The Lagos Hawker Who Makes N1 million Monthly: An Exposé into Africa's Unstructured Direct-To-Consumer Market

Chinedu Okorafor moved from his village in Eastern Nigeria to Lagos, in 2016. As soon as he could afford the night bus, he took it straight to city of excellence. When he got to Lagos, he had a thousand Naira, a Bagco sack housing two jean trousers and two shirts; all his belongings. It’s January 2020, four years in Lagos, and Chinedu makes a minimum of a million Naira monthly solely from hawking. What started, for me, as purchase of snacks from a seemingly regular hawker, turned into an in-depth discussion on the Nigerian Direct-to-consumer business.

Every large metropolitan city has traffic, and this unarguably influences the daily habits and culture of these cities. For Lagos, Nigeria’s commercial headquarters, the heavy traffic determines sleep and wake times, and commute choice for most of the populace. The most amusing phenomena the Lagos traffic offers is the magical transition of a traffic situation into a shopping mall. The range of offers are wide, from the needful to the exquisite, from nylon wrapped sausage rolls and carbonated drinks to chihuahuas and bull dogs. Thirty minutes in traffic and you could come out of it with a new inflatable bed and manual air-pump in your back seat and empty bowls from finished lunch in the passenger seat. The range of merchandise sold by the street vendors also includes household durables, electronics, apparel, accessories and book materials.

A study done by the Journal of Marketing and Consumer Research in 2015 shows that about 41% of street hawkers earn a monthly income of over N200,000 while the lowest earning hawkers earn about N20,000. This is particularly why Chinedu’s story is fascinating. How did he, in four years rise from the N20,000 income of the average starter to N1,000,000?

Chinedu, who made a point to tell me he is now a titled chief in his village, did a profit analysis with me. In his third month of hawking, he was making a N5 profit on every unit of Gala (packaged sausage roll) he sold and made an average sale of 300 units daily, solely in the Mile 2 traffic. This roughly translates to N40,000 monthly because Chinedu, like many other hawkers work for limited hours on Sundays. They go to Mass, get some rest and return phone calls that have pended week-long.

In his sixth month in business, Chinedu had explored more than a few of the traffic hotspots across Lagos and decidedly moved to Oshodi. He started selling 10 cartons a day, more than tripling his previous average daily sales, and his monthly income jumped to N150,000.

Yet the major leap for Chinedu was born months later when he travelled down to Eastern Nigeria for Christmas. With hundreds of young, able men in his village who weren’t gainfully employed, it was easy for his story to spread. He didn’t return with a convoy of cars or with freshly minted dollar notes, but young men and women fell in love with his Lagos story. He returned to Lagos with 12 young men and like the popular stories of disciples in twelves, these ones adored him, relied on him and let him lead them. With them, Chinedu unofficially started a crude distribution company. He bought sausage rolls, in cash, from wholesale points, and resold to the twelve, making a 30% off their supposed profit. This relationship came with some cost. Apart from providing them a dream to aspire to, he paid for their accommodation and routinely organized dinner after a long day running to and fro Lagos roads.

Chinedu could have settled into his middle-man role and literally gotten off the streets but he didn’t. Continue Reading...


This story was originally published by Joseph Osemegbe Aito, a Sales Manager at Unilever.

Joseph Aito