colleague, Ngozi Chukwu, says as ‘Deji Atoyebi, PointsBud founder, sits with us for an informal product demo at our office in Lagos. Ngozi, and anyone curious to ask what we were doing, was excited about ‘Deji’s product once he explained it. I was, too.

As conversations around AI, its functionality, and unemployment fears continue to rise, ‘Deji is one of the people building artificial intelligence (AI)-enabled products that solve critical problems. In his case, he explains that his product provides embedded finance servicing in the hospitality industry.

“We just launched yesterday [August 23, 2023] at a restaurant in Lagos,” he tells me as we explore the features of the PointsBud, an AI-assisted messaging system that allows people to order products and services from different providers at breakneck speed through WhatsApp.

It took less than five minutes to order food and pay for the order from Circa Lagos, the first restaurant to get on PointsBud.  We mentioned the meal we wanted, and the AI responded within seconds, confirming the order’s availability and how much it cost before processing the order and moving to payments.

At the moment, the bot is exclusive to each restaurant. “For example, the bot I showed you,” ‘Deji emphasises, “was acting as Circa Lagos’ bot. It’s built on their menu. When we onboard enough restaurants, we will have a general PoinstBud bot where people can find restaurants and other services.”

But that’s not all.

“It’ll learn customer interests and recommend similar products in the future,” ‘Deji says, smiling coyly through the demo. Despite a slow internet connection, our order was faster than typical human response time.

But a human still has to operate the admin panel to confirm and reject orders, so that customers know the restaurant has gotten their order. In the past, the process was a human taking the order, confirming from the kitchen, and finally sorting out payments. Now, the human only does kitchen confirmation. Everything else is automated.

The ex-Flutterwave engineer (for four years) promises that his team is building an integrated system that’ll be an infrastructure for businesses to have customer data and insights; so that hospitality businesses can target customers with offers, upsell and cross-sell to them faster and better than ever. “The reason why it’s called PointsBud is to provide a way for businesses to reward their customers. With all this data, it becomes possible to know what the customer likes.”

This means you can order food, book flights and hotels without interacting directly with a human at any level of the journey.

PointBuds didn’t start as an AI-enabled system. “Initially, we started with QR codes… if you scan the QR codes, it takes you to their [a restaurant’s] menu,” but getting to onboard restaurants was difficult. On one hand, restaurant owners were difficult to find and persuade on LinkedIn. On the other hand, workers made it difficult to see their managers at the restaurant. This could be because of fears that their jobs might be at risk.

When TechCabal asked Victor Daniel, a content creator specialising in food content, how he felt about the integrated AI system, he said, “I think it’ll make the experience better in the sense that it can be faster and more efficient. And since AI improves the efficiency of everything, then yeah, I want AI.”

One of the PointBud’s features is that “you can even check and track your rider through WhatsApp.” What this efficiency means, however, is that there’s at least one person whose services are no longer needed in the customer servicing queue. Victor doesn’t seem bothered by this as long as he gets his meal faster: “that’s the way the world works. Every innovation that has ever benefited humankind including myself had to come at the expense of someone’s job. We have to deal with this. In future, it’ll probably be my turn,” he tells Tech Cabal.

However, Ama Udofa, who works in the foodtech industry, thinks “anyone who wants to replace the human touch is in for a rude shock. In the restaurant industry which is more hands on than say fintech or SAAS type industries, diners are demanding more human involvement. See how QR code menus ruined table-side ordering, for example.” 

Nonetheless, he supports some automation: “I’m all for partial automation. AI working hand in glove with humans.”

While the argument on the human experience hovers, the PointsBud founder explains that they “plan to charge a monthly subscription for the usage of some of the features, payment for marketing automation and delivery tracking.”

It’s only day one at PointsBud. One can only imagine how high and in what direction they might fly in the coming months.

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