MAKKET is a market-enablement platform. We don't compete with traders — we make them more discoverable, more trusted, and more efficient.
Over 80% of commerce in Nigeria happens in physical markets. These markets move billions of naira every day, yet there's no way to search them, compare sellers, or verify who you're buying from.
Buyers waste hours in traffic, walk through crowded market rows, and have no way to know if a seller is trustworthy until they've already paid. Sellers — even the best ones — depend entirely on foot traffic and word of mouth.
MAKKET changes that. We're mapping every major market in Nigeria, stall by stall. We verify sellers through field agents who physically visit shops. And we give buyers the tools to search, compare, and order — all from their phone.
We're not another ecommerce app. We don't own inventory, we don't warehouse goods, and we don't compete with the traders we serve. MAKKET is infrastructure — the digital layer that makes physical markets work better for everyone.
We started in Lagos because it has the most complex and commercially powerful market ecosystems on the continent. From Balogun to Mile 12, Alaba to Computer Village — these markets are economic engines. They just need a digital upgrade.
We enable sellers, never compete with them. Every feature strengthens the existing market system.
Verification, ratings, and reviews aren't features — they're the foundation everything else is built on.
Low bandwidth, basic smartphones, pidgin search. We design for real Nigerian conditions, not imported models.
We prove one market cluster before expanding. A smaller geography with real usage beats broad coverage with weak activity.
Alex Nwoko spent a decade deploying humanitarian data systems for UN agencies and international organisations across six countries — building geospatial intelligence, trust infrastructure for cash transfers, and real-time coordination platforms serving over 200 organisations. Returning to Nigeria between deployments, he recognised the same structural problems he was solving in crisis response — fragmented information, invisible supply chains, trust that only exists through personal networks — were the everyday reality of Africa's informal markets. He re-imagined these struggles not as inconveniences, but as opportunities to unlock the continent's vast informal economic potential.
MAKKET is the result: a digital layer built from first principles by a founder who understands operational constraints from the inside out. Alex's conviction is that Africa's markets don't need disruption by outsiders — they need digitisation by builders who respect the systems that already work and know how to design for 2G networks, basic smartphones, and trust-first commerce. His mission with MAKKET is simple: help Africans do business with Africans. Read the full founder journey →