Yes, I included that in the brackets. There's roughly ~240M registered SIMs, but unlike American phone line where you sign a contract, Nigerian SIMs are bought OTC and are quite disposable. But, they're tied to the National Identity Number which is biometric and hard/impossible to circumvent.
It's quite common to have up to 2-3-4 SIMs also. When when you account for that, you have ~60M-80M-100M phone users.
Another proxy is the Bank verification Number, which like I said, is Nigeria's Social Security Number, but for banking. Can't have a bank account without it. Even in the super-rural parts of Northern Nigeria, they're still banked, which is impossible without a BVN.
Now, there's been ~66M BVNs issued so far, according to a recent update. If we assume that covers the bulk of the adult population (remember, you can do literally nothing without a BVN) and several million teenagers, and account for the median age being 19 (that is, half the entire population is beneath that age), we can infer that Nigeria's population is close to 2* the BVN count.
My best guess is 120M to 140M max given the measurable, unfalsifiable proxies.
I'm strangely bullish on Nigeria. The population stats and the work y'all are doing is just amazing to me. The EkoAltantic project is so big but under the radar that I love it. I keep trying to tell my management that we need to invest in West Africa today to build up brand loyalty now.
What are you thoughts on Nigeria's future in the next 50 years or so?
Yes, I included that in the brackets. There's roughly ~240M registered SIMs, but unlike American phone line where you sign a contract, Nigerian SIMs are bought OTC and are quite disposable. But, they're tied to the National Identity Number which is biometric and hard/impossible to circumvent.
It's quite common to have up to 2-3-4 SIMs also. When when you account for that, you have ~60M-80M-100M phone users.
Another proxy is the Bank verification Number, which like I said, is Nigeria's Social Security Number, but for banking. Can't have a bank account without it. Even in the super-rural parts of Northern Nigeria, they're still banked, which is impossible without a BVN.
Now, there's been ~66M BVNs issued so far, according to a recent update. If we assume that covers the bulk of the adult population (remember, you can do literally nothing without a BVN) and several million teenagers, and account for the median age being 19 (that is, half the entire population is beneath that age), we can infer that Nigeria's population is close to 2* the BVN count.
My best guess is 120M to 140M max given the measurable, unfalsifiable proxies.
Hey, thanks for the inspiration de look here.
I'm strangely bullish on Nigeria. The population stats and the work y'all are doing is just amazing to me. The EkoAltantic project is so big but under the radar that I love it. I keep trying to tell my management that we need to invest in West Africa today to build up brand loyalty now.
What are you thoughts on Nigeria's future in the next 50 years or so?
This is fascinating, thank you for bringing this to the discussion!