Kemi Adeosun, Nigeria’s former minister of Finance has launched Nidacity, a private-sector-driven educational media platform aimed at strengthening Nigeria’s entrepreneurial ecosystem by providing practical business knowledge, mentorship, and market intelligence, particularly for young and female founders.
The platform officially went live on Tuesday, positioning itself as a resource hub designed to help entrepreneurs build more resilient and scalable businesses.
Adeosun, alongside a group of entrepreneurs and professionals, aimed to tackle 95 per cent startups failure rate in the country through the initiative which begins with a landmark national survey on the roots of Nigerian enterprise.
The former minister said the launch of Nadacity had become necessary due to the impact of human cost of startups failure in every community across the country.
She said,
“The timing is urgent. Nigeria has the world’s highest entrepreneurship rate, yet as many as 95 per cent of Nigerian startups do not survive beyond five years. With Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) accounting for 85 per cent of all employment in the country, the human cost of that failure is felt in every community across the nation.”
Adeosun however, found a powerful and actionable opportunity in the same numbers.
According to her, “Nigeria’s entrepreneurs are already doing something extraordinary, they are creating the vast majority of jobs in this country, from the ground up, often with very little support.
“The data tells us something remarkable: if we can help more of these businesses survive and grow, the employment gains for Nigeria will be enormous. Nidacity is not a charity, it is an investment in the people who are already building this economy. Make them better, and everyone benefits.”
The former minister further described the “Many Roads” survey, as a landmark digital survey and living archive of Nigerian enterprise history.
She explained,
“At its centre is a deceptively simple question: how did the entrepreneurial spirit that defines so many Nigerian households come to be, and why does it endure? Many Roads invites Nigerians across the country to contribute the origin stories of their family businesses, collectively mapping the deep cultural and generational roots of Nigerian enterprise over time.
“The resulting dataset will yield original, evidence-based insights into the cultural and structural drivers behind Nigeria’s remarkable entrepreneurial history — insights that have, until now, remained largely undocumented.”
She stressed that the survey’s findings would be published on the Nidacity platform and shared with a broad range of stakeholders, including policymakers, educators, investors, and the general public.
Adeosun said,
“Many Roads” will form the evidentiary foundation for Nidacity’s broader mission: to strengthen business education, support enterprise development, and meaningfully reduce the rate of startup failure across Nigeria.”
In addition, she noted that the new platform was structured around five interconnected pillars, each designed to address the specific digital, cultural, and economic realities facing Nigerian entrepreneurs today.
These pillars include the Builders, Nidacity’s flagship podcast, features in-depth interviews with founders across all stages of the entrepreneurial journey; Entrepreneur Profiles form the foundation of the new initiatives peer-to-peer learning library; Resources encompass a suite of proprietary tools developed to address the operational challenges most commonly faced by Nigerian SMEs; Education which is delivered through a curriculum of videos, webinars, and micro-courses, providing practical, immediately applicable instruction in core business disciplines, and News Analysis provides Nigerian entrepreneurs with the context and critical tools needed to navigate an evolving business landscape.
Essentially, Nidacity provides tools, resources, training, and news relevant to entrepreneurs across Nigeria, delivered through digital, audio, and community formats, according to a statement by her media aide, Oluwadamilola Oguntimoju.
Adeosun is an economist, chartered accountant, and finance professional with over 35 years of experience across Nigeria and international markets, with a proven track record of delivery.
She served as Nigeria’s Minister of Finance from November 2015 to September 2018, steering the nation through a recession that saw oil prices as low as $28 per barrel.
She championed fiscal reforms, including the Efficiency Unit, which reduced government wastage by using technology to eliminate over 45,000 payroll irregularities.
She launched the Whistleblower Scheme that recovered billions of naira, including a high-profile $40 million cash recovery that made international headlines.
Prior to her ministerial role, she served as Commissioner for Finance for Ogun State, where she increased the state’s internally generated revenue by over 600 per cent.
