Nigeria boasts to be home to the largest economy in Africa, and with a population of over 210 million, it’s no surprise that the country is being referred to as the “Giant of Africa.” With all these positive sides to being a citizen/resident in the country comes a plethora of unexplored business opportunities.
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Some Hidden Business Opportunities in Nigeria
If you’re a budding entrepreneur looking for some business ideas to kickstart your career, you’ll want to continue reading this article. In subsequent writing, we will highlight and briefly discuss some lucrative hidden business opportunities in Nigeria.
Blogging
If you’re looking to delve into the world of owning an online business and working remotely, becoming a blogger should be your first choice. While that’s the case, the fact that your earnings come in dollars categorically sets you apart from other entrepreneurs operating with the Nigerian naira.Â
One reason why blogging is a great choice is because it’s relatively still under-explored in the country, and you don’t necessarily need to write to target your country alone. Also, you don’t need a lot of startup investment as only a PC, stable internet, quick blogging videos and time is all it takes.
Bloggers who choose to play in less congested blogging niches will get quicker results, blogging today is not just for people who are looking to make money with display ads like Google AdSense and Affiliate marketing.
Businesses are also leveraging business blogging to enhance their organic reach to more prospective customers, hence more small businesses are increasingly incorporating blogs on their websites as a means to provide informational and knowledge resources.
The reason why blogging is the next reliable way to earn online after YouTube is due to the ease of getting it started, you can create your own blog ( a type of website) in minutes and start publishing your own content, but there’s more to the art of successful blogging that doing just that.
If you’re interested in starting a blog that matters in Nigeria, I advise that you take time to go through some of our guides and resources on the subject, we have extensively addressed different aspects of business blogging, such as the best blogging niches to start a blog including some yet untapped ones, best blogging platforms to build a blog today, free keyword research tools, blogging mistakes you need to avoid, how to create blog posts that ranks and some niche-specific guides for Christian, Food, News and tech bloggers.
Freelancing
Freelancing is another business opportunity that can set you apart from other entrepreneurs in the country. The world is currently home to over 1.57 billion people who are freelancers many of whom are Nigerians, offering remote services to clients across the globe and earning their pay in dollars.
For this type of job, you don’t have to show up every day as you work from home and on a contract basis, the gig economy can also pave the way for you to become gainfully self-employed and eventually have your own startup with time.
It’s a surefire way to become a millionaire within a year as you can work on multiple niches from copywriting, to ghost blogging, to graphics design, to even long projects like web development. The only downside is that you may need to work your way up the freelancing ladder especially if you’re not using public freelance platforms like Upwork, Fiver, and Indeed.
Experienced freelancers soon matured from relying on the sharing economy greatly controlled by the above freelancing platforms to establishing their own network to offer services directly to their clientele. They do these by putting in place the forces of digital marketing such as social media marketing, content marketing, email marketing, and more.
Agriculture Storage Business
If you’ve got sufficient capital, this can be a very lucrative opportunity for you. The large and fast-growing population of Nigerians always needs to eat. It’s your opportunity to capitalize on this fact by investing in warehouses for food storage.Â
The good thing about this business is that you don’t necessarily need to own a farm, nor do you need to pay for all that’s in your warehouse right away. You can either strike deals with farmers and give ensure them a place to keep their produce while they pay rent, or jointly invest by buying and storing some products and then marking them up for a profit before they get to the market.
Digital & Affiliate Marketing
While digital marketing and affiliate marketing are largely two separate fields from making money online, you can combine them as one to improve your income flow. For digital marketing, all you need to learn is how to pick the right products you’d like to use for your affiliate marketing program. However, working as a digital marketer will mean you’re leveraging online tools to bring your client’s business to their target audience.
Social Media Influencing
Social media influencing is fast becoming a good employment opportunity for youth especially as almost any brand will collaborate with someone that has above 1000 followers. All you need do is create social media pages on platforms that work best for your content idea and start posting specific kinds of content that allow you to gather followers that are monetizable on the platform. Whatever the platforms you picked; be it Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, or TikTok, With time, as the algorithm favors you and you continue to gather more followers, you’re likely to attract brands in your niche or industry by default.
Start Livestock Farming
Livestock farming is also another lucrative business venture in the agricultural sector in Nigeria. With very few regulations, you can begin a small livestock farm in your backyard, and grow till you’re able to afford a standard livestock farm.
The good thing about this business venture is that you don’t necessarily need to look for customers; as it’s food, the customers pretty much handle themselves, just be ready to deliver. More so, for livestock like goats, cows, and chickens, there can be multiple monetizable sub-sectors.
DropShipping
Drop shipping is a very lucrative business that if done properly, can be more than enough to pay for the lifestyle you dream of. It’s a tech-driven way of starting a retail business without having to get a huge budget for inventory, rather you simply rely on a supplier, partner with them, get a catalog of their available products and prices, mark it up, and start marketing.
An example of this is the Bethelmendels dropshipping program. The e-commerce platform is into supplying artificial plants, home designing artifacts, and other decorative accessories. You can sign up for their dropshipping program and start promoting their products with a little markup on each product.Â
For example, the artificial palm plants fiberglass pot costs N45, 000 with them, you can mark up to N50,000 and promote to your prospects, and you make N5,000 profit when you make a sale. All you had to do was send an order for the item and submit the customer’s address to them so that they directly waybill the item to the customer.
Fashion Designing
Fashion design will always be a thing in Nigeria as long as people continue to wear clothes; especially Ankara and other bespoke traditional material. First, you’ll want to take your time to learn the skill, then with the right promotion, you’re almost sure of becoming an instant hit.Â
The only downside here is that you’re going to spend a lot of time learning the skill, and also to develop your customer base to the level where you start charging high prices. Once you can get these out of the way, you can lowkey build a fashion brand that bags millions daily from selling and making African print delights.
Podcasting
This business venture is relatively new in Nigeria, as such, you may want to delve in quickly to be one of the firstcomers. If you’ve got a knack for talking and you’re well-articulated, you can begin your podcast and start posting on listening platforms like Soundcloud, Spotify, and YouTube.
The only shortcoming here is that you’ll need to have a sizable following on other social media platforms like X, TikTok, Facebook, and Instagram to become an instant hit as you can’t rely on the algorithm alone.
Playground and/or Arcade Station
This is one business that’s gradually gaining popularity in Nigeria, especially with the growing population of gamers and fun seekers across the country. With enough capital, you can set up a playground/relaxation center where parents and guardians can bring their kids to have fun. If you’re able to get an arcade station running, you can organize periodic events to ensure a steady inflow of gamers.
The only blemish is that this business is a little more capital-intensive than others on the list. Despite it being an almost sure success, it’s not the best choice for most upcoming entrepreneurs.
Conclusion
There are a lot of businesses that are compatible with Nigeria’s economy. Although for this list, we prioritized businesses that may require time learning, there are some options like transportation, logistics, and fitness coach that require very little technical knowledge to start.
