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By Sodiq Adebara
Nigeria has talent, but the system is failing it- 32 year old UAE-based tech professional
Abubakar Bello is a financial markets and technology professional with nearly a decade of experience across Nigeria, the UAE, and the United Kingdom. He is a graduate of Business Administration from the prestigious Bayero University, Kano, and holds the Project Management Professional (PMP®) and Certified Business Analysis Professional (CBAP®) certifications.
He is a co-founder of MALhub, a Nigerian technology training and innovation hub, and has worked across financial services, fintech, commercial strategy, and project delivery within global institutions. In this interview with some journalists in Ilorin, the 32-year-old Ilorin-born tech expert speaks about his experiences in the UAE and the UK, talent development in Nigeria, and the country’s unemployment rate.
You have worked in Nigeria, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), and the United Kingdom. What are the biggest misconceptions Nigerians have about building globally competitive careers, and what lessons should we be borrowing from those economies?
The biggest misconception is that a globally competitive career is primarily about location. Most young Nigerians I speak with believe the problem is where they are. In my experience, the real problem is what they have built and how clearly they can demonstrate it to someone who does not share their context.
When I was managing high-net-worth clients in Dubai, nobody asked me where I was from during the first conversation. They asked what I could do for them. That question—“What can you do?”—is the real filter in global markets.
The second misconception is that international credentials are a luxury. I would argue that they are among the most cost-effective investments a Nigerian professional can make. A PMP® certification is recognised in over 200 countries. According to PMI’s 2025 Earning Power Survey, PMP-certified professionals earn a median of 24 per cent more than their non-certified peers globally. In the UAE and the UK, that credential serves as immediate verification of competence because employers cannot evaluate your Nigerian institution by name alone. The same applies to the CFA, CBAP, AWS certifications, and others.
The lesson I would borrow most urgently from the UAE is that the country deliberately positioned itself as a place where competence is rewarded regardless of origin. Nigeria has the talent. What it has not yet built is the regulatory, institutional, and cultural infrastructure that enables talented people to stay and perform at their best.
Nigeria has one of the youngest populations in the world, yet unemployment and underemployment remain major challenges. What do you believe is fundamentally broken in our talent development system?
The system is not broken in one place; it is misaligned in several places at once, and those misalignments compound over time.
The first misalignment is between what universities teach and what employers—both local and international—actually need. We produce graduates who are theoretically proficient but practically underprepared. The WEF Future of Jobs Report 2025 found that 40 per cent of core skill sets globally will be transformed or become obsolete by 2030. In Nigeria, where curricula change more slowly and industry-academia partnerships are weaker, the recalibration required is likely to be even greater.
The second misalignment is how we define and develop talent. Nigeria has enormous raw talent, the resourcefulness of young Nigerians solving problems with inadequate resources demonstrates that clearly. But raw talent, without structured development, mentorship, and market exposure, does not translate into employable or entrepreneurial capability at scale.
The third, and perhaps the most underappreciated, misalignment is between what young people are told success looks like and what actually builds it. There is a dominant cultural narrative that celebrates the outcome of success without adequately modelling the process. The process is usually unglamorous. It involves years of deliberate skill-building, credential accumulation, consistent output, and learning from setbacks.
Through MALhub, we have found that the young people who transform their trajectories most dramatically are not always the most academically gifted. They are the ones who commit to a specific skill, practise it with discipline, and find a community that holds them accountable. That is a system design problem, not an individual character problem.
Through MALhub, you have trained thousands of people and supported more than 1,000 businesses. Looking back, what patterns have you noticed about why some young entrepreneurs succeed while many others struggle?
The pattern that stands out most clearly is this: the entrepreneurs who succeed are not the ones with the most ambitious ideas; they are the ones who fall in love with solving a specific problem rather than with the idea of being an entrepreneur.
The entrepreneurs who struggle most consistently spend disproportionate energy on branding and social media before they have a single paying customer. They are building the appearance of a business rather than testing whether the business is viable. The ones who succeed do the opposite. They find the smallest possible version of their solution, put it in front of real people as quickly as possible, and let reality do the teaching.
The second pattern is mentorship. Almost every entrepreneur who broke through had someone—a more experienced professional or sector expert, who gave them honest feedback rather than mere encouragement. Encouragement is cheap and abundant. Honest feedback is rare and valuable. Those who actively sought constructive criticism consistently outperformed those who sought validation.
The third is financial discipline. Many young Nigerian entrepreneurs mix business revenue with personal income too early. Those who scale their businesses maintain a clear separation between the business’s finances and their own, even when resources are limited.
I should also acknowledge one important reality: some talented entrepreneurs fail not because they did anything wrong, but because of the environment. Unreliable power supply, limited access to credit, unstable exchange rates, the depreciation of the naira, inadequate infrastructure, and regulatory complexity can make the cost of persistence simply too high. Individual resilience has its limits when the environment is working against you.
Artificial Intelligence is disrupting industries globally. Should Nigerian professionals be worried about losing jobs, or should they see AI as the biggest opportunity of this generation?
Neither pure fear nor uncritical optimism serves Nigerian professionals well here. The honest answer is more nuanced than either.
AI will displace jobs. The WEF Future of Jobs Report 2025, drawing on surveys of more than 1,000 employers across 55 economies, projects that 92 million jobs will be displaced by automation by 2030. In financial services, specifically, routine processing and compliance roles are already declining. If your current role consists primarily of predictable, pattern-based tasks, you should be preparing now.
However, the same report projects that 170 million new roles will be created during the same period, representing a net gain of 78 million jobs globally. What is particularly relevant is that 64 per cent of African workers reported using AI at work in the past year, according to PwC’s Africa Workforce Hopes and Fears Survey 2025, compared with the global average of 54 per cent. This means African professionals are not passive bystanders in the AI transition.
The opportunity I see most clearly lies at the intersection of AI literacy and domain expertise. An AI tool can generate financial analysis, but it cannot replace a professional who understands whether that analysis is contextually appropriate for a West African client, a Gulf investor, or a development finance institution. The hybrid professional who understands both the technology and the human context in which it operates will be the most valuable over the next decade.
My practical recommendation is for people to stop asking whether AI will take their jobs and start asking what AI cannot do within their specific domain. That gap is where they should invest over the next two years of their professional development.
Many young Nigerians believe relocating abroad is the only path to success. Having lived and worked across three countries, do you agree, or can world-class careers still be built from Nigeria?
I will give you the honest answer rather than the comfortable one: both are true simultaneously, and conflating them leads to poor decisions.
Relocating abroad genuinely raises the ceiling for many Nigerian professionals in terms of earning potential, institutional exposure, professional networks, and access to research. I have experienced this firsthand. Working in global financial institutions in the UAE gave me access to individuals, knowledge, tools, and professional standards that would have taken much longer to encounter in the Nigerian market alone.
But I have also seen Nigerian professionals relocate and spend their first three years rebuilding from scratch in markets where nobody knew them, working on employer-sponsored visas, living in expensive cities, and separated from their support networks. Relocation is not automatically progress. It is a high-variance decision that rewards those who are prepared and punishes those who are not.
My advice to any young professional is to make that decision based on their individual circumstances and level of preparation, not on social pressure or the fear of being left behind. If you have built genuine skills, verifiable credentials, and a strong professional network, the decision to relocate becomes a strategic choice rather than an escape. If you have not built those things, changing your location will not solve the underlying problem.
And yes, world-class careers can still be built from Nigeria. The remote work economy has made that increasingly possible. Nigerian tech professionals are earning in dollars while living in Lagos. The constraint is no longer geography; it is preparation and positioning.
Nigeria has produced several billion-dollar fintech companies, yet millions remain financially excluded. Has fintech truly transformed the economy, or has its impact been overstated?
The honest answer is that fintech has been genuinely transformative in some respects and overstated in others. We need to be precise about which is which.
The transformation that is real and measurable is financial access. In Nigeria, 83 per cent of adults now use mobile banking. The country’s fintech sector contributed approximately 19 per cent to GDP in 2024, while more than 76 per cent of Nigerian fintech startups are profitable. Africa processed more than $1.4 trillion in mobile money transactions in 2025, representing 66 per cent of global mobile money transaction volume. These are significant achievements.
However, financial access and financial capability are not the same thing. Millions of Nigerians now have mobile wallets who previously had none. Yet many still lack the knowledge to invest, manage risk, build long-term savings, or protect themselves against the growing wave of financial fraud that accompanies expanded access. Financial inclusion without financial literacy creates a population that can access fintech products but cannot consistently use them to build wealth.
There is also a concentration problem. The fintech boom has largely served urban, educated, smartphone-owning Nigerians. The truly financially excluded—rural populations, women in underserved communities, and informal sector workers remain more difficult and less commercially attractive to serve. That does not diminish fintech’s achievements; it simply means the work is not yet complete.
So, has fintech been transformative? Yes. Is it sufficient? Not yet.
There is growing concern that Africa is producing consumers of technology rather than creators of it. What will it take for Nigeria to become a genuine exporter of innovation instead of merely importing digital solutions?
This concern is legitimate, but the picture is more complex than the “consumers versus creators” narrative suggests.
Nigeria, and Africa more broadly, consume digital solutions at scale. Most of the dominant platforms, including social media platforms, cloud infrastructure, and many of the devices we use, are designed and owned elsewhere. That dependence is real and carries long-term implications for economic sovereignty.
However, genuine innovation is also taking place. Nigeria’s fintech ecosystem has produced companies such as Flutterwave, Paystack, and Moniepoint, which are not only serving African markets but are also exporting solutions. The question is not whether innovation exists; it is whether it is occurring at the scale Africa’s potential demands.
What will shift the balance? In my view, three things. First, greater investment in technical education that goes beyond consumer literacy to focus on creation-coding, data science, hardware design, and systems architecture. Second, a regulatory environment that encourages experimentation through regulatory sandboxes, clear intellectual property frameworks, and procurement policies that give local innovators a genuine opportunity to compete. Third, patient capital that is willing to support African founders through the difficult middle stages of building businesses, not just the exciting early stages.
What MALhub is trying to achieve at the community level is exactly this: producing people who build technology, not just people who use it. But that effort must be matched by supportive public policy if Nigeria is to achieve the scale it needs.
If you had the opportunity to advise the Federal Government on just three reforms that could unlock youth productivity and wealth creation within the next decade, what would they be?
I would focus on three reforms that address root causes rather than symptoms.
First, make power supply reliable. The economic multiplier of reliable electricity is extraordinary. Every business that relies on a generator is spending money that could otherwise be invested as capital, retained as profit, or paid as salaries. The World Bank estimates that power sector inefficiency costs Nigeria approximately 2–4 per cent of its GDP annually. Until this is resolved, every other intervention will operate at a discount.
Second, reform the education-to-employment pipeline through mandatory industry-academia partnerships. Make it a condition of institutional accreditation that universities maintain active, measurable partnerships with industries that employ their graduates. Require curricula to be reviewed with employer input every three years. The CFA, PMP, and CBAP models are instructive. Employers around the world trust these credentials because the professional bodies behind them continuously align them with market needs.
Third, build a functional and accessible early-stage capital market for SMEs. The single most common reason viable Nigerian businesses fail to scale is not a lack of talent or ideas, it is access to capital. Not the microfinance products that already exist, but genuinely patient and reasonably priced capital for businesses that fall between the micro-enterprise stage and the bankable threshold. This is the “valley of death” for Nigerian entrepreneurship, and it is an area that policy has not adequately addressed.
The challenge in Nigeria is not the absence of good policy ideas; it is the implementation gap. The real question is whether there is sufficient political will and institutional capacity to execute them.
Many young people chase quick wealth through social media trends, crypto speculation, or shortcuts. From your experience in financial markets, what does sustainable wealth creation actually look like?
I will start with what sustainable wealth creation is not, because there is enough noise around the alternatives that it needs to be addressed directly.
Forex trading or cryptocurrency trading without proper understanding, and participation in “get-rich-quick” schemes, are not wealth creation strategies. They are transfer mechanisms that move money from the many who do not understand the risks to the few who do. I have spent years in financial markets and witnessed the full cycle of speculative manias. The people who build lasting wealth are not those who make the most dramatic market calls; they are the ones who survive the most market cycles.
What sustainable wealth creation actually looks like, based on everything I have observed across different economies and client segments, is this: it is slow, it is boring by social media standards, and it compounds over time.
It starts with income, developing a skill that commands a value above your cost of living, one that has genuine market demand and that you develop to a level where you are among its better practitioners. That is the foundation. Everything else is built on it.
From income, you move to savings and then to investment, not the other way around. Most Nigerians who lose money in investment schemes are trying to create wealth they have not yet earned. Investment amplifies what you already have; it does not replace the discipline required to build it. Sustainable investing is diversified, long-term, and aligned with what you genuinely understand.
The most consistent wealth builders I encountered while managing high-net-worth portfolios were not the most aggressive investors; they were the most disciplined. They understood the difference between calculated risk and gambling, and they never confused the two.
You have worked within global institutions and also built a grassroots innovation hub. Which environment taught you more about leadership, and what lessons can Nigerian business leaders draw from both worlds?
Both environments taught me valuable lessons, but they taught me different things. The most useful insight is understanding which lesson came from which context.
In global institutions—Exinity, Alpari, and the broader business environments in the UK and the UAE, I learned precision. I learned how to manage relationships where the cost of an error is measured in real money, how to communicate complex information to sophisticated audiences under pressure, and how to operate within structured governance frameworks that exist because someone, somewhere, learned a painful lesson that those processes were designed to prevent.
At MALhub, I learned adaptability. I learned how to lead without formal authority, where your team is made up of people who believe in a mission rather than people who report to you through an organisational structure. I learned how to make decisions with incomplete information and limited resources while continuing to move forward. I also learned how to listen to people whose challenges I have not personally experienced and design solutions that genuinely serve them.
If I had to choose, MALhub taught me more about leadership, while global institutions taught me more about professional excellence. The combination is what makes leadership effective: professional excellence gives you credibility, while genuine human leadership gives you impact.
For Nigerian business leaders, the lesson is simple: the disciplines that define global institutional culture—documentation, governance, measurable outcomes, and accountability are not bureaucratic obstacles. They are the infrastructure for scale. Nigerian businesses that aspire to grow beyond founder-dependent operations must deliberately build those disciplines, even when they feel uncomfortable at first.
Africa’s population is expected to double over the coming decades. Do you see this as our greatest competitive advantage or our biggest economic risk, and why?
Both and which one it becomes will depend on the decisions we make over the next ten years, not the next fifty.
The demographic case for optimism is strong and well documented. Sub-Saharan Africa’s population is projected to grow by 79 per cent over the next 30 years, reaching approximately 2.2 billion at a time when most developed economies are facing shrinking and ageing workforces. The WEF Future of Jobs Report 2025 notes that nearly half of employers in Sub-Saharan Africa expect talent availability to improve by 2030, compared with just 29 per cent globally. As much of the world ages, African labour becomes increasingly valuable.
However, a large young population is not automatically an asset. It is a potential asset that becomes valuable only through education, infrastructure, healthcare, and economic opportunity. A young population that is poorly educated, unemployed, and politically frustrated is not a demographic dividend; it is a potential source of instability. We have seen both outcomes across the continent.
The determining factor is investment in human capital: developing skills that align with global demand, building infrastructure that enables economic participation rather than penalising it, and strengthening institutions that reward merit and protect the value of what people create.
Nigeria, in particular, has the scale to become the defining success story of this transition. With more than 200 million people, a growing digital economy, and a diaspora that is deeply connected to global institutions and capital, Nigeria possesses many of the necessary ingredients. The question is whether the policy and institutional environment will allow those advantages to translate into sustained growth.
As someone who has observed different economies firsthand, what is the single biggest obstacle preventing Nigerian businesses from competing confidently on the global stage?
If I had to choose one, it would be trust—specifically, the absence of institutional trust, both domestically and internationally.
Externally, Nigerian businesses face a perception deficit that carries real economic costs. Nigerian passport holders are subject to some of the world’s most restrictive visa regimes. In some international commercial circles, the phrase “Nigerian business” still triggers suspicion, a generalisation that is unfair to the overwhelming majority of businesses operating with integrity, yet one that creates friction in international transactions, partnerships, and investment.
Internally, the trust deficit is different but equally damaging. Businesses operating within Nigeria face slow contract enforcement, an unpredictable regulatory environment, and lengthy judicial processes. As a result, they spend considerable resources on defensive measures, multiple layers of verification, upfront payment requirements, and relationship-based trust rather than institution-based trust. Those costs accumulate with every transaction.
The Nigerian businesses I have seen compete successfully on the global stage have generally overcome this challenge by becoming so technically excellent that they transcend the perception problem. When Flutterwave’s payment infrastructure performs better than the alternatives, the conversation shifts from, “Is this a Nigerian company?” to, “How do we integrate with them?” Excellence, demonstrated consistently over time, gradually erodes the trust deficit.
Ultimately, however, the long-term solution remains institutional: stronger contract enforcement, greater regulatory predictability, and a national reputation built on consistent, measurable outcomes rather than defensive positioning.
Looking ahead ten years, which industries do you believe will create the next generation of Nigerian millionaires and globally respected companies, and what skills should young people begin developing today?
Based on where global demand is heading and where Nigeria’s structural advantages lie, I see the clearest opportunities in five areas.
Financial services and fintech will continue generating wealth for those with the right combination of financial knowledge, technological literacy, and an understanding of the African regulatory environment. Areas such as investment, insurance, and wealth management for the emerging middle class will remain significant growth sectors.
Digital infrastructure and cloud services: As African businesses continue to scale their digital operations, demand for professionals who build and maintain that infrastructure will grow dramatically. The WEF projects that Sub-Saharan Africa will create 230 million digital jobs by 2030. Nigeria will need about 4.5 million skilled developers by then, yet it currently has only a fraction of that number.
Healthcare technology: Demographic pressure on Nigeria’s healthcare system, combined with the shortfall created by the emigration of healthcare professionals, is driving demand for technology-enabled healthcare solutions, including telemedicine, diagnostics, and health data infrastructure. These areas will create significant commercial opportunities.
Climate and clean energy: As international capital increasingly flows into climate solutions in emerging markets, Nigerian businesses operating at the intersection of energy access and sustainability will attract both local demand and international investment.
Content and creative economy exports: Nollywood is already a global phenomenon, while Nigerian music has established itself as a world-class export. However, the infrastructure required to monetise these exports, including rights management, digital distribution, and international licensing, still presents substantial untapped business opportunities.
The skills young people should begin developing today include AI and data literacy applicable across all five sectors, financial and business analysis, professional communication that translates across cultures, and at least one domain-specific technical skill developed to a genuinely high standard. Breadth without depth does not command a premium anywhere.
If you were speaking directly to a 22-year-old Nigerian graduate who feels frustrated by the economy and uncertain about the future, what mindset and practical steps would you recommend to build a successful career despite the challenges?
I want to speak directly to that 22-year-old because I remember exactly what that feeling is like, and I want to be honest rather than merely reassuring.
The frustration is normal. The challenges are real. An economy where your degree does not guarantee employment, where inflation erodes your purchasing power faster than your income grows, and where infrastructure does not support your ambitions presents genuine obstacles. Those realities have nothing to do with weaknesses of character. Anyone who tells a 22-year-old Nigerian to simply “think positive” without acknowledging these realities is not being helpful.
But here is what I have learned from my own career and from watching hundreds of young professionals navigate similar circumstances: the economy’s challenges are not evenly distributed. There are pockets of genuine opportunity, even in constrained environments. The question is whether you have built what is required to access those opportunities.
The mindset I would recommend is this: compete globally from wherever you are. Do not build your career to the standard of what is available locally. Build it to the standard of what the best in the world looks like. When you do that, where you access opportunities becomes a strategic choice rather than a limitation.
Practically, identify one skill that has genuine demand both within Nigeria and internationally, and invest two years in becoming genuinely good at it, not just competent, but exceptional. Document your work. Build a professional presence on LinkedIn that reflects your actual capabilities. Then pursue the first internationally recognised professional credential in your field that you can realistically attain—whether PMP, CBAP, CFA, ACCA, AWS, or another certification relevant to your profession. These credentials change the hiring conversation because they provide employers outside Nigeria with a trusted signal of competence.
Find a community of people who are building rather than merely talking about building. Such communities provide accountability, honest feedback, and often your first network of professional referrals.
Finally, be patient with the timeline, but impatient with the effort. Five years of disciplined preparation can produce a career that is genuinely difficult to stop. Two years of frustrated drift cannot.
