I just got some very interesting insights from a former colleague who now works in industry. Remember how @MTNNG announced that it would support the fight against COVID-19 by giving subscribers 300 free SMS messages per month? Remember how we clowned them for it?

Well get this..

According to my colleague, the #YelloHope thing has actually been a hit outside of urban Nigeria. While we clowned them for providing free texts instead of free internet access, apparently our compatriots have been using their 10 free daily texts like there's no tomorrow

Apparently, over 50% of their subscriber base is in rural/semi urban Nigeria and do NOT have smartphones or internet access. These guys still rely solely on SMS and voice calls to communicate.

Even more interestingly, she said the industry figures estimate the number of smartphone users in Nigeria at 25 - 40 million (total phone subscriber base is 96 million per NCC). So basically, our 4G-using urban reality is NOT Nigeria's reality at all, according to MTN's figures.

So basically the decision to make SMS the key pillar of their contribution was actually deliberate and based on numbers. We were dragging them based on our own urban needs, but statistically we are not actually the majority

Without the NCDC's daily SMS service, effectively half of Nigeria's phone users would have been out of the COVID-19 information loop.

Which only just goes to show...

We really don't know as much about Nigeria as we sometimes imagine we do

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