Dragons’ Den Nigeria

As regular readers of either of my blogs will know, I am something of a Dragons’ Den fan, but even I didn’t know that there was a Nigerian version of the show- nor that it was broadcast on a channel that I could watch. As it turns out, however, a tip-off from a resident of the Digital Spy forums revealed that African channel AIT International (Sky 187) broadcast it every Sunday night. Armed with this information, how could I not take the opportunity to find out what it was all about?

In principle, Dragons’ Den Nigeria is much like our own version- five multi-millionaire investors listen to the requests of budding entrepreneurs, whilst a presenter offers voiceovers stating the obvious. Nonetheless, the differences are immediately obvious, and it is in this ‘same but different’ state that the show ends up feeling most bizarre.

In this version of the show, the Dragons consist of two well-fed Nigerian men, two sharp Nigerian women and the token white guy- an immigrant who, had he stayed in Britain, would have been some kind of wheeler-dealer or used car salesman. Although less memorable than the likes of Peter Jones and Theo Paphitis, the Dragons are still masters of their Den, which confusingly looks like it’s filmed in a plaza at midnight rather than in an upstairs room in the middle of the day.

As far as entrepreneurs go, the standards don’t seem quite rigorous as over here, leading to an amusingly hopeless range of people who make some of our weaker offerings look like solid business concepts. Amongst the offerings of this particular episode was a man who ran a digital photography business (so what?), a maths graduate who had never had a job before in his life and a man who later admitted that perhaps half a printed page of A4 wasn’t really sufficient as a business plan.

Just as with our version of the series, however, the last pitch of the night got the investment, and in this case it went to a patented three wheeled tractor converted from a motorcycle. The entrepreneur was clearly an astute man, identifying his greatest competition as “probably the people who make tractors”, and indeed, one couldn’t help wondering exactly what advantages the three-wheeled tractor would have over its traditional four-wheeled cousin. Still, it’s the Dragons’ money, so who are we to argue?

Final Thoughts

It may not be quite up to the level of our Dragons’ Den, but there’s something curiously addictive about getting a peek into the Nigerian version. I must try out next week’s episode.