The Nigeria Start-up Bill (NSB) has been upgraded to the Nigeria Start-up Act (NSA) since President Muhammadu Buhari signed it into law in mid-October 2022. From a start-up bill draft, a joint initiative between the Nigerian presidency and a group of tech industry leaders over a year ago, to becoming the Nigeria Start-up Act 2022.
While the Act is targeted at the growth of the technology ecosystem, it additionally aims to strengthen and position the country’s ecosystem as the leader of the start-up pack on the African continent.
The new law seeks to bridge the engagement gap among start-ups, government and regulators in order to continually grow the expanding ecosystem.
It will go further to encourage the establishment, operation, and development of start-ups in the country through such incentives as tax breaks, government loans, and credit guarantee schemes. New start-ups and foreign service providers are not excluded; there is a provision for tax breaks and tax incentives for both respectively.
The act also lays out requirements for licensing/labelling as well as the registration of start-ups.
With the Act, start-ups operating in the country, particularly technology-based ones like GetFundedAfrica, can expect an improved enabling environment in the near future to conduct their operations. This improvement relates to such business necessities (among others) as regulatory challenges, lack of basic amenities like uninterrupted power supply, and limited funding.
Read the comprehensive start-up bill here; and for a summary of it, click here.
The Act puts Nigeria with Tunisia and Senegal, two other African countries that enacted start-up laws in 2018 and 2019 respectively. Legislation for start-ups is still relatively new on the African continent as opposed to its western counterpart. However, other countries have followed suit (Ghana, Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Ivory Coast, Mali, and Kenya), making deliberate efforts towards start-up legislation, and are currently in various stages of discussions.
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