Stop building for 'ideal' networks: The messy reality of Nigerian tech

My generator is humming in the background right now, and I’m staring at a failed API response because one of our local telcos decided to go on a brief, unannounced holiday.

If you build software in Nigeria, you know this feeling. We spend half our lives writing clean code and the other half writing catch blocks to handle the bizarre ways our local infrastructure fails. While corporate boards reshuffle and big brands push out shiny new logos—like the recent 9mobile rebranding hype—those of us in the trenches are just trying to keep our ping rates under three digits.

We need to talk about what it actually takes to build tech that survives the Nigerian reality, away from the glossy press releases.

The regulator-to-board pipeline

Have you ever looked at the board composition of the massive telecom companies operating here? It is practically a retirement home for ex-regulators.

When the people who used to write the rules are suddenly sitting on the boards of the companies they used to regulate, you have to ask yourself: who is actually looking out for the indie developer or the small business owner?

As a builder, this corporate musical chairs game directly affects my work. It’s why getting access to USSD codes is still a bureaucratic nightmare that requires millions of Naira and months of waiting. It’s why open APIs from telcos are practically non-existent. The giants keep the playground small and the entry barriers incredibly high, leaving local builders to rely on expensive third-party aggregators just to send a basic OTP.

Why "Local Content" must mean more than policy papers

I recently listened to Engr. Banjo talking about local content in our telecom market. He’s spot on, but we need to take it a step further. Local content shouldn't just be about hiring local contractors or buying Nigerian-made cables. It needs to be about building tools that actually fit how Nigerians live.

Think about a trader in the chaotic rush of a market in Onitsha, or a student trying to learn coding during a cold morning in Jos. They aren't using the latest iPhones on unlimited 5G. They are managing tight data budgets, dealing with "Sapa," and using mid-range Android devices with limited storage.

If we want true local tech, we have to build for these constraints.

That means optimizing our payloads. It means realizing that a 15MB app update is a major financial decision for your user. If your app requires a constant, high-speed connection to perform a basic database query, you’ve already lost the market outside the bubbles of Gbagada or Victoria Island.

The case for dynamic billing

There is some noise lately about advocating for dynamic billing to protect consumers. Honestly, we need this yesterday.

Right now, our data pricing is rigid. You buy a bundle, and it ticks away whether you get a solid 4G connection or a crawling 2G signal that barely loads a text file. If I’m getting terrible service in a remote part of Ogun State, why am I paying the same rate as someone sitting right next to a mast in Lagos?

Dynamic billing is the kind of consumer-first thinking that forces providers to actually improve their service quality.

For developers, it also opens up interesting ideas. Imagine if we could design our apps to consume less data—or swap to offline-first modes—based on real-time network pricing. We could build products that adapt to the user's economic reality in real-time.

At the end of the day, we can’t wait for the big corporations or the ex-regulator boards to make things easier for us. We have to keep building with the assumption that the network will fail, the power will go off, and the user is counting every single kilobyte.

That is how we build things that actually last here. No gree for anyone, just keep shipping.