There are thousands of startups in Nigeria, and they're not just producing high-tech products targeted at the upper and middle classes. Some are trying to get traction in that tricky ground between making a profit and taking on big social problems. After finishing her MBA at MIT, Bilikiss Adebiyi-Abiola started WeCyclers, basically a motorbike-based trash collection business that serves the 60 percent of Lagos' population that lives in slum neighborhoods where people are too poor to pay for trash collection. WeCyclers takes their waste and pays them with money it earns from recycling.

The spirit of small business is everywhere. The informal sector—street vendors, local businesses and tradespeople—is booming as well, particularly in Lagos. Nigerians have a work ethic that makes Scandinavians look like slackers.

No one sits in Nigeria. It's impossible to walk down the street without being approached by someone selling something, from peanuts to windshield wipers to an on-the-spot manicure. In Kaduna, the governor has converted a section of the market into a "recycling program" to provide employment for youth. It's backbreaking and dangerous work: smashing old alternators to pieces with hammers to pluck out the copper wire inside; bending old, razor-sharp roofing sheet metal to make bread bins; and melting down aluminum cans to recast them into cooking pots. The program has no shortage of applicants, many of whom are less interested in getting the basic skills the program provides than in earning money to pay their school fees so they can move on to better jobs. Nigerians are passionate about education and self-improvement.

That's all great. But movies, high tech and street retail are not enough to support three-quarters of a billion people. As Aiyesimoju says, "Google's been a great success, but it hasn't transformed the American economy" alone. Transformation will require addressing core industries like petroleum, manufacturing and agriculture, making them more efficient and competitive. In the case of petroleum, there's also the need to streamline the state company that oversees the industry, the Nigerian National Petroleum Corp. In the case of agriculture, it's moving away from subsistence farming using almost Stone Age tools and techniques toward modern high-yield farming and redeploying those displaced workers in what Tufts University economics professor Margaret McMillan calls the "modern sector." So far, progress is spotty.

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