Nigerian President signs Entrepreneurship Bill into law – third such bill in Africa

Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari has signed the Entrepreneurship Act, which promises to deepen Nigeria’s technology ecosystem and further the industry’s growth.

The Act follows the Nigerian Tech Ecosystem and the Nigeria Entrepreneurship Act project launched by the President in May 2021 and has passed all stages of legislation before reaching the presidency in October 2021.

According to their startup Bill’s website, the project aims to harness the potential of the country’s Crypto economy through regulations co-developed between the ecosystem and the government.

According to the drafters, the bill will now ensure that Nigerian laws and regulations are clear, planned and applicable to the tech ecosystem. This is expected to help create an enabling environment for investment growth, attraction and protection of tech startups.

One of the motivations behind the bill is to stop the government in a way that makes it difficult for startups to thrive, as is the case with the cryptocurrency ban in February 2021.

The bill also seeks to address 3 key challenges in entrepreneurship and tech, which are:

  • Lack of enabling environment
  • The regulatory framework is unclear, and
  • Insufficient local content support

Other issues that the Entrepreneurship Act, now in effect, aims to address include:

  • Access to local funding opportunities, including a £10bn fund from the Commonwealth
  • Incentives to facilitate doing business, such as tax breaks
  • Incentives to attract foreign investment

The Act empowers the Digital Innovation and Entrepreneurship Commission to administer it and ensure that its provisions are implemented and protected. This committee consists of the following members:

  • president
  • Governor, Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN)
  • Representative of Entrepreneurship Advisory Forum
  • Director General, Information and Technology Regulatory Agency, Nigeria

One of their responsibilities is to facilitate collaboration between startups and policymakers.

Nigeria became the third country in Africa to have a startup law after Senegal and Tunisia, while Kenya and Ethiopia are also pushing their own.

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Source of information: Compiled from BITCOINKE by 0x information.The copyright belongs to the author kodzilla, and may not be reproduced without permission

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