Tag Archives: Nigerian businesses

AMA, Business, Environment

Nigeria’s Heat Crisis Is Fueling a New Wave of Startups

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LAGOS, Nigeria, 29 April 2026 -/African Media Agency(AMA)/ – As heat intensifies across Nigeria, a new cohort of ventures is developing solutions to protect crops, reduce food spoilage and livestock losses, and equip hospitals and outdoor workers to anticipate and withstand extreme conditions.

BFA Global, FSD Africa, ClimateWorks Foundation, and the UK’s Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO) Nigeria have selected 10 early-stage ventures to join the inaugural cohort of the TECA Heat Action Wave (THAW) program focused on accelerating solutions to extreme heat.

The 10 selected ventures are:

  • Ofemini Global Limited provides a heat-resilient logistics platform that helps farmers transport perishable goods efficiently, reducing spoilage caused by extreme temperatures through optimized routing and heat monitoring.
  • Agiletech Operations Consulting Limited provides a hyperlocal early-warning system that delivers climate and heat alerts through accessible channels, enabling farmers and micro-entrepreneurs to anticipate risks and take preventive action.
  • Emplaris develops a predictive energy and heat-risk intelligence system for healthcare facilities, helping hospitals anticipate outages and manage equipment stress during extreme heat events.
  • Doorcas Africa delivers an AI-powered livestock health and co-ownership platform that enables early disease detection and prevention, helping farmers reduce heat-related livestock mortality and improve productivity.
  • Farmxic offers an AI-driven soil and crop diagnostics platform that helps farmers adapt to heat-induced soil degradation and crop stress through real-time insights and personalized recommendations.
  • Farm Fresh Grocery Ltd. builds a climate-resilient agricultural system combining heat-adaptive beekeeping, herb production, and consumer products to stabilize yields and supply under rising temperatures.
  • Farmslate Technologies Limited provides a climate intelligence platform that translates satellite and weather data into actionable insights, enabling farmers and financial institutions to manage heat-related risks and improve decision-making.
  • Let-It-Cold offers a solar-powered, portable cooling solution that helps small businesses and households preserve perishable goods during extreme heat and power outages.
  • Pod develops a climate-resilient sanitation system that prevents failure and contamination in heat- and flood-prone environments through on-site treatment and water reuse.
  • TheHyWing Ltd provides a climate-smart digital health platform that combines heat alerts, AI diagnostics, and telemedicine to prevent heat-related health risks among outdoor workers and vulnerable populations.

Together, the ventures address some of the most immediate and under-addressed impacts of extreme heat across Nigeria, including food spoilage and cold chain gaps, heat-induced soil degradation and crop stress, livestock disease and productivity loss, health risks for outdoor workers, and system failures in energy, healthcare, and sanitation infrastructure. They range from early-stage concepts to minimum viable products, reflecting both the urgency of the problem and the early development of solutions in this emerging space.

The cohort reflects a growing innovation ecosystem across Nigeria, with ventures operating in multiple regions. The companies are based in Lagos, Kaduna, and Edo States. This geographic spread underscores the breadth of climate innovation emerging across the country and reinforces TECA’s commitment to supporting founders building locally relevant solutions nationwide.

Selected from a competitive pool, the ventures will each receive $56,000 in funding along with hands-on venture-acceleration support, including user validation, product development, business model design, and investor readiness. Each team will work with embedded venture builders and technical experts to accelerate their path to scale. Six of the ten selected ventures have a female co-founder.

“Extreme heat is rapidly becoming one of the biggest operational risks facing African economies, yet it remains dramatically underinvested,” said Tyler Ferdinand, TECA Director at BFA Global. “Through TECA’s Heat Action Wave, we’re backing entrepreneurs building the tools, services, and financial products that will allow people, businesses, and cities to function in a hotter world. Our goal is not only to support these ventures but to prove that climate adaptation can become a powerful new investment frontier.”

Juliet Munro, Director, Early Stage Finance, at FSD Africa, said: “If climate adaptation finance is going to scale in Africa, it has to be grounded in real, investable solutions. This group of innovators tackling extreme heat is important because it shows what those solutions look like in practice, and that’s what gives markets the confidence to follow. At FSD Africa, our role is to help turn early innovation like this into something markets can actually back.”

“The cost of inaction on climate change is growing, as over 70% of workers around the world are at risk from deadly extreme heat. At the same time, momentum for adaptation is growing, as we see both more funding and more innovation. These new business ventures are strong, community-led solutions that can accelerate resilience in Nigeria and more broadly in the West African region,” said Jessica Brown, Senior Director of Adaptation and Resilience at ClimateWorks Foundation.

“Responding to climate change is central to Nigeria’s future growth and resilience. The UK is excited to support this cohort of ambitious Nigerian businesses developing transformative solutions to extreme heat. TECA’s Heat Action Wave is part of a broader UK partnership with Nigeria that backs private sector–led innovation, creates jobs, and drives shared prosperity for both our countries as we transition to a greener economy,” said Temi Akinrinade, Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office, Nigeria.

The program will run through 2026, culminating in demo days and investor engagement opportunities, with follow-on support available for top-performing ventures.

Distributed by African Media Agency (AMA) on behalf of BFA Global

About BFA Global
BFA Global is an impact innovation firm that combines research, advisory, venture building, and investment expertise to build a more inclusive, equitable, and resilient future for underserved people and the planet. We partner with leading public, private and philanthropic organisations, global and local, to catalyse innovation ecosystems for impact across emerging markets. Since 2006, we have completed 646 projects completed in over 107 countries, supported 250+ ventures in Africa, Latin America, and Asia, who have collectively raised $1B+ in follow-on funding, and have a survival rate above 80% (global average is ~20%), and built a network of 100+ global and African investors, innovators, and funders. Learn more at https://bfaglobal.com/.

About FSD Africa
FSD Africa is a specialist development agency funded through UK Development operating in more than 30 countries working to help make finance work for Africa’s future. Based in Nairobi, FSD Africa’s team of financial sector experts work alongside governments, business leaders, regulators, and policymakers to achieve policy and regulatory reform, capacity strengthening, and improving financial infrastructure, to address systemic challenges in Africa’s financial markets. Since 2017, the organisation’s strategy has evolved to prioritise solutions to Africa’s most critical challenges: economic, social, and environmental. The organisation has worked to promote investment into the continent’s green economy, as well as its rates of financial inclusion and gender equality. FSD Africa – previously known as Financial Sector Deepening Africa – was founded in 2012 and is based in Nairobi, Kenya. For more information, please visit:https://www.fsdafrica.org

About ClimateWorks Foundation
ClimateWorks Foundation is a catalyst for accelerating climate progress, driving bold solutions that benefit people and the planet. We connect funders and implementing organizations worldwide to create and scale transformative solutions across sectors and geographies, achieving faster, greater impact together. Since 2008, ClimateWorks has granted over $2 billion to more than 850 grantees across 50 countries, working alongside 80 funders.

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AMA, Business, Technology

Business leaders, innovators meet at SAP Innovation Day in Lagos

MaraviPost

LAGOS, Nigeria, September 18th, 2025-/ West African business leaders, technology partners and SAP experts met in Lagos this week to explore a bold new vision for business to thrive in an increasingly competitive technology environment. 

Shiraz Khota, Managing Director: Emerging Africa at SAP, said: “Organisations across the region are leveraging the latest technologies to build a trusted foundation for AI and amplify their insights and processes to transform the way they work. From harnessing collaborative AI agents to solve complex problems and accelerate decision-making, to seamlessly connecting their entire business value chain, West Africa’s business community is gearing up to unleash their full potential powered by cloud, data and AI.”

The comments were made at SAP Business Suite Innovation Day on September 17th, a special event for SAP customers and partners to showcase how SAP Business Data Cloud and SAP Business AI come together to deliver exceptional value as part of the SAP Business Suite.

Experts from across the SAP ecosystem provided behind-the-scenes insights into the power of business AI and cloud, and how these new innovations combine powerful cloud applications with the most contextual and reliable data to enable collaborative AI agents to tackle the most difficult business challenges with confidence. 

The event also included presentations by regional business leaders who have successfully leveraged SAP technologies to accelerate growth and unlock new capabilities.

Juzar Badami, Group Head: SAP Centre of Excellence at Dangote Industries Limited, shared some insight into how the company leverages cloud technologies to power growth and drive efficiency. Dangote Industries Limited is the largest conglomerate in West Africa and one of the largest on the African continent, employing more than 30 000 people.

“Succeeding in today’s fast-paced business landscape requires strong foundations built on the latest technologies. Critical to this is a modernised enterprise resource planning landscape that enables organisations to fully leverage the power of emerging technologies, all built on a clean-core strategy that ensures the business has access to real-time, accurate data for decision-making.”

Titilayo Adewumi, Country Managing Director for Nigeria at SAP, said: “Africa’s greatest wealth lies in its people, including our fast-growing youth population. Our ability to cultivate the right mix of skills is critical to our digital transformation ambitions, especially as we rush to leverage the power of AI and cloud in our businesses.

Research conducted by SAP found that half of Nigerian businesses expected a ‘significant’ increase in demand for AI skills this year. The SAP Africa’s AI Skills Readiness Revealed report also found that 93% of Nigerian companies already experience a negative impact on their innovation capabilities due to a lack of access to AI skills. The same report revealed that West Africa was the region most likely to partner with expert third-party providers to fill the AI skills gap in their organisations.

Khota adds: “The region stands at the edge of a new era of growth and innovation powered by data, cloud and AI, and supported by a workforce geared for our emerging technologies. To ensure this collective effort succeeds, organisations need access to the right skills. While efforts at developing AI-ready skills are underway, companies should also explore ways to augment their skills base in the short term by partnering with our thriving ecosystem of expert partners and collaborators powering business transformation in the region.

Distributed by African Media Agency (AMA) on behalf of SAP Africa.

Visit the SAP News Center. Follow SAP on Twitter at @SAPNews.

About SAP

As a global leader in enterprise applications and business AI, SAP (NYSE:SAP) stands at the nexus of business and technology. For over 50 years, organizations have trusted SAP to bring out their best by uniting business-critical operations spanning finance, procurement, HR, supply chain, and customer experience. For more information, visit www.sap.com.

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Technology

Nigeria sees accelerated cloud uptake as companies push digital transformation

Maravi Post Reporter
5-G
5G is generally seen as the fifth generation cellular network technology that provides broadband access. The industry association 3GPP defines any system using “5G NR” software as “5G”, a definition that came into general use by late 2018

By Olajide Osho-Thomas, Sales Executive at Infobip Nigeria

17 September 2020, MaraviPost: Nigerian businesses are becoming increasingly innovative as they implement digital transformation strategies, finding new ways to improve business processes with the use of technology that will ultimately yield better efficiency and cost savings for the business.

The country’s key technology stakeholders are in the financial services sector, which is resulting in a push for broader financial inclusion by government and sector regulators. Currently, about 40% of Nigeria’s adult population are financially excluded. The goal is to address this and instead drive financial inclusion up to 80% by the end of 2020.

Traditional banks, which are facing growing competition from emerging fintechs, are having to embrace digital solutions to improve service levels and reach a broader customer base. Fintechs are inherently lighter, smaller and leverage technology to move quickly to capture as much of the market as possible.

The technology drive in the financial sector is also precipitating a boost for cloud adoption in Nigeria, as fintechs usually have a cloud-first strategy that enable them to be more agile and flexible. Conventional banks are following suit as they need to keep abreast with the technology innovation driven by the new market entrants.

However, the COVID-19 pandemic has been the unexpected pivotal accelerator for cloud adoption, as it forced companies to set up remote working environments swiftly and efficiently. In most cases, businesses did not have time to deploy additional infrastructure to scale up storage and performance capacity, so cloud was the logical choice.

Expansion of coverage

At the same time, the principal inhibitor to cloud adoption – namely latency that resulted from inadequate bandwidth availability – has mostly been removed, as Nigeria has seen a recent largescale expansion of 4G coverage.

Also central to the current digital transformation push, underpinned by gradual cloud adoption among larger enterprises, is process automation, and it is easy to imagine that in the near future, all business processes will be automated.

Aside from cost savings and better efficiencies, customer demand also propels process automation, and this is clearly evident from organisations’ addition of chatbot solutions to their communication channels.

In a bid to enhance the Customer Experience (CX), companies are increasingly adding chatbot functionality to communications channels such as live chats, mobile applications and recently to chat apps like WhatsApp, to provide customer support.

Industries such as finance, retail, telecommunications, and healthcare can harness the power of multichannel communication and even conduct two-way conversations with customers, allowing them to transact with the brand. Enterprises can also keep their finger on the pulse of customer sentiment and preferences through automated processes that require minimal human intervention.

Reaching out effectively

Nigeria currently has about 60 million smartphone users and organisations that want to reach these users and they need to do so on most or all the channels that are available such as WhatsApp, SMS, voice or email, among others.

Companies that want to thrive need to adopt an omnichannel approach, that in turn will lead to improved CX as they can reach customers on their preferred channels. This enhances brand perception and builds confidence, as not only do customers know that they are dealing with an innovative company, but they can also communicate with it when and how they want.

Nigerian businesses need to act now and fast track their digital strategies to become more agile, competitive and customer centric. They need to look in the direction of automated multichannel communication, which – when supported by the capabilities of a fully integrated technology platform – can fully realise its potential as a key business differentiator and reliable growth driver.