Ndubuisi Ekekwe, US-based Nigerian entrepreneur, calls for rethink of global trade metrics
by Dr. Piyush Mathur
Dr. Ndubuisi Ekekwe is the founder and chairman of Tekedia Capital LLC, a US-registered enterprise. (This photograph is a screenshot from Tekedia Capital’s website.)
In a LinkedIn post that sparked vibrant discussion, US-based Nigerian entrepreneur and business trainer Dr. Ndubuisi Ekekwe challenged conventional thinking about trade balances. Taking aim at the US President Donald Trump's complaints over US trade deficits, Ekekwe argued that such calculations are fundamentally outdated because they ignore the growing dominance of services and software in the global economy.
‘Yes, when you add services and software, America wins the world and runs a huge “trade” surplus with every country on earth’, Ekekwe declared. Unlike traditional goods that pass through seaports and border customs, digital exports—like Google ads, Netflix subscriptions, or Apple app sales—move silently across IP addresses and bank networks, he noted.
Ekekwe’s post referenced his own request to Nigeria’s trade authorities to compute a two-part table: first, the physical goods trade balance with the US, which Nigeria appears to win due to oil and agricultural exports; and second, the ‘invisible’ trade balance on services and software, where ‘Nigeria has a huge trade deficit’, thanks to heavy reliance on US-origin platforms and services.
The post gained traction for reframing the notion of tariffs as a modern-day digital toll booth where the US already holds the upper hand. ‘Take a look at the ranking of mobile apps and their downloads—the US is top in all categories’, Ekekwe emphasized, urging Nigerian negotiators to update their strategy accordingly. Referring generally to popular US-origin digital products and services as gateways—or ‘internet ports’, as he put it—he suggested that they be included in trade talks.
The response from Ekekwe’s network was swift and spirited.
Voke Otega, a digital commerce communication strategist, praised the post for highlighting what most people ignore in trade discussions. ‘Yes, we export crude oil and food to the US, and on the surface, it looks like we’re winning’,' Otega typed. ‘But the real trade game now includes software, services, and subscriptions.’ She substantiated her argument with unerring clarity in two additional paragraphs:
From Netflix to Microsoft, Google Ads, Meta Ads, to Apple Store purchases, and even the tools we use to run our businesses those goods don’t go through seaports, but they absolutely count. That’s money leaving our economy daily.
So when we’re negotiating trade or tariffs, we can’t just focus on physical goods. The world has changed, and our playbook needs to reflect that. Otherwise, we’re calculating with the wrong numbers and wondering why the balance never seems right.
Otega’s comment was supported by Keston Agboro, the Lagos-based founder of Oya Online, who noted that many of Nigeria's digital platforms are also hosted on Amazon Web Services (AWS), further underscoring the invisible US dominance.
Ayotokunbo Ajewole, a software engineer, was more blunt: ‘Donald Trump knows that he [America] holds the winning chips, that’s why he’s bold... Whether or not the goods are physical is not the matter.’ He went on to point out that not only Nigeria but also the rest of Africa has no alternative to what the US has to offer, especially within the digital sector.
Iko Alavo, a founding partner of Africa Supply Logistics (ASL), raised a more technical point about measurement tools. ‘Which economical and statistical tools can fairly measure total trade balance in an unbiased way?’ he asked. Ekekwe replied that the issue is less about tools than about what data is being fed into them; countries like Lesotho, he noted, may appear to have a trade surplus with the US but they still rely on American banking, entertainment, and technological services.
Amid a sprinkling of calls for Nigeria to develop greater self-dependence, a gentle note of caution was issued by 'femi Akinremi, the Head of Market Access Strategy and Cross-cutting EU Policy with the UK’s Department of Business and Trade: ‘There’s a subtle risk in framing this as a call for “independence in all things”.’
In sum, Ekekwe's intervention pushes for a new trade lexicon, one that no longer confines trade to ships, trucks, and warehouses but acknowledges the commanding role of data streams, intellectual property, and subscriptions. While his argument—that America’s true trade surplus lies not in containers but in code—is being overlooked as global geoeconomics unravels under Trump, his call to include digital portals, gateways, and applications in trade calculations may become harder to ignore in the long run. As it stands, Nigeria still has a long way to go before it could incorporate such calculations in ways that would be robust enough to produce convincing data on global fora.
Calls for Nigeria to improve its own digital trade infrastructure have been growing. The Overseas Development Institute (ODI) came out with a report in that regard barely four days after Ekekwe’s LinkedIn post. The same institute had published a report last year advocating the implementation of the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) protocol on digital trade in Nigeria. There have been similar reports and assessments through previous years—highlighting the need for Nigeria (and other countries) to push forward their digital trade and infrastructure.
Ekekwe’s argument is of course a bit more specific than the advocacy of promoting digital trade infrastructure in Nigeria or Africa—but this latter component gives a context to it. At the same time, in its clerical specificity, Ekekwe’s argument goes far beyond Nigeria or even Africa: Most countries would stand to gain from adopting and advancing his perspective, especially within the skewed logic of Trump-era tariff wars, justified on the basis of trade imbalances calculated in what now can be considered a pre-digital framework.
What is missing from Ekekwe’s argument and even the thread that followed his post is the impact of the US dollar’s role as the global reserve currency since the end of the Second World War—and the American ability to use that privilege to import goods in exchange for the dollar, thereby sustaining a trade deficit since 1976. The dollar enjoys the status of a coveted commodity. If the dollar is removed as the global reserve currency, then the US trade deficit would also shrink.
Ekekwe founded and chairs Tekedia Capital LLC, which is registered in the US as a privately held entity headquartered in Wyoming. Tekedia serves as the venture investment arm of FASMICRO LLC (better known as First Atlantic Semiconductors and Microelectronics), registered and headquartered in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, also founded and chaired by Ekekwe.
Ekekwe’s LinkedIn post—made around April 13, 2025—could be accessed here.
Dr. Piyush Mathur edits Thoughtfox, and is the author of the book Technological Forms and Ecological Communication: A Theoretical Heuristic (Lexington Books, 2017). For some of his related reports and interviews, click these links: Is the world primed for a new model of global banking?; Tanzanian researcher takes forward his learning movement—and how!; Interview with Leo Igwe.
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