Nigeria vs SA student market

Student Village recently visited Lagos and got an interesting perspective on the youth in Nigeria.

Of the 167 million people living in Nigeria it is claimed that the youth constitute up to 70% of the population. This compared to South Africa which has a population of 45 Million where the youth (14-35) make up 40% of the population.

A characteristic describing young people can be summed up in one word – aspirational. Young people want to do better for themselves and they work damn hard to make it happen. In the process of bettering themselves they are pushing their own limits, doing new things, being entrepreneurial and becoming educated. Forget what you’ve heard on the news, and especially forget the crime. It takes a few hours on the streets of Lagos to see that young people are on a mission, they are working and they are making a life for themselves. In fact it was quite unexpected to see the lack of homelessness in the city. While you cannot take this writer’s views from a 3 day visit to be indicative of the entire country, it was certainly surprising.

Youth Experts, Red Media Group, agrees that certain sects of the youth have a high disposable income. This is certainly a shared trait of South Africa’s youth. According to the 2010 SA Student Spending Report the market potential is spending over R28.5M per annum, with 85% of students being able to save at least 20% every month. This is very much focused on the higher tear tertiary universities within the country. The top tier universities that were described included UniLag, UniPort and Ibadan.

In addition to this, specialists cite the culture of the country as a money centric one. Examples were given of the lack of cellular phone contracts on offer. If people want to buy a phone it’s all cash. This has special relevance to young people who want the most up-to-date phones on the market but not all can afford it. Compare this to South Africa where a third of all students own a BlackBerry smartphone and 96% of students say their next phone will be a smartphone (source: How to market 2 students on their mobiles, research 2011)

According to youth experts Red Media Group, while music may be a primary platform for which South African youths relate to, for Nigerian youths it’s more about fashion, music and the social aspects of living.

Looking back now, from a youth perspective, there are a lot of similarities between South Africa’s market and Nigeria’s. A point that is even more encouraging is seeing the potential both countries have moving towards the future.