Ideas that pay
their own rent.
The commercial side of Extrafemi — studios, marketplaces, small presses, civic archives. Each one is a real business with real customers and its own site.
Every venture here earns its own way.
Ventures is where an idea has grown teeth — it charges money, it serves customers, it keeps the lights on. Everything on this page has crossed that line, or is close enough that it's about to.
Fleuri — the French tutoring practice that quietly taught Lagos for years.
A French-language tutoring and consulting practice based in Lagos, active from around 2013. The name plays on the French fleuri — flowered, flourishing. Fleuri taught, translated and consulted in French for Nigerian professionals, students bound for Francophone Africa and Europe, and small businesses trading across the West African border.
The practice has since wound down. We keep the record here because Fleuri proved a quiet, durable market — ECOWAS-facing corporates, embassies, NGOs, families preparing for exams — and because the archive is a useful reference for anyone building French-for-business in West Africa today.
ChatClass NG — the ed-tech marketplace TechCabal profiled before the sector had a name.
ChatClass NG was one of Nigeria's earliest online higher-education marketplaces, connecting students across five countries to tutors, prep and admissions support. TechCabal profiled it as an innovative response to Nigeria's higher-education access gap. It was originally shortlisted for the Tony Elumelu Foundation Class of 2016 before the team pivoted to Wakafire.
ChatClass is defunct. The reason it still earns a page: everything Extrafemi later learned about African ed-tech distribution, unit economics and cross-border acquisition started here. Institutional partners exploring this space — the playbook is available.
Wakafire — the Lagos photography studio that trained 600+ mobile photographers.
Wakafire was a photography practice with a point of view: that a phone in trained hands beats a body-and-lens in untrained ones. Tony Elumelu Foundation Class of 2016. In 2018, Wakafire partnered with TECNO Mobile at Social Media Week Lagos to run a Smartphone Photography Masterclass — the first SMW Lagos event shot end-to-end on phones by amateurs, not professionals.
Over its run, Wakafire trained 600+ photographers, raised $30,000+ across three institutional backers, and served brands including Puma, Hugo Boss, Domino's and TECNO. The studio is now defunct; the curriculum, decks and mobile-first workflow are available to operators building something in the same shape.
Find A Mech — the automotive marketplace built inside ITU Seed's 2022 cohort.
Find A Mech was a marketplace concept for automotive services in markets where price opacity and quality variance are the default. Vetted workshops, upfront estimates and reviews you could trust. One of only two African startups accepted into the ITU Seed Accelerator in Türkiye, which also served as the TRNC's Innovation, Entrepreneurship and Incubation programme.
Find A Mech did not launch to market and is now defunct. The programme deliverables — market study, unit-economics model, workshop-onboarding funnel and TRNC/Türkiye landscape notes — are available to founders building in single-market services marketplaces.
Reviews App — the FlutterFlow prototype for capturing customer reviews on any surface.
Reviews App was a lightweight reviews collector built in FlutterFlow — a working prototype for capturing, moderating and displaying customer reviews on any small-business surface. It was the fastest way to prove the flow end-to-end without committing to a full custom build.
The prototype is now defunct as a standalone product; the mechanics live on as a reference implementation. The build file, screen designs and moderation logic are available to teams evaluating FlutterFlow for review-collection or light SMB tooling.
One Chapter — read the Bible one chapter at a time, on your own dates.
One Chapter is a subscription reading plan for the Bible. You pick two dates; the plan divides the 1,189 chapters between them and quietly re-balances after every missed day. No streaks, no shame, no gamified guilt — just a plan that flexes around a real life.
It's built for the reader who's tried five apps and given up on all of them. Live today at bible.extrafemi.com. Church and campus partners are welcome; the plan works quietly in the background of a congregation.
The Republic — a searchable archive of Nigerian civic data.
The Republic is a searchable archive of Nigerian civic data — budgets, bills, election results, ministerial promises. Everything the state already publishes, reorganised so a journalist, a researcher or a citizen can actually find it, cite it and compare it across years.
Live at therepublic.extrafemi.com. Open to newsroom partnerships, university licensing and philanthropic funders who care about civic infrastructure over civic performance.
Tools we built,
each with a home of its own.
Small, focused utilities we use every day at the studio — now open to anyone. Each one lives at its own address and does one thing well.
Sign
Send, sign and countersign documents. No accounts required for signers.
Signature
Create a handwritten-quality signature you can drop into anything.
Verify
Confirm a document was signed with Extrafemi — audit trail included.
Invoice
Clean invoices for small studios and freelancers. Send, track, get paid.
Transfer
Send large files without an account. Expires when the job is done.
Vault
A private locker for the documents that matter most.
Brands the ventures
have shot, shipped and served.
From Puma and Hugo Boss to Domino's, Tecno and the Bethesda Child Support Foundation — the ventures show up wherever the work is.
Open to investors,
franchisees and partners.
Wakafire has trained over 600 photographers and raised more than $30,000 across three institutional backers, including the Tony Elumelu Foundation. Find A Mech was selected into the ITU Seed Accelerator 2022 cohort. If you invest in African founders, back single-market marketplaces, or fund quiet, profitable studios — we should talk.
Selected recognition,
across ventures and years.
Awards, accelerators, cohorts, features — the moments external institutions put their name behind a venture.
One of Nigeria's early online higher-education marketplaces — profiled by TechCabal as an innovative response to the higher-education access gap; serving students across five countries.
Wakafire selected into the Tony Elumelu Foundation Entrepreneurship Programme — pan-African backing for the studio's earliest years.
Wakafire co-led a Smartphone Photography Masterclass with TECNO Mobile at Social Media Week Lagos (Feb 27, 2018, Landmark Towers) — and became the first SMW Lagos event shot end-to-end on phones by amateurs, not professionals.
The now-defunct Fleuri Consults was nominated for the Youth Citizen Entrepreneurship Competition — an international contest by GOI Peace Foundation, Stiftung Entrepreneurship Berlin, and UNESCO — with the award ceremony held at Germany's largest entrepreneurship event in Berlin.
One of only two African startups accepted into the ITU Seed Accelerator in Türkiye — which also served as the TRNC's Innovation, Entrepreneurship and Incubation programme.
Three rules,
quietly enforced.
Charge from day one
A venture proves itself with money in the door. Free tiers are a lab thing; ventures ask for the sale.
Own the customer
Direct relationships, direct bookings, direct email. No middleman platform gets to change the terms.
Small on purpose
Every venture is sized to the work it does. Growth is welcome; scale for its own sake is not.
"A hobby is a hope. A venture is an invoice."
Want to work with one of the ventures?
Bookings, partnerships, or a note about a venture that isn't listed yet — the inbox is open.