Early in March 2025, I sat amidst a group of executives in a sleek conference room in Europe. Eager to learn about Africa’s digital market, they threw question upon question at me, but one of their questions, seemingly easy in nature, stood out for me as one question with the most complex answer: “What does your market need?”.
I began to explain, sharing data, real-life use cases, and insights drawn from Nigerian consumers.
But as I spoke, I could already sense the familiar gap widening. This was not a situation that they could easily understand; the uniqueness and complexity of it all was too much, and so even though they nodded politely, one of them soon countered with: “In Latin America, we used this solution, and it worked perfectly”. In sombre silence, I considered their assumption that all emerging markets are the same; that what worked in São Paulo will somehow work in Lagos.