The Lagos taxi driver roars across the biggest bridge in Africa at 110 mph. Buffeted by the night wind, it feels as if we're riding a motorbike.
I am with two South Africans and a guy from Silicon Valley. We’re all swilling from a bottle of so-called whisky, including the man behind the wheel. (When your taxi driver says his name is "Success," things can’t possibly go wrong.)
Lagos, Nigeria seems like an unlikely place for Africa’s major tech hub. The city's estimated population is 21 million people, and 30,000 more Africans are arriving every day.
Ten years ago, architect and author Rem Koolhaas co-wrote Mutation. After studying Nigeria’s biggest city, he says,"Lagos is not catching up with us; rather, we may be catching up with Lagos." He may have been right.
It seems fanciful to equate Lagos with a 21st century New York, as Koolhaas does. For all intents and purposes, the city should not operate at all. Its chaos outstrips that of Cairo or New Delhi.
But within the insanity, a new type of region is emerging.
In a city gridlocked by traffic after 6 a.m. and rampant with crime, Lagos offers non-mobile Internet. Wi-Fi is gut-wrenchingly slow. But despite its weak infrastructure, it stands because of its innovative residents and their hunger to succeed in the most competitive of environments.
May’s Mobile Web West Africa sold out its Lagos conference, bringing together companies, startups, inspiring investors and developers. The three-day event was the background to the emerging economic and inspired power of the region, and Lagos’s aspiration to be the city at the center of that universe.
Across Victoria Island to the "mainland" and over the bridge my taxi crossed, the city’s Co Creation Hub (CcHub) is a collaborative work space for young entrepreneurs and coders. It's close to the University of Lagos. Like similar spaces in Palo Alto, London, Berlin or Moscow, individuals converge in one space to share ideas. They even have the chance to meet VCs and angels looking for promising investments. It’s an amazing place.
But such meetup hubs compete with others around the continent. Nairobi has the iHub, a similar space, supported by companies like Google, Intel and Samsung. And the government recently announced plans for Konza Techno City — the finished project will reside 40 miles south of Nairobi, with aims to create 100,000 tech jobs by 2030.
Closer to Nigeria, the neighboring country of Ghana recently announced Hope City, a $10 billion hub in capital Accra that will see Africa’s tallest building emerge from shrubland. By 2016 Hope City will house 25,000 residents and will have created some 50,000 jobs.
Not to be outdone, South Africa has the JoziHub in Johannesburg, launched in February 2013, while Cape Town is attempting to brand itself as Silicon Cape by creating a non-profit, community-owned infrastructure that supports startups with capital and expertise.
Alas, Africa is replete with stories about great ambitions and grandiose projects that never see the light of day. Nigeria is no different.
Tinapa Resort, the planned shopping and commerce "paradise" in the Cross Rivers state, is a warning to all who believe that investment necessarily creates cities and jobs. More than $350 million was ploughed into the project, thought to boost business and tourism before it opened in 2007, based on a deep sea port in the city of Calabar, which did not exist or materialize. The resort gathered dust, becoming a ghost town — another African disaster.
That is, until the newly elected regional government announced the rehabilitation of Tinapa in the form of Tinapa Knowledge City, a private sector-driven investment to serve as an alternate ICT hub to Lagos.
The government, privately-owned Covenant University and oil company OANDO will create a campus and gas plant that will ultimately employ 10,000 people. Legendary Nigerian investor and influencer Harry Tomi Davies finds the new scheme one that costs a lot of money but is ultimately a burden, in other words, a "white elephant turned black by technology," he says.
Time will tell whether Tinapa emerges as a phoenix rather than a pachyderm. But in Nigeria, there is a sense that anything is possible — especially in Lagos, where the infrastructural impediments to success are driving entrepreneurship.
Nairobi, Accra, Johannesburg and Cape Town are all vying with Lagos to claim ownership of Last Frontier Africa, the continent of the 21st century.
Just ask my speeding taxi driver. He knows Success when he sees it.
Image via DERRICK CEYRAC/AFP/Getty Images
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