Earlier this week, Facebook announced the launch of its Free Basics internet service in Nigeria. It was big news for Africa’s largest economy, where internet usage has hovered at just under 50% for the past couple of years. On the same day, Mark Zuckerberg took to the social network to give a little recognition to Jobberman, one of Nigeria’s most successful startups.
“There’s a lot of innovation across Africa right now, and Nigeria in particular is home to a lot of talented developers,” the Facebook founder writes.
No ad to show here.
“In 2009, Olalekan Elude, Ayodeji Adewunmi and Opeyemi Awoyemi started a site called Jobberman in their dorm to help connect people looking for work with companies looking to hire. Now Jobberman is one of the top 100 websites in Nigeria, and it gets 5 000 applications every day”.
In the post, Zuckerberg argues that Free Basics could help expose a much larger portion of the Nigerian population to startups like Jobberman.
“Free Basics,” he writes, “offers Nigerians, including 90 million people who are currently offline, the opportunity to access news, health information and services like Jobberman that were built by Nigerians and other developers across West Africa — all without having to pay for data”.
