Mark Zuckerberg is in Lagos as we speak. This comes as he left Italy where he attended the wedding of Spotify CEO Daniel Ek to Sofia Levander on Saturday. The trip saw him visit the Pope with his wife and a Q&A session and when we thought he was on his way back to the US, he announces his arrival in Lagos, Nigeria; a place he has talked about a lot in the past.
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Facebook announced its partnership with Airtel back in May to offer “Free Basics” In Nigeria; a service that brings services to people for free. Nigeria is one of Facebook’s biggest markets in Africa with over 15 million monthly active users out of the about 100 million users it has on the continent. His foundation also led a $24m funding round for Andela last June in a move that will see Andela expand its African presence so if you call his visit an investment checkup tour, you may be right as we have now updated this report to reflect his visit to the Andela office in Lagos
His first stop is the Co-creation Hub Nigeria (CcHUB) in Yaba where he got to talk to kids at a summer coding camp and entrepreneurs who come to CcHub to build and launch their apps. It’s not clear what his itenreary in Nigeria is and whether he will visit other states in Nigeria but we’ll update you as soon as we know more.
While Nigeria may be a big market, Facebook like other American tech companies opened its African office in South Africa.