I’ve never been to silicon valley in San Francisco, California, but I’ve got friends and collegues up there and sure I get the heads up about happenings around the city that is home to some of the largest internet companies such as Google, Yahoo, eBay, AOL, etc.

Silicon Valley has been described as “a special habitat for innovation and entrepreneurship, consisting of dense, flexible networks and relationships among entrepreneurs, investors, university researchers, consultants, skilled employees… connecting people to ideas.”

Over the years, Silicon Valley has produced some of the best startups in the world such as Facebook, Youtube, etc This has moved a lot of Web-savvy people all around the world to keep an eye on the valley either for work, business or investments. In Africa, I’ve seen some interesting startups that I think could compete with some of those Silicon Valley-based startups. For example, Synthasite, a Web 2.0 Silicon Valley-based startup founded by South African Vinny Lingham that focuses on web publishing and designing, which recently recieved a $20 million funding.

Since the last two years, I’ve been watching the Nigerian startup scene, and I’m yet to see a great startup that could become a huge internet company, although I have to admit that there are some smart startups that got lots of potentials - if properly managed.

However, there are lots of successful startups from Nigeria that have become huge companies such as Globacom, founded in 2003, which is gradually becoming Africa’s largest telecommunications company. Granted, Globacom is not an internet company, but it sure has greatly contributed to the Nigerian economy in so many ways and could provide support to the internet startup scene in Nigeria just like South Africa’s Naspers has acquired internet startups from Africa and around the world.

But why hasn’t Africa produced more goliath startups like Naspers and Globacom?

Well, Vinny Lingham wrote an interesting piece (following Vincent Maher’s controversial article on the SA startup scene) on the key reasons why the SA startup scene has not taken off yet, of which I totally agree with and could also explain why it would take another 3-5 years for the Nigerian startup scene to fully mature and develop. I guess that’s when we can start seeing Nigeria’s full scale impact on the social webspace and Internet companies industry around the world.

A few years ago, an ex-Minister of the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) Abuja, said “the Nigerian government has worked out to invest 600 million US dollars to establish the Abuja Technology Village modeled after the United States Silicon Valley…the hi-tech village would cover an area of 650 hectares near Lugbe on Airport Road…[and] the government would provide a seed fund amounting to 5 billion naira (about 38 million dollars) for the provision of infrastructure in the village.”

Could this mean that Nigeria was really planning to build its own Silicon Valley on a 650 hectare property, located in a suburb of the Federal Capital city, Abuja? At first, I thought it’d be awesome to have a silicon valley in Nigeria, but perhaps the location was not ideal, since there has to be a world-class university with reputation for research and development, in order to model the ‘Silicon Valley’ in the United States.

As a matter of fact, Paul Graham recently wrote:

The organic way to do it is to establish a first-rate university in a place where rich people want to live. That’s how Silicon Valley happened.

Abuja, the capital city of Nigeria doesn’t have a ‘first-rate university’ well known for research and innovation in technology, even though the city is home to high net-worth individuals.  The University of Abuja (where I graduated from) is not even known as a research and technology-driven university. Besides, there is no presence of Venture Capital firms, Incubators, Angel Investors, etc that could provide seed capital to startups and fund them for an equity stake in their online ventures.

In my opinion, Lagos will be an ideal location for a Silicon Valley, since the city is the commercial hub of Nigeria and the state government has recently set a target to transform the city into a mega city by 2015 or so. Besides, the University of Lagos in Akoka, Yaba is well-renowned for research and development in technology and innovation and has produced some of the best tech talents in Nigeria. There is also the Lagos Business School and the Pan-African University.

Again, the city breeds entrepreneurs, investors, researchers, consultants as well as web-savvy people and software developers who could spark up the Nigerian startup scene in the next few years. Personally, I’d love to see Nigerian Internet companies headquatered on 10-floor buildings on Adeola Odeku, Ozumba Mbadiwe and Ademola Adetokunbo streets on Victoria Island, Lagos in the next 10-15 years. I hope Governor Fashola is reading this…I’d probably send him a proposal on this one:)

Paul Graham continues…

For the price of a football stadium, any town that was decent to live in could make itself one of the biggest startup hubs in the world.

What’s more, it wouldn’t take very long. You could probably do it in five years. During the term of one mayor [Governor]. And it would get easier over time, because the more startups you had in town, the less it would take to get new ones to move there. By the time you had a thousand startups in town…they’d be opening local offices. Then you’d really be in good shape. You’d have started a self-sustaining chain reaction like the one that drives the Valley.

…The exciting thing is, all you need are the people. If you could attract a critical mass of nerds and investors to live somewhere, you could reproduce Silicon Valley.

Read more on How to Create a Silicon Valley by Paul Graham

However, there seems to be many factors that could shape the future of a Silicon Valley in Nigeria. According to an article written by Andrew Issacs, Executive Director, Management of Technology Program, University of California, Berkeley, “In Silicon Valley, there were many contributing factors: A) gradual development of the Venture Capital industry, B) gradual improvement in local universities, C) gradual influx of technically strong labor , D) gradual growth in government investment in R&D. These factors reinforce each other, over time making it more difficult for it to happen anywhere else”.

My Suggestions: How to Build Silicon Valley in Nigeria

For a Silicon valley-like industry to be a reality in Nigeria, it will be driven by a Public Private Partnership (PPP) between the government, private investors and web entrepreneurs.

1. There will be a new generation of tech-savvy entrepreneurs with a rare business culture - one that can only be found at Silicon Valley. A generation that damns the poor technology and power failure problems in order to succeed in an online venture.
2. An emerging Internet industry filled with web geeks and developers (already being witnessed) will naturally give birth to a Venture Capital industry with a good mix of incubators and local angel investors who will in turn provide funding and financing for a stake in these internet startups.
3. Local universities and business schools will have to integrate entrepreneurship-based modules with courses in arts & design, new web technologies, web & mobile application development, web-centric business plans, SEO marketing, online advertising, etc into their curriculum.
4. Huge companies in IT software, telecoms, etc will have to engage students with competitions that could set them up to starting their own internet companies, even from their University hostels. Remember, Mark Zuckerberg started Facebook while in college. Today, Facebook is worth about $3.7 billion.
5. The government will have to invest in research and development as it relates to the latest innovations and technologies that would support Nigeria’s emerging Web industry. I suggest this should be included in the Vision 2020 plan.

Today, web companies have become one of the largest employers of labour in the U.S and have generated huge chunks of revenue that has successfuly driven the U.S economy. For example, Google’s revenue for 2008 stood at $4.22 billion, after subtracting commissions paid to its ad partners, despite the ugly economic recession. The Internet search giant was named the best company to work for in 2008, according to Fortune. Indeed, a Goliath Startup!

So all in all, if adequate attention could be focused on developing the web industry and startup scene in Nigeria over the next few years, I’m sure we’ll be seeing Internet companies like Google, Yahoo or Facebook from Nigeria, perhaps in the year 2020. The process will be “gradual”, as it were, and may take 5-10 years to actually replicate the success of the ‘Silicon Valley’.

For me, I’d love to wake up one morning, tune to CNBC Africa and listen to the news that a Nigerian-based Internet company has been listed on the NYSE - New York Stock Exchange - and the price of the company’s stock has eventually risen 30% to $467.23 per share.

So the big question is: Can Silicon Valley really be developed in Nigeria?