adsThere is a particular kind of exhaustion that settles into the bones of a small business owner in Lagos or Kano or Port Harcourt. It is not simply the tiredness of long hours, though those are plentiful. It is the weariness that comes from wearing too many hats at once, from being the accountant and the customer service agent and the marketing director and the delivery tracker all before noon. For millions of Nigerian entrepreneurs running small and medium enterprises, the working day has always demanded more than any one person should reasonably give.
Artificial intelligence will not fix everything. Let us be clear about that from the outset. It will not solve the power supply problem or negotiate a better exchange rate or magic away the cost of importing raw materials. But what it can do, right now, this week, for a business owner with a smartphone and a modest internet connection, is absorbed a meaningful portion of the repetitive, time-consuming work that currently eats into hours that could be spent on growth.
The conversation about AI in Nigerian business has too often been held in boardrooms and at tech conferences, framed as something relevant only to well-funded startups The reality is considerably more democratic. The tools available today are accessible, many of them free or nearly so, and the tasks they can handle are precisely the ones that smaller businesses struggle with most.
