Nigeria’s Tech Bourse, Once Fancied As A Homegrown Exit Route, Is Being Ghosted
Nigeria’s tech bourse, once touted as a homegrown exit route, is being quietly ignored by the very startups it was meant to serve.
A new industry report from TLP Advisory, a cross-border venture law practice, finds that most founders either do not know how to use the Nigerian Exchange’s Technology Board or prefer selling abroad, leaving the NGX with a tech-sized hole three years after the board was created.
TLP’s survey says 53 percent of founders cite a simple awareness gap as the main reason they have not pursued a local listing. The same study finds 77 percent of venture-backed startups raise capital in dollars but make revenue in naira. That currency mismatch creates a powerful economic bias toward offshore exits, where investors and founders can lock value in hard currency.
Nearly half of founders prefer acquisition exits, while only 21 percent would consider an IPO, the study finds. Still, about 42 percent said they might list on the NGX if conditions improved. This suggests a healthy concentration of founders who aren’t exactly saying no to listing, but saying not yet.
The NGX did set up a Technology Board in late 2022 with the explicit aim of attracting high-growth tech companies. Regulators approved listing rules, and the exchange marketed the board as a path for startups to raise local capital. But the plumbing never saw the traffic. Three years after the board’s launch, not a single tech startup has completed an IPO there.
Why the disconnect?
TLP’s analysis points to multiple friction points. Founders name a knowledge problem. Investors worry about illiquid secondary markets. Executives flag compliance costs and fears of undervaluation. And the currency problem looms largest. When funding, cap table, and expected returns are dollar-based, listing where the currency weakens against dollars is a hard sell. Thus, a resultant effect such that even when local infrastructure exists, market dynamics push winners offshore or toward private sales.
That matters for more than bragging rights. Local listings, the analysis emphasises, create routes for ordinary savers and pension funds to share in startup gains. They make exits transparent and taxable at home. They also give later-stage domestic investors a chance to recycle capital into new ventures.
Without those pathways, capital that should compound inside Nigeria ends up enriching foreign markets or sitting on offshore sidelines. TLP’s co-founder Odunoluwa Longe put it plainly at the report launch, noting that too much value still flows offshore because viable local exit routes are limited.
TLP does not stop at diagnosis. The report recommends practical steps, including education and roadshows to close the awareness gap, simplified listing rules to reduce compliance costs, market-making and incentives to boost liquidity, and ways to address the currency mismatch, such as mobilising local capital or enabling dual listings.
The study also benchmarks India’s push to mobilise domestic pools, including pension reform, as a model that might be adapted rather than copied. Those are sensible, incremental fixes, but the analysis notes that they require coordination among regulators, exchanges, founders, and institutional investors.
Still, healthy scepticism is in order. Building active secondary markets takes time and consistent regulatory credibility. Institutional investors, the researchers note, aren’t swayed by roadshows but by evidence of sustained returns and governance.
The recommendation to Nigeria’s tech bourse, in its quest for the elusive credible listings, is to demonstrate that listing is not just possible but attractive compared with offshore alternatives. Otherwise, it risks looking more like an empty stage of missed opportunity than a marketplace of possibilities.
