Chief Technology Officer atGlovo, Shiro Theuri, who was in Nigeria recently for a special assignment, spoke about Glovo’s business growth and expansion in Nigeria, and the opportunities in deploying emerging technologies to further enhance customers’ experience. Emma Okonji presents the excerpts:

As the Chief Technology Officer at Glovo, how do you view Nigeria’s potential as a growing market for technology-driven investments? 

I firmly believe that there are tremendous opportunities in Africa, but more so in Nigeria. It’s been amazing to see the innovation coming out of Nigeria and putting the continent on the global map. The median age in Nigeria is super young, a very huge young population.Smartphone and internet penetration is growing every other year, and it’s ripe for disruption when it comes to innovation. In markets like African markets, technology is particularly important because it allows us to leapfrog a lot of the challenges that we face, whether it’s from an infrastructure perspective or financial inclusion and banking.You don’t really need the infrastructure to be there for you to get people to embrace and use these technologies. When you look at all these different pieces, Nigeria is ripe for disruption and innovation. I think there are tremendous opportunitiesin Nigeria, and the youth demographics speak for themselves.

What first attracted Glovo to invest and expand operations in Nigeria, and how has the journey evolved so far? 

Glovo for us, it was a very clear decision to not just expand in sub-Saharan Africa, but particularly Nigeria.I don’t think anyone has a good success story of expanding into Africa and not talk about Nigeria. It’s a very relevant market. That was the first thing for us.We wanted to be present in the sub-Saharan African market, and you cannot do that without being present in Nigeria, being present in certain strategic markets across the continent. That’s the first one. The second is what I talked about before, which is just the basic raw material that should be present to allow for companies and businesses to thrive.

For us, it’s the very huge young population, and the smartphone and internet penetration in the market, and the non-existence of a second or a third player in the market. Now things have changed a little bit, but this was the reality back in 2021 when we moved into Nigeria. Now things have shifted a little bit, but it’s still a very exciting market for us.

How does Nigeria fit into Glovo’s broader vision for growth across Africa and other emerging markets? 

Our strategy is very simple.We want to continue growing in food business. That is providing all our customers all around the world in all our 23 markets with options for them to order their foods. The other angle is that we want to make sure that we’re present as a multi-category lead.If you look at the opportunity that we have in markets like Nigeria, Kenya, Cote d’Ivoire, where we’re present, the opportunity is immense. There’s still a huge untapped market that’s just ready to be tapped into, to be disrupted.We feel that compared to over-penetrated markets like the ones we have in Europe, there are opportunities in markets like Nigeria. That’s why we feel that over the next two, three, or five years, there’s so much in penetrating the market even further and trying to make sure that we solidify our presence in markets such as Nigeria.

What role do data, AI, and digital infrastructure play in strengthening Glovo’s operations and improving efficiency in Nigeria? 

Data and emerging technologies are key to our business growth, and I think that African markets are particularly interesting in the sense that they allow us to leapfrog a lot of the usual traditional development milestones.A market like Kenya, for example, where financial inclusion was super low, and then we had the emergence of technology such as M-Pesa, which suddenly grew financial inclusion in Kenya to over 80 per cent. So, it leapfrogged the traditional model of owning a bank account, and doing a regular KYC with financial institutions. To me, Artificial Intelligence (AI) is going to do something like that for Africa because I think it provides a unique opportunity to leapfrog traditional challenges such as the lack of infrastructure.So, now we’ll probably be looking at AI-driven logistics solutions. Look at what’s happening in Rwanda with Zipline. I don’t know if you’ve seen this, but it’s a drone delivery business that no longer needs any visible road, brick-and-mortar infrastructure. They’re just delivering very critical healthcare solutions to very remote parts of the country.I think this is what’s going to happen with AI and robotics and emerging technologies. I think it’ll actually allow Africa to catch up and even surpass the rest of the world, because the thing we’ve adapted to, we’ve learned how to solve our own problems using very unique models and solutions.

How is Glovo using the AI model called Agentic AI to expand business growth and enhance partners and customers’ experience?

We are deploying different AI models across different parts of our business.

We’re a three-sided marketplace. The simplest way of describing our business to people who are not familiar with it is that we have three distinct users. We have customers, we have couriers and we have partners.

Partners are restaurants. We need to build technology that allows a customer to place an order that then goes to a restaurant to assign that order to a courier. So, that whole ecosystem needs to work very well together.

Behind all of these are thousands of employees who are working very hard in the back office to make sure that the ecosystem exists in harmony. So, there are lots of different opportunities to deploy AI and Agentic AI in particular. One of the examples I have for Agentic AI solutions that we’ve deployed in my team back in Barcelona in Spain, is in AI coding assistance tools.So, basically we are using AI to assist developers to write their code. It allows them to be a little bit more productive and there are so many different Agentic AI models that developers are now using on a day-to-day basis to allow them to be more productive, hence deliver more value and impact faster to the company. So, this is one example.

We also just recently deployed a solution here in Nigeria just a few weeks ago, and Nigeria was one of the first countries that we chose to deploy the technology because it’s a very interesting market for us, and it’s also an English-speaking market.
So, when customers have an issue with their order and they need to call Glovo to raise a complaint, we’re using AI to kind of help with that and Agentic AI is very helpful in addressing such complaints.

How is Glovo using AI to cut down on the time of delivery to customer that ordered food?

So, the models that we’ve been using in the past still apply in such situations where you’re basically trying to train your models as much as possible to identify the best routes depending on where you’ve deployed your business. So, basically, if we’re launching in a new market, we’ll train our models based on the data that exists in cities as complex as Nigeria, for example.But I still believe that this is one of those used cases where things like robotics and other innovations will really disrupt because it’s not enough to just train existing models to deliver things in the old-fashioned way of handling logistics. I think markets like Africa are just so complex and fragmented in terms of logistics, and technology will help in addressing the complex issues

What technological barriers and opportunities exist for investors looking to scale digital operations in Nigeria?

So, I think for African markets, there are a lot of barriers, because of the different cultures of the people. We call them kind of low-trust cultures where the institutions are not very strong. It makes it difficult to build good, and strong businesses. Not impossible, just more challenging, right? I think that the absence of adequate infrastructure in places like Kenya and Nigeria, and Nigeria specifically, in the sense of not having stable power supply, un-fragmented logistical infrastructure, broadband coverage is also not very stable and consistent.
I think these are just some of the challenges that exist. But I honestly think the opportunities far outweigh the challenges that exist, because we’ve seen things improving.

But I think that’s what makes African countries really interesting when we have conversations on innovation. But I still believe the opportunities far outweigh the challenges.

What policy reforms or infrastructure developments would make Nigeria more attractive for tech investors like Glovo? 

I think investors will always put their money where they believe and trust that the money will grow and be spent properly.So I think government’s role is to make sure that they are guardians of investments and making sure that we have strong institutions, and the right environment, as well as the right incentives for both local entrepreneurs and global investors. I think a lot of the money that we’ve also been receiving over the past decade in terms of VC funding, of which I know Nigeria has been the biggest beneficiary of Western VC funding, a lot of that money is from the West. So I think one of the biggest roles for government is to make sure that it safeguardsinvestors’ interests and making sure that the investors can believe and trust that the institutions will protect their investments.I think the second thing that needs to happen is for governments to partner a lot more with local entrepreneurs and local players in developing a ripe tech ecosystem. I still feel that in as much as we talk a lot about Nigeria being the tech giant of Africa, of which it is and I firmly believe it, there’s still this gap because it doesn’t really translate into share of GDP by tech companies, and I know there’s a huge opportunity there.
So there should be partnerships between governments, entrepreneurs, local startups, and this is not just specific to Nigeria, because it applies to other African markets as well.

How will Glovo key into Nigeria’s plan on the 3MTT initiative to develop three million tech talents?

So Glovo definitely can partner with Nigerian government on the 3MTT initiative. We’ve done this very successfully in other markets like Morocco. We can definitely partner with the ministry here in Nigeria in terms of also collaborating to provide these trainings and mentorships, running boot camps, and sponsoring some of these events. There are so many different models that we can use to partner with local players because we’ve done this in other markets as well.I think one of the things that we’re very passionate about is also creating a little bit more inclusion and diversity as we continue to grow in our different markets. We can ensurethe trainingof women in tech boot camps and encourage girls when they’re still young to get into STEM education. So there are lots of different models that we could use and partner with Nigeria to help the ministry achieve its goals and objectives.

How will you describe Glovo’s business growth in Nigeria?

We expanded our business into the Nigerian marketsome few years ago, and it’s been amazing to know about our double-digit growth year on year. We are present in 10 cities as of today, and we have thousands of couriers and thousands of restaurants and partners that we work with every single day. So the business is growing in a very healthy trajectory. We’re happy with what we’ve managed to achieve in Nigeria since we established our business in Nigeria.
We are not just growing as a business, but we are also growing the ecosystem with us, because this is something that we take very seriously. As we are growing the business in Nigeria, we are also developing the talents that exist in the market that we operate in, making sure that we are developing the ecosystem along with the business.

Is Glovo looking at diversifying its business in Nigeria anytime soon?

Not for now. We still believe in sticking to our strategy of growing our business in terms of food delivery, but also in a multi-category ways. Again, we still believe that the opportunities are immense in markets like Nigeria. Sowe are not diversifying for now, but I’m sure if something happens and the plan changes, you will be the first to know.