“I save with akawo (daily contribution), but I need money to feed my family, so the savings don’t grow,” Yiteovie, a self-taught fisherwoman, said.
Yiteovie is a mother who stopped her formal education in SS2. Like many people across the riverine communities of Bayelsa, she turned to fishing as a means of survival and a way to care for her children.
But in the event of an unforeseen crisis, how long can Yiteovie and her household rely on the little savings she is able to set aside from her daily hustle?
Only about a month, according to a report by Moniepoint Africa, which shows that 42 percent of Nigeria’s informal businesses would survive for just one month without income.
At the centre of this unsettling finding is another Moniepoint report estimating that more than 50 percent of Nigerian businesses fail within their first year, and by the fifth year, an astonishing 95 percent cease operations.
This means that Yiteovie, and thousands of other small enterprises, from the young e-commerce founder in Lagos to the fashion designer in Aba, operate under constant uncertainty with a high likelihood of failure.
But why does Nigeria have such an alarmingly high rate of business failure?
Several reasons have been identified: insecurity, poor infrastructure, and inadequate market research are often cited as major causes. While the impact of these factors cannot be overstated, the role of customer acquisition and retention is frequently overlooked.
Shina Memud, convener of MarTech Africa, one of Nigeria’s largest marketing gatherings that brings together over 1,000 professionals to discuss marketing challenges, believes that knowing how to acquire, engage, and retain customers is an essential survival skill for every business.
“Reading the Moniepoint report, what you can’t help but ask is: how can people like Yiteovie grow their businesses? What technologies, platforms, or tools can they leverage to reach more customers so they aren’t pushed out of business by a single unforeseen circumstance?” Memud said.
Memud, who is also the founder of Yournotify, a growth-and-automation marketing platform, explained that the rising rate of business failures, and the number of otherwise promising small businesses that struggle due to limited marketing knowledge, inspired him to start the MarTech Africa summit.
Across its last two editions, thousands of professionals have gathered to learn from top African marketing leaders about the core requirements for business growth. At MarTech Africa 2, held earlier this year, industry veterans such as Maurice Igugu (Chief Marketing Officer, Sterling Bank), Idemudia Dima-Okojie (Marketing Director, Mastercard), and Linda Obi (Founder/CEO, Afrihealth) shared sector-specific insights from their years of experience.
“For the 2026 edition, we’ll focus on how businesses can acquire customers, engage them meaningfully through personalised communication, and retain those customers as loyal advocates. That’s why the third edition, slated for February 28, 2026, is themed ‘Growth Loop: Redefining Customer Acquisition, Engagement, and Retention,’” Memud said.
According to Ingressive Capital, African startups allocate between 20 to 40 percent of their operating budgets to marketing and customer acquisition, a burden that has pushed many small businesses out of operation.
The question now is whether there are ways to reduce these heavy costs while still reaching the right customers.
While exploring more cost-effective customer-acquisition strategies, MarTech Africa 3.0 also plans to show businesses how to retain the customers they already have, a crucial focus, given research showing that a 5 percent increase in customer-retention rates can boost profits by 25 to 95 percent.
