In Nigeria, the internet came to the lime light in the mid 90’s where only employees of major brands and an elite number of home users had access to it, with emails being the main reason why people were online. I remember opening my first email at the headquarters of the then Intercontinental Merchant Bank Limited (Idejo) there were no Cybercafés just business centers that all basic typesetting.

A few years down the line, the cybercafé business became a gold mine, business centers then all quickly converted to cybercafés with as little as 4 to 5 systems, young entrepreneurs springing up at every turn to start cybercafés (even I ran one). Remember people coming in- paying just to open an email account; I mean It was easy money, overtime people learnt to use the internet and competition between café owners grew, café owners started upping their games.

I mean high-end cafes had over 30 systems with Vsat connection, Fully Air-conditioned environment, nice background music. Lol! Some even offered to burn/mix cd for the customers for a token.

Remember then it was about knowing what the competition was offering and doing it better for café owners.

Customers then varied from contractors sending in their LPOs, to students coming in to check and send mails to friends and family aboard and to chat on Yahoo Messenger. We didn’t have Facebook, Myspace or HI5 then; it was all about chatting and browsing for information mainly

Read the Full Article here - http://www.ignite-ng.com/?p=318