The chips in your phone may have been designed in Nigeria

Inside an unassuming building in Lagos’ Opebi district, a group of young engineers are hunched over computer screens, filled with diagrams of circuits, verification flows, codes, and simulation models. They are meticulously sketching the blueprints that can power cars, phones, laptops, and AI systems around the world.

That building is home to ChipMango, a US-based startup with a bold ambition to give Africa a foothold in the global semiconductor industry. Semiconductors are often called the brains of modern electronics. They sit inside phones, laptops, cars, and even smartwatches that track our sleep. While the chips themselves are physical products, much of the intellectual value lies in the design, the detailed architecture that determines what a chip can do and how efficiently it performs.

ChipMango doesn’t manufacture chips; rather, it specialises in the design and verification process that happens before a chip ever reaches a fabrication plant.

Chip shortage of ‘20

ChipMango’s existence is a direct response to global and local forces colliding. First is the world’s insatiable hunger for semiconductors, an industry valued at $681.05 billion in 2024.

The global semiconductor shortage of 2020–2023 exposed just how dependent the world had become on a handful of manufacturing hubs. When the pandemic hit, global supply chains stalled due to a high demand for computers, iPads, and other electronic devices, while chip manufacturing sites were closed or operating with minimal staff. Carmakers, including Audi, Volkswagen, and Toyota makers were forced to halt or slow production because they couldn’t source enough chips to meet demand.

As demand surged, fueled further by the rise of AI systems, companies around the world scrambled to find more design and verification capacity. Outsourcing that work to Asia became more expensive due to increasing labour costs and technological advancements, leaving an opening for new, cost-efficient regions with strong engineering talent.

For ChipMango’s founders, Ola Fadiran and Jovan Andjelich, this was the opening. “Everything was going to India. That’s what we’re seeing now.” Fadiran recalls asking, “Why can’t we bring this to Africa?”

Local response to global demand

To many Nigerians, the idea of designing computer chips within the country once seemed distant, like a skill reserved for engineers in Silicon Valley. But Fadiran and Andjelich quickly realised that this gap existed because of a lack of opportunity.

The co-founders bring complementary backgrounds. Fadiran previously worked design and architectural roles at Intel and Boeing, while Andjelich managed Google’s computer chip operations for mobile devices and helped Tesla ramp up its vehicle production. In 2021, the pair began mapping what it would take to build a chip design capability in Africa. Their approach was to start with what Nigeria already had, bright engineering graduates, a growing tech ecosystem, and a lower cost base, and then build from there.

They wanted to prove that complex chip design could be done from Lagos and have the same standard as the ones done in Beijing. In 2022, ChipMango launched to design high-quality chips for global clients and train Nigerian engineers to meet global semiconductor standards. By December 2024, ChipMango opened its first design center in Lagos, a secure and controlled outsourcing hub designed specifically to protect client intellectual property (IP).

Under the hood

ChipMango’s model is deliberately different from the fintech boom that has dominated Africa’s startup narrative. “We’re not trying to bank the unbanked. We’re trying to create a talent hub that is going to put Africa right in the AI race,” Fadiran says.

ChipMango operates a dual engine designed to cultivate and deploy chip design in Nigeria. The first is a talent pipeline, which teaches chip design skills to engineers within the country. Early in their journey, Fadiran and Andjelich realised that Nigeria lacked industry-ready semiconductor engineers, even though the universities produced strong graduates in electrical engineering. Through partnerships with Nigerian universities, including the University of Lagos, Obafemi Awolowo University, and Miva Open University, ChipMango runs a curriculum that blends classroom learning with hands-on industry projects, allowing participants to work on real design problems for global clients under supervision.

The second engine is the design and verification of chips, which includes checking that everything works as intended, and customisation for specific end products before they are sent to a facility where they would be manufactured. This action happens at ChipMango’s Design Center in Lagos which, after my visit, revealed trained talents in action.

The atmosphere is one of intense focus among the ten engineers I spoke with. On one screen, a designer was meticulously laying out the architecture for a chip designed for an ECG machine that uses chest leads. A few seats over, another engineer was deep in the verification process, running countless simulations to ensure a client’s design works before it ever reaches a manufacturing plant. At another workstation, an engineer was carefully analysing a client’s existing intellectual property (which he did not reveal to me) to extract the precise specifications needed for a new custom design.

This facility is a controlled space that allows engineers to collaborate with U.S. clients while protecting sensitive intellectual property. “Companies are very protective about their intellectual property,” explained Agnes Mukiya, ChipMango’s Head of Operations. “That IP is their secret sauce. It’s what they’re selling to their clients. So this kind of work needs to happen in a very controlled environment with really high speed connectivity. We have the design center there to give the clients guarantee of trust”

ChipMango competes with established chip-design outsourcing firms such as HCL Tech, TATA ELXSI, and FTD Infocom Pvt Limited, which dominate India’s semiconductor design industry. These companies benefit from decades of accumulated talent, global presence and availability of resources, but they also operate at a scale that makes them expensive and less flexible. ChipMango’s strategy is to stay lean and reduce chip design costs by up to 80%, leveraging a fully software-based, cloud-enabled model.

ChipMango’s long term ambition is to position Nigeria, and eventually Africa, within the global semiconductor value chain, a space the continent is largely absent from. The company is also focused on using its design capacity to serve local needs as it believes that in time, African engineers could design chips optimised for African realities. In practical terms, that could mean designing chips for devices that operate efficiently under frequent power outages. The company claims to have achieved roughly $200,000 in annual recurring revenue (ARR) and plans to scale the Lagos center to reach a full capacity of 90 engineers with the $1 million pre-seed round it’s currently raising.

The billion-dollar chip-production facilities, like fabrication plants, may still be distant. But a crucial first step, chip design, is here now in a quiet Lagos office. By building capacity, ChipMango hopes to ensure that when manufacturing eventually reaches the continent, the technical expertise will already exist.