So you finally landed that remote job—or you’re trying to get one. Maybe you’re a freelancer, a startup founder, or someone who’s just tired of Lagos traffic and wants to work in peace from Osogbo or Onitsha. Whatever your reason, remote work in Nigeria is real. But here’s the thing:…
Author: Smart Megwai
Smart Megwai
Smart is a technology journalist covering innovation, digital culture, and the business of emerging tech. His reporting for Innovation Village explores how technology shapes everyday life in Africa and beyond.
“I lost 8 years of WhatsApp chats—how do you even cope with that?” That sentence—raw, full of digital grief—was posted by someone who cleared their WhatsApp data after watching a YouTube “hack” to bypass the 6-hour SMS verification wait. No backup. No warning. Just silence where years of messages once…
In a country where many of us grew up with the quiet comfort of clinic visits, baby immunisation cards, and yellow booklets tucked into family drawers, it’s hard to imagine that over two million Nigerian children have never received even one vaccine. Not polio. Not measles. Not hepatitis. Nothing. That’s…
Imagine waking up one morning to find your phone completely useless—no calls, no texts, no data. But worse, you start getting emails about unauthorised withdrawals, strange OTP requests, and your WhatsApp suddenly logs out. Sounds like a scene from a hacker movie, right? Well, this happens every day in Nigeria—and…
Most of us have spent years building a digital life — accounts, emails, passwords, photos, files, subscriptions, bank apps, social media profiles, crypto wallets, cloud storage, and messages that hold a lifetime of memories. But here’s the uncomfortable truth: when we die, our online lives don’t just disappear. They linger.…
When a private fintech company steps in to do what entire state ministries of education and federal intervention funds have failed to do, we have to stop and ask: Who is really responsible for the future of Nigeria’s youth? Today, OPay announced a ₦1.2 billion, 10-year scholarship initiative for students…
For most African venture capitalists, the formula is familiar: payments, logistics, e-commerce, rinse, repeat. If it’s not another fintech claiming to “bank the unbanked,” it’s a last-mile delivery startup trying to ride the continent’s mobile revolution. But there’s a blind spot in this formula — a massive one. And it’s…
₦208,000 down. 15% commission. Daily costs slashed in half. If those numbers don’t jump out at you, they should. Bolt’s recent rollout of ₦3.2 million electric tricycles in Lagos isn’t just another pilot project to test the EV waters — it’s a real-time attempt to crack one of Africa’s hardest…
At first glance, it looks like a loyalty card. A simple digital ID bearing a name, a flag, a QR code. But what Peter Obi and his team have just launched is more than political branding. It’s a bold, data-driven experiment in organising a movement through technology — and it…
It’s official — WAEC and NECO are going digital. According to Nigeria’s Minister of Education, Dr. Tunji Alausa, Computer-Based Testing (CBT) will become the new normal for the country’s major secondary school exams starting in 2026. Objective papers will begin CBT rollout as early as November 2025, with full essay…
Once upon a time, you could go to work, clock out, and leave your private life… well, private. Today, that line is disappearing — and technology is a big part of the problem. The shocking scandal at Access Bank, where a staff member allegedly recorded over 400 secret videos of…
When MTN Group — Africa’s biggest mobile operator — announced it had suffered a cybersecurity breach last week, a lot of people shrugged it off. No money stolen. Core networks intact. “At least it’s not that bad,” right? Wrong. Because once you realise that millions of personal records could be…
When news broke this week that Oladapo Olalekan Fadugba, a Nigerian-born U.S. citizen, had been indicted in Florida for allegedly diverting over $690,000 in federal funds through wire fraud, the headlines followed a familiar formula: Nigerian. Fraud. Identity theft. To some readers, it’s just another chapter in the so-called “Nigerian…
Every year, malaria kills over 600,000 people globally—with Africa accounting for 96% of those deaths. On the surface, fighting this disease looks like a humanitarian effort. But dig deeper, and a compelling truth emerges: eradicating malaria is not just a moral obligation—it’s a scalable industry. This year, on World Malaria…
On May 1, 2025—International Workers’ Day—drivers for Bolt, Uber, and other e-hailing platforms in Lagos will stage a 24-hour strike. Their message is clear: “We will not be ignored.” And for anyone watching the gig economy in Africa, this isn’t just a protest—it’s a reckoning. The planned strike, organised by…
When the West African Examinations Council (WAEC) recently announced it had banned 574 secondary schools from conducting the 2025 WASSCE due to exam malpractice, the news sent shockwaves through Nigeria’s education sector. But beyond public outrage lies a deeper question: Can technology finally solve WAEC’s cheating crisis? The scale of…
The 2025 UTME kicked off today, with over 2 million candidates sitting for Nigeria’s biggest university entrance exam. But alongside the usual anxiety and expectations came a now-familiar shadow: cheating scandals. This year, the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) revealed it had deliberately created a fake “expo” website—and 180…
When WhatsApp quietly rolled out its new in-app translation feature to some Android beta users in 2025, most people saw it as a win for casual conversations and travel plans. But there’s another group that should be paying very close attention: small businesses. WhatsApp Business is already a lifeline for…
Africa has traditionally been viewed as a consumer of used vehicles from Asia, Europe, and America to fulfil its mobility needs. However, this perspective is shifting. Across the continent, both governments and manufacturers are driving a quiet revolution: local auto assembly. In countries such as Nigeria, Ghana, Kenya, Rwanda, and…
Electric vehicles are gaining momentum across Africa, but the biggest roadblock isn’t interest—it’s infrastructure. While developed markets rely on dense networks of charging stations and home chargers, many African cities and towns still struggle with unreliable power supply, limited grid coverage, and high electricity costs. That’s why one homegrown solution…