Nigeria’s top internet entrepreneurs
17Who are the top internet entrepreneurs in Nigeria? These are the sort of questions we will be answering in our on-going internet and blogging series on CP-Africa. This weekend, we published a list of the top blogs in Nigeria. You can read the full list here.
We have picked the top entrepreneurs in Nigeria by focusing on Nigerians who have launched the most popular Nigerian websites online. We have chosen not to include newspapers on the list with the exception of Sahara Reporters whose founder we think qualifies as an internet entrepreneur.
Here is a list of Nigeria’s top internet entrepreneurs. Please note that we identified them based on how popular their websites rank on Alexa.com. Though these ranks may shift from time to time, in general, the sites that rank well remain fairly stable.
How Alexa measures a website’s popularity
The rank by country is calculated using a combination of average daily visitors and pageviews from users from that country.
Nigeria’s top internet entrepreneurs
1. Seun Osewa (Founder, Nairaland.com)
Seun Osewa founded Nairaland.com in March, 2005 and has since grown it to become the most popular website in Nigeria run by a Nigerian. At Nigeria’s 8th most visited website (as at the time of this post), Nairaland is visited more often than Twitter and Windows Live and is just below Wikipedia which currently ranks as number 7. The website currently has about 650,000 user accounts and he is the sole employee of the site. You can read all about his Nairaland story on CP-Africa here. Seun also runs Nairalist.com, a Nigerian classified ads site.
2. Prince Nwabeke (Founder, Nigerian Best Forum)
Prince Nwabeke’s part forum, part social networking site, Nigerian Best Forum is currently ranked number 19 in Nigeria. His forum/social network is more popular than Microsoft’s Bing and WordPress in Nigeria. To learn more about him, you can check out his profile on Nigerian Best Forum here.
3. Dvt and Dguy (Nicknames) (Co-Founders, Naija Hot Jobs)
Dvt and Dguy (nicknames) are the co-owners of Naija Hot Jobs, a Nigerian jobs and career community. Naijahotjobs currently ranks number 34 in Nigeria and is currently more popular than Aol.com and About.com. The two brothers also own Naijapals.com.
Author’s note/Update, May 27th, 2011: The site’s founders would like to maintain anonymity hence our decision to use their nicknames
4. Omoyele Sowore (Founder, SaharaReporters.com)
Omoyele Sowore is the founder of Sahara Reporters, Nigeria’s leading citizen journalism site. The site currently ranks number 38 in Nigeria. Sowore previously worked with Jonathan Elendu of Elendu Reports before starting Sahara Reporters. To learn more about Sowore and his founder story watch this video here. Also read more about Sahara Reporters recent funding news here.
5. Joy Uko (Founder, NigeriaGalleria.com)
Joy Uko is Founder of NigeriaGalleria.com, a Nigerian information portal. The portal is made up of a business directory and features jobs, forums and many more offerings. It currently ranks number 46 in Nigeria.
Please note again that these are based strictly on Alexa rankings as of today, Tuesday May 24, 2011 and not our subjective opinion.
Honorable mention: Jason Njoku of Nollywood Love. Though his You Tube channel is still rising in popularity and may not match the sites above in traffic numbers, we admire his innovative approach of digitizing Nigeria’s movie industry through content deals with Alaba producers.
To read more about Nigeria’s internet and blogging culture, read our recent post on the top blogs in Nigeria.







