On September 2, Uber shut down its Nigerian business after 12 years and left the same day. No notice to drivers, no goodbye to riders. It was the fourth African market Uber left in under a year.
The easy way to read this is as a market-share story: Uber’s gone, so Bolt and inDrive split the spoils of a market worth around $450 million with more than 200,000 drivers. That read isn’t wrong. It’s just shallow.
Uber didn’t lose Nigeria because its app was worse than anyone else’s. It lost because the math stopped working, and no app feature fixes math.
Look at the number underneath the whole business. Petrol now sells for between ₦1,100 and ₦1,400 a litre. For a driver working full days in Lagos traffic, fuel isn’t a line item. It’s most of the business. When the single biggest cost climbs past what a rider will pay for a trip, the platform either covers the gap or watches cars go off the road.
Originally published by TechCabal.