After an MBA, almost two decades of work with telco, and watching many episodes of Shark Tank, I realized that retail was a science and not art in places where sustainable markets have been created. They use data to make decisions and not "Insha Allah" or "Hail Mary" passes.

Yet, in 2020 African startups still do decks with unverified data and model a strategy largely based on "Insha Allah." The market for data is the market. Those who try to do some gathering are selling only to those at the very top when it is actually what EVERYONE needs.

When I lived in Lagos, I was in an estate with 95 homes. My friend and his wife ran a convenience shop beside the gate of the estate. They were serving two other estates near us without shops as well and they decided to make this a regular model for new estates. It failed.

There are many reasons why it failed but the biggest reason was seen as Shoprite at the Palms and the Lekki Expressway. The truth was that they never had anything I needed except for emergencies and ShopRite pricing was better. Shoprite was on my way back from work. People worked

95 homes and they never bothered to do a market survey. The newspaper vendor outside the estate knew more about all of us there than the shopowner. He started delivering papers on credit to the homes. The shop didn't do any deliveries and had no credit. At least not for me.

I look at lending apps on app stores and I shake my head at their sources of data. I have always believed that the most important data gathering should start from where people live and where they work. Who is gathering that data on estates and workplaces in Lagos, Lome, or Accra?

Banks are probably the biggest losers when it comes to not gathering data. You do KYC on ID and not on where people actually live? Even when they come to business premises, they ask silly questions and have no scientific approach. They miss out on a major opportunity.

When the Lekki Toll Plaza was being constructed, I saw it as a data goldmine and not the cash honeypot that people kill for that it has become. I saw it as a means of knowing the types of vehicles people owned and their movement patterns. I saw it as a way to get people to opt-in

Someone told me how he used emails from people with LCC passes to help them sort out payments and it got me thinking. You actually have emails of people who pass through that place EVERYDAY and the only product is payments? That was the commerce opportunity of the decade.

That company advertising on that toll gate may think they are making money but they could make a shitload more if they got more details about the people passing through every single day. I keep seeing broad stokes being painted for retail everywhere and no details.

Even with payments and Fintech that we are all rushing to. What does the data really tell us about commerce? Can the average trader in the street benefit from this data? I had to go from Ikoyi to Iwaya to realize that airtime sales in Lagos was not the same everywhere.

One of our partners on the solar project told us once that Lagos is a mirage and not at all representative of Nigeria. Even within Lagos, there are several mirages. Accra and Lome are becoming the same. I see more opportunity and not less. Data and trust are not enemies.

We may have privacy concerns especially in places with a lot of insecurity but there are still many ways to get data that is not personalized. I was watching updates from the recent American elections and I once again realized how valuable INEC data is to retail alone.

Each polling unit provides enough demographic data to start from. I believe some of this data is already public. I have still not seen any local venture taking advantage of this. We only remember during elections then forget afterward.

I wrote an article on "Zero Based Ventures" on @GuardianNigeria 3 years ago and I don't think much has changed "yet". https://guardian.ng/technology/zero-based-ventures/