Update: We contacted Nairahost’s Emmanuel who emailed to say that Nairahost will release an official press statement later. We are eagerly looking forward to that.

I’m wondering how we missed the story about Nairahost appointing a Chief Executive Officer in January. But wait, didn’t they have a CEO before?

We didn’t know that Nairahost has faced a lot of problems regarding running the company smoothly, managing funny customers and financial limitations not until we saw the information posted on their blog.

Nairahost is the leading web hosting company in Nigeria founded in 2004 by Emmanuel Oluwatosin and Kayode Muyibi and two other people who we don’t know.

Nairahost recently sought for external funding (due to financial limitations, I guess) and in a deal that fetched them $500, 000 (about N85 million), according to information on their blog, they were able to appoint a CEO who’s supposed to oversea the company’s goals and visions.

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Afrifunding.com is an online community platform where entrepreneurs who have plans for starting or expanding a business in Africa meet with global investors who want to invest in Africa. The idea is to provide a service whereby private investors from around the world and entrepreneurs with focus on Africa can connect easily online.

Afrifunding claims to be the premier Africa business investment network and venture capital funding portal that matches serious and active private business investors with entrepreneurs’ seeking investment capital and business funding to start-up their new venture or expand their existing business within Africa.

The service acts as the “meeting point”, essentially allowing entrepreneurs who want to build up a business in Africa to showcase a brief synopsis of their business or business ideas in order to seek contact with potential global investors who could bring investment and expertise.

The online service, which has just been launched, has already registered investors through a new start-up angel network called AfricaBAN with substantial amount of capital available (over $1 million) and ready for investment into the right innovative business ideas in Africa.

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Have you ever wondered why start-ups originating from Nigeria are hardly funded externally? Could it be because they lack innovative ideas? Or is it the fact that most startups from Nigeria are not built using their own tech/web apps? Or could it be the S.C.A.M factor?

How to Position Your Nigerian Start-up for VC Funding

Perhaps you’ve been looking for funding for your Nigerian start-up and it may seem like there’s no hope for venture capital financing in Nigeria, when your counterparts in the U.S and other parts of the world have been funded and acquired by the world’s largest companies and venture capital firms.

Ideas Nigeria campaign, driven by BG Venture Capital claims to be providing funding to outstanding individuals and teams of Nigerian entrepreneurs who submit business plans for new ventures or already growing businesses showing significant business potential.

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Recently, I’ve been discussing with some angel investors, incubators and venture capitalists and its obvious that people are watching the Nigerian web space to identify innovations and entrepreneurial ideas that could be incubated or funded. In the coming months, I’ll be working with these individuals and companies to identify and develop entrepreneurs from Nigeria.

While there are a few challenges with VC funding in Nigeria, considering the fact that foreign investors need to be educated first about the trends and prospects in a given investment area, I’m also interested in seeing every big business in Nigeria loan a small fund to kick-start a small business start-up. Is this possible?

Apart from start-up funding, young entrepreneurs in Nigeria need some help in learning how to set up and grow a real online business start-up. Thus, there is a need for training of software enthusiasts in Nigeria on the newest web applications.

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