Computer village is regarded as one of the biggest tech market in Africa. It started from a small street called Otigba market. A place formerly known as the annex of the Lagos state government secretariat. During the technology boom of 1999, Nigeria was not left out. Prior to the proliferation of mobile phones by the Olusegun Obasanjo, computer village had been the one stop shop for computer gadgets in Nigeria. The informal tech community that grew organically from a shop now sits on a 26 hectares of land and had started spreading its horizons into the Anifowose axis of Ikeja. It boasts of an average revenue of USD 12M with an annual growth 7.5%
There are always all kind of solutions to various gadgets and all kind of accessories. It accommodates a cluster of mobile phone, home grown technicians, software, and other accessories. The community lacks in civility, environmental friendliness, densely populated, and quite dangerous for newbies.
The government structure is mixed, partly democratic and partly monarchical. Previously, leaders of the market are selected by votes and these leaders’ report to the Iya-Loja of Lagos State (Lagos State Market Leader) but in recent times, there have been a beef up in the governance structure of computer village. The Iya-loja of Lagos state controls the governance of the tech community with other appointed in-market committee members as well as other formal and informal markets in Lagos. This system of government flows from the monarchical structure of the state “The Oba of Lagos and his Ijoye’s” (The King of Lagos and his Chiefs). The iya-loja, always female is a council member of the Chiefs is saddled with the responsibility of taxing the market people and in return, rendering some social services to the markets in Lagos. For computer village, the taxing system was segmented into different areas; car park levy, security levy, community levy, hawkers fee, sanitization levy and so forth.
The community development thrives through IT and telecommunication brands that takes up the responsibility to rebrand the buildings, free internet services, in order to promote their brands
Diving into its supply chain, tech accessories that comes into the country are restricted to 3 licensed distributors, one which is popularly known as TD — Technology Distribution. We also have the resellers like Crowncrystal technologies and other retail outlets in the supply channel. However, prices are of computer accessories are being decentralized to an informal competitive market.
The distributors are licensed to sell to the resellers only while the resellers operate on a B2B and B2C and the retail outlets basically on a B2C. The resellers buy these OEMs from the distributors at 3% margin. They can also take an alternative option of buying directly through FoB. Retail outlets are ought to operate on a B2C, however, they have rendered the chain to a ‘no-channel’ distribution by finding other means to do their business and now, prices are easily influenced.
Retail outlets, some unrecognized and unlicensed OEM partners build a catchy online presence and stiffen businesses for resellers by competing in the market share of individuals and corporate firms and this have its effect when businesses and customers seek repairs from service centers.
Written by Cesare Adeniyi-Martins — This article was originally written in 2020 by the author.
