When Moniepoint released its 2025 Informal Economy Report, one data point stood out and caught my attention with striking clarity. Over 70% of Nigerian business owners entered entrepreneurship not by choice, but because they could not find formal employment.
At face value, this statistic reflects economic distress. But it also reveals something else, a structural shift in how Nigerians create work, value, and opportunity in the absence of traditional jobs. At first glance, this feels like a failure of evidence of a broken labour market and an economy unable to absorb its young population. But looked at differently, this same reality may be one of the most important forces reshaping Nigeria’s creative, commercial, and technology sectors.
Unemployment, uncomfortable as it sounds, has become a catalyst.
Unemployment, in this context, is not just a failure of the system. It has become one of the strongest forces pushing Nigerians toward self-employment, on-demand skills, and technology-enabled livelihoods.
According to Moniepoint’s findings, micro and small businesses account for more than 90% of Nigeria’s economic activity, with the informal sector employing a majority of the workforce. Many of these businesses operate with thin margins, irregular income, and limited access to capital. Yet they persist not because conditions are easy, but because alternatives are scarce.
This pressure has produced an unexpected outcome: a surge in skill-driven, tech-enabled and creative work.
Nigeria’s booming creative economy, from film and music to fashion, design, and digital media, did not grow out of abundance. It grew out of constraint. The same is increasingly true for technology. Many of today’s engineers, product managers, growth marketers, and startup founders did not arrive through structured pipelines. They arrived through experimentation, online learning, freelance work, and informal networks.
Across Nigeria, particularly in the South-South and South-East, young people are increasingly turning to on-demand skills such as software development, digital marketing, design, content creation, data work, logistics coordination, fintech operations, and remote customer support. These are not jobs handed down by institutions; they are skills acquired online, practised informally, and monetised through platforms, networks, and digital tools.
Moniepoint’s report shows that a significant portion of informal businesses are run by people under 35, many of whom rely on digital payments, mobile banking, and online channels to operate. This aligns with what is happening on the ground: technology is no longer just supporting businesses; it is creating work.
In cities like Aba, traditionally known for manufacturing and trade, tech is not replacing industry. It is augmenting it. Traders use social media to find buyers beyond local markets. Manufacturers coordinate supply chains through messaging apps. Payments move digitally. Skills are layered on top of existing economic activity.
In the South-South, where formal employment has long been tied to government and oil-related industries, the shift is even more pronounced. Young people are building income streams through remote tech roles, freelance work, digital commerce, and platform-based services, often without leaving their states. Young people who might once have waited indefinitely for oil-and-gas jobs or government employment are finding alternatives in tech-enabled work: remote roles, digital services, fintech operations, media, and logistics. These are not always glamorous careers, but they are increasingly viable ones.
However, the above-stated points do not mean the system is working perfectly. Far from it. This does not mean the informal economy is thriving.
Moniepoint’s data also highlights persistent challenges, such as the fact that many informal businesses struggle to survive. They face unstable income, limited access to credit, poor infrastructure, policy uncertainty, and weak consumer purchasing power. Technology alone does not erase these challenges. A food vendor using a POS machine is still vulnerable to inflation. A freelancer earning online is still exposed to unstable power and connectivity.
But what technology does offer, and this matters, is optionality.
It provides pathways that did not exist a decade ago. It allows young people to participate in the economy without waiting for permission. It reduces reliance on geography, traditional employers, and legacy systems that have consistently failed to scale opportunity.
But technology offers something critical, which is an entry point for many young people.
It lowers the barrier to participation. It allows people to sell skills rather than wait for vacancies. It makes self-employment more structured, measurable, and scalable. It turns survival into a possibility.
This is why the conversation around unemployment must evolve because framing unemployment purely as a crisis misses half the story. Yes, the lack of jobs is a policy failure. But it has also forced innovation from the bottom up. It has accelerated self-employment, creativity, and digital skill acquisition in ways that formal planning never achieved.
The real risk is not that Nigeria lacks jobs. The risk is that we fail to support the ecosystems that unemployed people have already built.
Nigeria does not simply need more jobs in the traditional sense. It needs more pathways, pathways that recognise self-employment, informal work, and on-demand skills as legitimate economic engines. The data already shows that millions of Nigerians have taken this path out of necessity. The opportunity now is to support it intentionally.
If technology is to remain a pathway out of unemployment, especially in regions outside Lagos and then policy, infrastructure, and investment must follow the reality on the ground. That means better internet, clearer regulations, access to digital payments, skills training, and protection from harassment and overregulation.
If policymakers, investors, and ecosystem builders focus only on formal job creation, they will continue to miss where growth is already happening. The real question is not whether technology can solve unemployment. It is whether we will build the infrastructure, policies, and protections to support the millions already using tech to employ themselves.
The informal economy is not a temporary stage Nigeria will “grow out of.” It is the economy. And technology is already shaping how millions survive within it.
The question is whether we choose to see that as a problem or as the foundation of the next phase of growth.
Read Also:https://techsudor.com/the-flutterwave-mono-deal-signals-africas-tech-market-is-growing/
