

Nigerian web start-ups to watch - agegelabs
http://www.agegelabs.com/2009/06/23/10-nigerian-web-start-ups-to-watch

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seldo
In hindsight, it's obvious that a country famous for internet scammers would
have enough savvy people with access to the internet to have its own startups
as well. Nice to see the positive side of Nigerian internet access for once.

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IsaacL
Ha, good to see my friend Oo linked to on there (he's a Nigerian who studies
at the University of Warwick, where he's been trying to build a startup
community). According to him, in Nigeria, everyone knows that internet fraud
(and politics) is the way to get rich, but there aren't the same role-models
for entrepeneurs as there are in Western countries. Interesting stuff.

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yangyang
Most of them look like Nigerian versions of existing sites. Nothing
particularly new.

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agegelabs
I agree, however the existing sites do not necessarily cater to the Nigerian
market or have local content. Cragslist is not in Nigeria; Nairalist stepped
in to fill that gap.

I'm sure you saw the piece in NYT about how web companies are shifting focus
to the profitable “Western” markets. <http://tinyurl.com/cv8eoz> The gaps that
open up will be filled by local start-ups. Interesting times ahead!

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yangyang
I'm not saying they're not _good_ , just saying they're nothing really _new_
\- just a locally produced "clone" (for want of a better word - I realise
they're more than that) of another site. Not particularly innovative.

I hadn't seen that article, thanks. The point of it really seems to be that
video sharing sites find it expensive to deliver to developing markets.

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erikwiffin
I think it would be cool to see some kind of google maps mashup showing
various startups around to world. There would obviously be a lot on the US
West Coast, but I'd like to see how distributed around the world they are.

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jonursenbach
So this is why they started 419 scams; they couldn't get any funding from VCs
for their startups.

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mahmud
Very tired "joke".

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jonursenbach
I love how my comment went up to 7 points last I checked, then almost
immediately down to 1 after this was posted.

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bemmu
Nairalist.com and nairalists.com are waging an interesting battle, the sites
look exactly the same, even the categories seem to be the same. For now
nairalist seems to be winning based on amount of classifieds posted, which is
probably the only thing that users really care about.

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seunosewa
Many of the ads you see on "Nairalists" are copied from Nairalist. It's an
"interesting" battle if you're not involved, I guess, but it's not a very fair
one. :-(

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muddylemon
something else to watch... your wallet. Nigerian startups have to overcome the
hurdle of the assumption that any packets crossing their border are intent on
defrauding you.

