Building a Business When the Economy Is Actively Working Against You |
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Shigohub Team -      |
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Nobody hands you a manual for running a small business during inflation, currency devaluation, and power cuts that arrive on their own schedule. You figure it out in real time, usually at the worst possible moment, usually when there is money on the line.
The Nigerian business environment is not hostile by accident. It is structurally difficult in ways that require a completely different playbook from what the standard business advice books describe. Most of that content was written for stable economies with reliable infrastructure and predictable costs. That is not your reality, and pretending it is will cost you. The first thing that separates businesses that survive here from the ones that do not is pricing discipline. When your input costs can jump 30% in a quarter because of exchange rate movement, your prices cannot stay the same. Many founders are afraid to reprice because they fear losing customers. What they do not calculate is that keeping the old price while absorbing higher costs is a slow bleed that ends the business anyway, just more quietly. The second is supplier diversification. Depending on a single supplier for anything critical is a risk that a stable economy can absorb but an unstable one cannot. When that supplier has a problem, and eventually they will, your business should not stop moving. Multiple options, even if the backup is slightly more expensive, is insurance worth paying for. Cash holding strategy matters too. Keeping large naira balances for extended periods in a devaluing currency environment is its own kind of loss. Understanding how to move between assets, whether that is stock, dollars, or else other stores of value, is not speculation. It is basic financial survival for a Nigerian SME in Big 2026. The founders who last are not the ones who had it easiest. They are the ones who stopped waiting for conditions to improve and built systems that work within the conditions that actually exist. Stability is not coming to save you. Adaptability is the only plan that has ever worked here. |
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