- Nigeria’s Web3 startups raised $20M in 2024, led by infrastructure and finance.
- Nigeria contributed 4% of the global new Web3 developers in 2024.
- Blockchain now supports public services like land records and healthcare.
Hashed Emergent, a venture capital firm aimed at Web3 development in emerging markets, has released the first issue of the Nigeria Web3 Landscape report. This report aims to identify the current trends of Web3 in Nigeria with regard to the startups, the developers, the government, and the legal frameworks.
The publication also regards Nigeria as the leading Web3 market in Africa. These are pieces of information and views from the interviewees and data obtained from the main platform and literature. From the report, due to its level of developer engagement and earliest-stage startups, especially the practical adoption of the blockchain in Nigeria, the country is putting at a strategic position in Africa’s web3 economy.
Startup Activity and Funding Trends
The report reveals that Nigerian-origin web3 startups can boast of $130 million in total funding, with $20 million of the funding that they raised in 2024. Funding has been mainly focused on infrastructure and applications of financial technologies this year. Infrastructural startup received capital of $11 million, whereas financial startup received capital of $7 million for financing, whereas the figures depicted were a shocking $2 million in 2023, only the previous year.
Initial funding was the most represented funding type in 2024 due to grants from the blockchain ecosystems and the support from Layer 1 & Layer 2. However, there was a trend that rejoined the essential sectors, which was observed as the financings reduced for the entertainment and gaming vertical to $2 million from $17 million in 2023. Still, the continuous representation of developers in SocialFi and Gaming/NFT sectors suggests that they continue testing other forms besides primary funding processes.
Stablecoins have now featured immensely to be part of important Web 3 applications in Nigeria. These are now employed in cross-border transactions and as a medium of inflation and proving the trend of utilization beyond mere gambling, but as actual mediums of finance.
Developer Engagement and Workforce Trends
Another strength is Nigeria, which has now become the leading breeding ground for developers in Web 3.0. Technological advancement also saw the country gaining a remarkable increment of developers in 2024, with an estimated 28% making the total number touch one million and one hundred thousand developers. The report attributes 4% of all new global Web3 developers to Nigeria, the highest figure in Africa.
About 52% of Nigerian web3 developers are cobblers or younger than 27 years old, while 52% have entered the space in the past year. Many projects like Web3bridge, Superteam NG, and Web3Ladies that have fostered the hiring of fresh talents have been instrumental in the onboarding of talents, while training programs supported by ecosystems such as Solana, Base, and StarkNet have helped in the cultivation of new talent.
The employment landscape remains fluid. Half of the core developers do not work for a web3 company, even if 41% of them self-identified as freelancers. Even then, there are changes in the payment structure with 45% indicating that they receive compensation in stablecoins and 31% in cryptocurrencies like ETH, BTC, or SOL. Despite some disparity compared with global trends, the upcoming report is to reveal the augmentation of the opportunities to scoop international learnings from bounty programs and leadership positions in startups.
