Joy Ekanem-Babasola
It is often said about Nigerians, that we are part of a culture that often celebrates hardship and truth because we romanticize survival against all odds, turning endurance into a badge of honor; This mindset is evident in everything from minor issues, like transportation difficulties, to major aspects, such as parenting, where there’s an expectation that others should experience the same struggles as past generations, rather than seeking a different or easier path, it is largely frowned upon, Laughable, is it? But you see in such an environment, innovation, though thriving in its own way, does not come easily. Yet Nigeria, and Africa more broadly, may be living through one of the most innovative moments in our history. The problem is that we rarely recognise it as such.
However, there’s a restlessness in the air for survival across Africa, one that no longer bows to borrowed dreams. From Lagos to Nairobi, young people are questioning a story that they did not write, a story shaped by foreign perceptions, recycled models and the myth that progress must look a certain way and must resemble someone else’s success.
Nigeria with its contradictions, its energy, its chaos, its defiant creativity, sits right at the heart of this reckoning. A nation once told to imitate is slowly remembering how to imagine. The question is not whether Africans can follow the world’s path, it is in why it keeps trying to.
Much of what the world celebrates as innovation, still comes wrapped in familiar aesthetics of the West, glossy tech launches, billion dollar valuation, and recycled language of descriptions and disruptions. But the African story has always sounded different. Our innovations rarely sparkle under stage lights, they emerge from the grit of daily life, from people solving real problems with the little they have.
Think of a young coder in Lagos who builds an app that works offline because he knows that millions of people cannot count on a stable internet. Or the women in rural East Africa who rewire solar kits to not only light their homes but also power small shops and charge neighbours’ phones. These are the kind of innovations you see and come in contact with in Africa, innovations that are quiet, and grounded in deep human reality. These are not off-brand versions of global ideas, these are inventions born from context, necessity, and from an understanding that silicon valley doesn’t even have the language to describe.
Yet the global conversation on innovation has narrowed, privileging a small group particularly tech startups backed by venture capital from San Francisco, London, or Berlin. The implicit message is that if your idea is not globally scalable, it is not valuable. But here lies the danger: scaling globally often strips away the very essence of African innovation. Take mobile money as an example. M-Pesa in Kenya did not emerge because Silicon Valley foresaw its usefulness; it emerged because millions of Kenyans were unbanked, but had access to basic mobile phones. That same model would have made little sense in the United States, where banking infrastructure was/is already entrenched.
Unfortunately, African innovators themselves sometimes undervalue their own creativity because it does not mirror global templates. We measure our ideas by how quickly they are understood in San Francisco boardrooms, forgetting that our reality is not the reality of Silicon Valley. For instance, digital banking solutions in Nigeria had to consider not just internet penetration, but electricity shortages and language barriers. These are not constraints; they are the fertile soil out of which meaningful, resilient innovations grow.
But here is the hard truth: as long as our ecosystems rely on foreign venture capital, our ideas will always be bent toward foreign expectations. Investors naturally want scale and returns that fit their worldview. This is why many African startups, once funded, are pushed to reframe their products for international markets. Scaling globally is not inherently bad; it can bring prestige and resources but it often dilutes the initial purpose. A product built to solve a local transport crisis suddenly becomes an export model stripped of its core.
What we need is a deliberate conversation about venture capital within Africa. While some funds exist, they remain far too few. Nigeria, Africa’s largest economy and a hub of youthful creativity, cannot continue outsourcing the financial backbone of its innovation. African capital must meet African ideas. This does not mean shutting out foreign investors; it means ensuring that local venture capital, philanthropy, and public-private partnerships prioritises homegrown solutions without pressuring them to “go global” prematurely.
Consider the informal sector innovations across Nigerian markets, the digital loan apps that help traders restock, or the community-based ride-hailing services adapted to poor road infrastructure. These may never become “unicorns,” but they transform lives daily. They are scalable within Nigeria, Africa, and perhaps within other parts of the Global South, but not necessarily in the West and that should not diminish their worth.
If we are serious about development, then we must broaden our definition of innovation and shift our gaze inward. Let us stop measuring our creativity by its global acceptance and start valuing it for what it does: meet the pressing needs of our communities. Africa does not need validation from Silicon Valley to innovate. What we need is belief in our own ingenuity, and the capital structures to sustain it.
The world does not need a version of someone else’s success, it needs an Africa that sounds like itself.
