Sabi mekanic ⚓ ♛

For the record, Uber never made or intended to make money in Nigeria. Anyone who is familiar with Uber's core business model knew this since 2015. Uber's business model is to enter a market, set its fares well below those of the existing traditional taxis, burn VC money to absorb the losses while driving taxis out of the market, then raise prices after it becomes a monopoly. That model needs a large middle market segment to work - people who don't own or drive their own cars but have enough discretionary income to regularly pay for comfy private transport. In Lagos and Abuja, there are only maybe a couple of hundred thousand people within that income segment. People above it who own their own cars and/or have their own personal driver don't need a ride hailing service, and the vast majority below it who don't, generally aren't willing to pay even the VC-subsidised "cheap" fares because what is considered "cheap" in San Francisco is definitely not cheap in Bariga. In the ideal market, Uber is only competing against the traditional taxi. In the extremely price-sensitive environment of Nigeria, the opportunity cost of taking an Uber in the minds of the addressable market is the cost savings one can make from taking a danfo, BRT bus, korope, keke, okada, or even literally walking instead. All the VC dollars in the world cannot subsidise a trip made in a low-capacity, air-conditioned, 4-wheeled car into ever becoming cheaper than a bus or rickshaw trip over the same distance. The only people who were regularly and predictably using Uber to get around were a small minority of well-heeled, mainly female customers who chose not to own or drive their own vehicle for various reasons - and this was far too small a market segment to build the Uber business model on. The mathematics made no sense from day 1. Also from a driver and cars POV, Uber is known to operate like a pyramid scheme. It depends on a constant stream of new drivers and cars being onboarded onto the platform to replace the drivers and car owners who drop out in vast numbers everyday after realising that after fuel, repairs and depreciation costs in Nigeria, it is mathematically impossible to make any real money on Uber. The best one can do with it (as I did for 3 months in 2016) is just use it to temporarily get by - but the fuel costs will eat nearly half of whatever you make, the repairs will be expensive and incessant, and your car will be transformed into a pile of moving metal trash with next to no resale value. There was no real business case for Uber Nigeria, and this was known as far back as 2015 just 1 year after launch. The real reason it stayed another 11 years after the entire initial set of drivers and car owners pulled out citing everything I just said, is that its real business in Nigeria was not ride hailing, but **data gathering.** Uber is part of the US military industrial complex, like every other thing out of Silicon Valley. Edward Snowden's leaked files already showed us that the American NSA uses Uber, Lyft etc as its "God's Eye" system, giving the US government round the clock surveillance access into where people go, what routes they use, what items they buy, what social relationships they have etc. Thinking of Uber as just a ride hailing app is like thinking of Google as just a search engine. Over 12 years in Lagos and Abuja, the data Uber has collected would have given whoever gathered it some extremely useful, and possibly dangerous insights into whoever might be a person of interest. The data would include people's home address, work addresses, which Airbnbs they book to meet their side pieces, which takeaway restaurant they order from, what pharmacy they buy condoms or morning after pills from, what routes they take to work and back, where their kids go to school... I'm willing to bet that the decision to end Uber's presence in Nigeria was not sudden at all, but merely the expiration of whatever US government contract it was executing.