Food Delivery Software in Nigeria — Launch a Platform

Lagos first, then the gap

Lagos has the density, the restaurants and the riders. It also has traffic that makes a 20-minute promise a refund machine, so promise 35–45 minutes and hit it. Outside Lagos — Abuja, Port Harcourt, Ibadan, Enugu — competition thins out fast and a well-run local platform can own the city.

Payments

Paystack and Flutterwave are the practical choices, with cards, bank transfer and USSD. Cash on delivery is still common and must be reconciled per rider. Because Nigerian card success rates vary, always offer a non-card fallback at checkout — a failed payment is a lost customer, not a retry.

The address problem

This is the operational issue that decides whether delivery works in Nigeria. Street addressing is inconsistent, so a free-text address field is not enough. Collect a phone number, a landmark, and a pin on a map. Then call the customer when the rider is five minutes away — that call is the difference between a delivery and a return.

Riders and fuel

Bikes dominate. Fuel price volatility hits unit economics directly, so price delivery with a buffer and review it monthly rather than annually. A rider incentive per completed drop works better than a fixed hourly rate at low volume.

Delivery fees

Restaurants in Lagos are used to aggregator fees in the 20–30% range. Running your own ordering channel with a clear delivery fee is credible, especially if you can promise reporting on a predictable schedule — cash flow matters more to a Nigerian restaurant than a few points of fee.

Cost in naira

$299 once, roughly ₦450,000 at current rates, plus a VPS. Hosting in Europe or South Africa with a CDN in front is usually a better experience than a local VPS at the same price.