Every Wednesday, BETAR.africa profiles an African tech professional who left — or chose to stay. We don’t celebrate the decision or condemn it. We just get the real numbers. This week: a Nigerian software engineer who was CTO of a Lagos-based logistics startup before taking a remote senior engineer role at a European scale-up. He is 37, based in Dublin, and asked us to use a pseudonym. We’re calling him Emeka.
Set the scene. Where were you, and where are you now?
Lagos, Lekki Phase 1, for six years. CTO of a logistics-tech startup — we did last-mile delivery optimisation for e-commerce businesses. Good work. Important work. I built the engineering team from two to eleven people. Then in late 2024 I took a remote senior staff engineer role at a Dublin-based SaaS company that does B2B supply chain software. I moved physically to Dublin in January 2025.
Walk me through the money.
As CTO in Lagos: ₦4.2 million a month total comp. That sounds like a lot — and in Lagos terms, it is. I was in the top tier. At the exchange rate when I left, that was about $2,800 a month. My Dublin salary is €130,000 a year, which is €10,833 a month — roughly $11,700 at current rates. So the multiplier is about 4.2x on paper. In real purchasing power in Dublin versus Lagos — honestly, it’s closer to 2.5x after you account for rent and the cost of living here. Dublin is not cheap.
What does rent look like?
I pay €2,100 a month for a one-bedroom in Drumcondra — that’s a 20-minute bus ride from the city centre. Not a nice area, not a bad area. Just functional. In Lagos, I had a 3-bedroom flat in Lekki that I paid ₦3.5 million a year for. If I convert that at current rates: about €1,950 a year. A year. So my rent went up 13x. That’s the number that still sits funny with me.
So is it actually better financially?
I save more. Meaningfully more. In Lagos, I was comfortable but I wasn’t building wealth at speed — the inflation ate everything. My naira savings were losing real value every month. Here, I’m saving about €3,500 a month after tax, rent, and living costs. That goes into investments — a mix of ETFs and dollar-denominated assets. I’m also still sending ₦600,000 home every month for my parents and two younger siblings in Enugu. That’s non-negotiable.
What’s it like technically? Are you doing more interesting work?
Different, not necessarily more interesting. In Lagos, I was building infrastructure almost from scratch — designing systems, making architectural decisions, managing vendors, everything. Here I’m a senior individual contributor on a mature team. The codebase is cleaner, the tooling is better funded, the on-call rotation is sane. I don’t carry a pager alone. I don’t have to fight for AWS credits. Those are real improvements. But I’m not building something from the ground up, and I feel that loss sometimes.
Do you miss Lagos?
I miss specific things. Buka on a Tuesday afternoon. The energy when something works despite everything conspiring against it. The friends who really know you. I don’t miss the generator fuel bills. I don’t miss negotiating with landlords who refused to take bank transfers. I don’t miss watching juniors I had trained leave for Canada and the UK every six months, which meant I was perpetually rebuilding the team.
What I really miss — and this is the honest answer — is the feeling of consequence. When our routing algorithm shaved 18% off delivery times for a major Nigerian e-commerce client, I could feel what that meant in the real world. Here the stakes feel more abstract. We optimise supply chains for European manufacturers. It matters economically, but it doesn’t feel the same.
What was the trigger? Why did you actually leave?
Three things. One: the naira devaluation in 2023 and then again in early 2024. My salary in dollar terms kept shrinking while my ambitions didn’t. Two: my startup hit a rough patch — we lost two major clients to a competitor who undercut us badly, and I could see the funding environment wasn’t going to be kind to us in 2024. I didn’t want to be looking for a job in a bad market. Three: my wife was already in the UK on a skilled worker visa. The Dublin role let me close that distance without going through a long UK visa process.
The startup you were building — what happened to it?
Still running. They hired a new CTO six months after I left — someone who came up through operations rather than engineering, which I think was actually the right call for where they are. They raised a small bridge round in Q3 2025. I still hold equity. I track their numbers quietly. I want them to win.
What’s your relationship with the japa question — do you think you made the right call?
I think I made a rational call. I’m not sure rational is the same as right. The person I was when I was CTO — the builder, the problem-solver who worked with constraints and still shipped — I value that version of myself. I’m doing good work here, but it’s not the same thing. I think both things can be true: I’m safer financially, and I gave something up.
I also think about what it means in aggregate. If everyone with strong technical skills leaves, the ecosystem doesn’t get the quality it needs to grow. That thought doesn’t feel good. But I also have parents who are getting older and siblings whose school fees don’t pay themselves. Individual choices are made inside real constraints.
Would you go back?
Yes — but not to a salaried role. If I build something again, I’ll build it in Nigeria. The market, the problems, the opportunities — they’re real and they’re enormous. I just need to build it with a dollar revenue base. That’s the thing I’ve concluded: you can build in Lagos, but you have to price in dollars or you’ll be running fast just to stay still.
What’s your advice to a senior Lagos engineer weighing this decision?
Don’t romanticise either option. Dublin or Toronto or London is not a solution to your problems — it just changes which problems you have. And Lagos is not a failure — it’s just a harder game right now. Do the actual math: your specific salary, your specific family obligations, your specific career goals. Talk to people who made the move two years ago, not six months ago. The first year abroad flatters the decision. Year two and three is when you find out if it actually fits.
And if you do go: keep your Nigerian network alive. Not for nostalgia. Because the continent is where the opportunity is growing fastest, and if you’re not connected, you’ll miss it from wherever you’re sitting.
BETAR.africa verified Emeka’s salary figures, rent costs, and remittance amounts via payslips and bank statements. His previous employer’s details have been withheld at his request. #TechJapa profiles are published every Wednesday.
Are you an African tech professional who left — or chose to stay? Share your story here.
Joseph Busari
UphivaBETAR
