Yaba is losing its shine to Ikoyi as Nigeria’s tech ecosystem continues to evolve

Yaba, Lagos was once Nigeria’s dominant location for budding tech startups. 

Often referred to as Nigeria’s Silicon Valley, Yaba became a hub for innovation in the early 2010s. It hosted key players like Andela, CcHub, and a wave of startups that attracted global attention, including Mark Zuckerberg’s famous visit in 2016.

The neighbourhood offered affordable rents and proximity to academic institutions like the government-owned University of Lagos (UNILAG), which provided a steady pipeline of young, skilled talent.

For years, Yaba symbolised the energy and potential of Nigerian tech, providing a foundation for early-stage companies to thrive.

Yet as companies scaled, Yaba’s aging infrastructure, traffic congestions, and limited space became drawbacks, leading tech companies to find other locations in Lagos. 

Ikoyi, an upscale part of Lagos, has become symbolic as Nigeria’s next tech hub. Costing around $600–$800 per square metre, Ikoyi office spaces offer more than security and high rises for tech startups; they also offer a strategic location at the heart of Lagos’ tech ecosystem.

Ikoyi boasts some of Lagos’ most modern and well-maintained office buildings, like King’s Tower and Heritage Place, which meet global standards for security, environmental compliance, and functionality.

Global giants and big companies out of Nigeria like Flutterwave, Meta, and Google are flocking to the upscale Ikoyi for their Nigerian offices, despite the dollar cost of real estate in the neighbourhood.

As Nigeria’s tech ecosystem, now recognised as one of Africa’s Big 4, continues to boom, the move to Ikoyi could be symbolic of the status and growth these tech companies are achieving.

Silicon Valley is a mindset, not a location—a fitting metaphor for this migration. 

Read why Nigerian biggest tech companies are betting on Ikoyi.

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iHub, the Nairobi-based accelerator acquired by CcHub in 2019, has moved to a modern two-storey headquarters in the upscale Lavington area, Kenya, signalling its growing influence in Africa’s tech ecosystem. 

The new space features co-working areas, private booths, and venture capital offices for firms like TLcom and Verod-Kepple Africa Ventures, along with a media hub for film, television, and social media professionals.

This expansion follows a busy year for iHub, which partnered with Safaricom and Spark Accelerator in May 2024 to support startups like Chpter and Chumz. Chpter, a social e-commerce startup, went on to raise a $1.2 million pre-seed funding round in September 2024.

Since 2010, the Kenyan accelerator has directly contributed to the formation of over 170 startups. It has collaborated with CcHub to invest $1.2 million in 36 edtech startups.

Startups like Twiga Foods, Mookh, and Sendy have directly benefitted from iHub’s accelerator, receiving funding, mentoring, and support. 

With operations across Nigeria, Rwanda, and Kenya, iHub is strengthening its pan-African footprint, connecting startups to funding and providing a growth framework for building strong companies in Africa. 

Its parent company, CcHub is also expanding into Togo with the launch of the Janta TechHub.

MTN Nigeria, the country’s largest telco, has decided to look inwards to select its next leaders. The telco appointed Yahaya Ibrahim as chief technical officer (CTO) and Onyinye Ikenna-Emeka as chief marketing officer (CMO), with both executives resuming on October 14, 2024.

Ibrahim joined MTN back in 2002 and has been quietly making history ever since. He helped bring Nigeria its first 4G and 5G networks and rolled out 37,000 kilometres of fibre optic infrastructure.

Ikenna-Emeka, on the other hand, is MTN royalty. She’s been with the company for 23 years and has climbed every corporate ladder imaginable, from sales to broadband. She played a key role in growing MTN’s fixed broadband subscriber base to 3 million. 

It’s hiring season in Nigeria’s telecoms market, as Globacom, 9Mobile, Airtel, and now MTN have all announced changes to one or more executive positions since July 2024.

The communications regulator recently announced a new subscriber measurement method that impacted all telcos’ subscriber numbers, with Globacom the hardest hit. The Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) now defines an active subscriber as a user who has performed at least one revenue-generating activity in the last 90 days.

Yet, MTN will be looking to bounce back from a slight slump that saw it lose around 3 million subscribers, to strengthen its market leadership status and widen the gap on Airtel, which follows closely in second place.

Both appointments of Ibrahim and Ikenna-Emeka show the telco’s focus on maintaining its market leadership through technological innovation and expanding broadband services. Ibrahim’s expertise in network infrastructure and Ikenna-Emeka’s extensive experience in sales and broadband strategy will likely play critical roles in achieving MTN’s goals of deeper penetration and improved service delivery in Nigeria’s competitive telecom sector.

While millions of videos are posted on TikTok daily, only a fraction of them violate the platform’s safety policies. On Saturday, Semafor reported that TikTok removed 360,000 videos—or 0.3% of the total videos uploaded in the country—over sexually explicit content in the second quarter of the year. 

TikTok, which is looking to avoid government scrutiny over content moderation for sexually explicit content, also banned nearly 60,000 accounts in Kenya for violating various community guidelines. 99.1% of the videos were proactively removed before users reported them, with 95% taken down within 24 hours. TikTok also pulled down videos containing ethnic incitement and violence. 

In Kenya, the proliferation of sexual content on TikTok has almost a bad form, leading the government to compel TikTok to share quarterly compliance reports. The firm also performed similar actions in Nigeria, removing over 2.1 million videos that violated its safety policies. According to TikTok, the removed videos did one or more of the following: incited hate, spammed, generated fake engagement, or provided viewers with misleading information.

Written by: Emmanuel Nwosu, Frank Eleanya, and Faith Omoniyi

Edited by: Olumuyiwa Olowogboyega