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Nigeria does not have a shortage of people who work. We have a shortage of productive
work.
Every morning, millions of Nigerians trade, farm, build, repair, transport, cook, manufacture,
code and provide services. They work long hours and demonstrate extraordinary resilience.
Yet too much of this economic activity remains trapped in low-productivity, informal and
fragmented structures.
This is one of Nigeria’s great economic paradoxes: we have an economy full of entrepreneurial energy, but not enough productivity. The answer is not simply to tell informal businesses to register with the government, obtain licences and pay taxes. Formalisation without productivity merely creates a more regulated low-productivity economy.
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The real question is: How do we redesign work so that Nigerians can create more value from
every hour of labour?
Britain’s Old Lesson: Organise Work
Britain offers an interesting historical lesson.
Centuries ago, economic activity was organised through guilds and craft institutions. In Glasgow, the Merchants House of Glasgow, of which I am privileged to be a member, and the Trades House of Glasgow developed alongside the city’s commercial and craft communities.
The distinction is instructive.
The Merchants House represented the interests of merchants and commerce. The Trades House brought together incorporated crafts and trades. These institutions were concerned not simply with who worked, but with skills, standards, apprenticeships, professional identity and the organisation of economic life.
Over time, Britain moved beyond the guild system. Industrialisation, company law, apprenticeships, professional bodies, labour regulation, workplace standards, social insurance and financial institutions gradually created the modern economy.
The lesson for Nigeria is not that we should recreate medieval guilds.
It is that productive economies are built around institutions that organise skills, capital, labour
and markets.
Nigeria Needs a Productivity Architecture
Our informal economy should not be treated as Nigeria’s economic embarrassment. It should be treated as one of our greatest untapped assets. The trader, mechanic, tailor, farmer, electrician, artisan, food processor and digital freelancer already possess something extremely valuable: economic agency.
What many lack is the infrastructure to scale that agency. Imagine if an informal mechanic could obtain recognised certification, digital business identity, affordable finance, insurance, modern diagnostic equipment, apprentices and access to corporate procurement.
Imagine a group of tailors sharing industrial machinery, digital design, procurement and export logistics.
Imagine farmers organised around shared processing, storage, data and distribution rather than selling individually at the local market. That is the transition Nigeria needs – from survival enterprise to productive enterprise!
Formalisation Must Deliver Value
We should also rethink what we mean by formalisation. For too long, the Nigerian conversation has been: Register your business. Pay your taxes. Comply with regulation. But the informal entrepreneur is entitled to ask:
“What do I get in return?”
Formalisation should provide access to something tangible:
- Credit and financial history;
- Recognised skills certification;
- Apprenticeships and training;
- Digital payments and records;
- Insurance and pensions;
- Government and corporate procurement;
- Shared infrastructure;
- Technology;
- Larger markets.
In other words, formalisation should be an economic bargain, not simply an administrative
burden.
We need to upgrade apprenticeship
Nigeria already possesses something many countries would envy: a deeply embedded apprenticeship culture. In the UK and across Europe, there’s a push for apprenticeship schemes for young people. The problem in Nigeria is that much of it remains informal. We should upgrade it rather than replace it.
A modern Nigerian apprenticeship should combine practical experience with technical standards, digital skills, financial literacy, health and safety, management, artificial intelligence and formal certification. The objective should be to produce not merely a skilled worker, but someone capable of building a productive enterprise.
This is where the historical lesson of Britain’s guilds becomes relevant. Skills become economically powerful when they are recognised, standardised, transferable and connected to markets.
Productivity Is About How We Design Work
Nigeria’s productivity debate is often reduced to GDP, electricity, infrastructure or
unemployment.
All matter.
But we also need to ask a more fundamental question:
How is work designed and delivered – what’s our economic operating system?
Why should ten artisans work independently when they could operate as a productive
network?
Why should thousands of small businesses individually purchase equipment they could
share?
Why should a farmer sell raw produce when a cooperative could process, package and
export it?
Why should a skilled worker remain invisible to the financial system because their economic
activity is not digitally recorded?
If you see China, you’ll notice the productivity network on display and their economic
operating system is different from ours.
Technology can change this.
Artificial intelligence can help a small retailer forecast demand. Satellite data can help a farmer optimise production. Digital diagnostics can transform automotive repair. Digital design can improve manufacturing. Digital payments can create transaction histories that unlock finance.
The objective of technology should not simply be to replace Nigerian workers. It should enable Nigerian workers to produce more.
Nigeria’s missing middle
Perhaps the biggest opportunity lies between the informal micro-enterprise and the large
corporation.
Nigeria has millions of very small businesses, but too few enterprises successfully make the
journey – micro – small – medium – large – globally competitive.
That missing middle is where productivity growth, better jobs and industrialisation can
happen.
We therefore need policies that help businesses scale – not merely policies that help them
survive. That means better access to capital, reliable infrastructure, skills, markets, technology and management capability.
A Nigerian Guild 2.0
Perhaps Nigeria should consider a new generation of sector-based institutions – not medieval guilds, but “Productivity Guilds”.
- A modern guild for construction.
- A guild for automotive technicians.
- A guild for fashion and manufacturing.
- A guild for food processing.
- A guild for agriculture.
- A guild for digital workers.
- A guild for electricians and plumbers.
Their purpose would be simple:
Skills, Certification, Apprenticeship, Standards, Finance, Technology, and Market Access. This would give millions of informal workers something they currently lack: economic identity and a pathway to scale.
The choice before Nigeria
Nigeria does not need to eliminate its informal economy – we need to upgrade it! We need to convert entrepreneurial energy into productive capacity; apprenticeship into recognised skills; informal businesses into scalable enterprises; associations into productivity institutions; and technology into a multiplier of human capability.
My experience as a member of the Merchants House of Glasgow has reinforced an important lesson: economic development is not only about money and infrastructure. It is also about the institutions we build around human endeavour.
Britain’s journey from guilds and crafts to modern commerce was not instantaneous. It was a long process of building institutions that made skills, capital, labour and markets work together.
Nigeria now faces its own version of that challenge. Our greatest economic resource is not simply oil, minerals or even our enormous population.
It is the productive capacity of every Nigerian.
The question is whether we continue to organise that capacity around survival – or build the institutions, skills, technology and markets that allow it to scale.
Nigeria does not need more people simply working harder. We need Nigerians working better, with better systems, better tools and better institutions.
That is how we turn our informal economy from a survival mechanism into an engine of national productivity.
Finally, I do find the theme of Nigerian Economic Summit (NES) 32 – “Growth that works: Delivering Jobs, Productivity and Shared Prosperity” particularly timely. Nigeria must rethink how we design and operate our economic systems, especially the way work, labour and productivity are organised and delivered. The objective must be clear: to translate economic growth into measurable productivity gains, better-quality jobs, higher incomes and improved livelihood for every Nigerian.
For information about the NES 32 – https://www.nesgroup.org/32
About the Author
Abel Aboh is a Data and AI Leader and ex-governance board member of The Data Lab Scotland. He serves on the Nominations Committee and the Technology Law and Practice Committee of the Law Society of Scotland.
With over two decades of experience across data management, AI, technology, human resources, and governance, Abel advises UK critical institutions and organisations on data, AI, innovation, technology and transformation.
He’s one of the Foundever UK AI 100 Leaders 2026 by the Digital Leaders – which honours the top 100 changemakers driving the responsible use, adoption, and governance of AI across the UK. He was a finalist for
British Data Leader of the Year 2021 and was inducted into the UK Data Leader Hall of Fame 2024. A proud Nigerian from the Niger Delta, Abel is passionate about inclusive leadership, data, AI, education, finance, technology, trade, and empowering the next generation of African innovators and change-makers. He regularly
contributes and writes for Nairametrics.
