Amoke Oge and Jean Tirole

A Nobel winner and food entrepreneur come together in agreement

In 2014, the French economist, Jean Tirole, was awarded the Nobel Prize in Economics “for his analysis of market power and regulation.” That simple statement by the committee understated the fact that no other economist had done more to formalise the understanding of platforms, or two-sided markets. His Theory of Industrial Organisation, published in 1988, remains the gold standard text on the topic with over 21,000 citations.

A platform connects two groups - typically buyers and sellers - through an intermediary that creates more value than if the groups interacted directly. Tirole's key insight was recognising that platforms exist precisely because these groups struggle to find and transact with each other efficiently on their own. Without the platform, many of these transactions simply wouldn't happen. This explains the platform's fundamental value proposition: if users could easily connect without it, the platform would have no reason to exist. Tirole recognised that network effects fundamentally change how platforms operate. As more people join a platform, it becomes a lot more valuable: each new phone user, for example, makes everyone else's phone more useful. This creates two radical departures from traditional business logic.

First, platforms will sacrifice profits to grow quickly. Second, platforms routinely charge one side nothing (or even pay them) while the other side foots the bill. Platforms subsidise whichever side creates more value for the other, maximising the network's total worth. Without grasping this logic, platform economics seems mystifying. But once you do, these seemingly perverse strategies make perfect sense.

Champagne for my real friends, real pain for my sham friends

The origin story of platforms that economists like to tell goes back to the year 1299. A merchant from Prato, Italy, attended the famous Champagne (in today’s northern France) fairs that served as "the fulcrum of European trade." When the fair ended, one Florentine customer fled to London owing the Prato merchant 1,600 pounds - a staggering sum worth four hundred years of a skilled craftsman's wages back in those days. The merchant complained to the fair wardens, who wielded extraordinary power. After confirming the debt through London's lord mayor, the wardens issued an ultimatum: either the Florentine paid up in full, or they would ban all London merchants from the fairs. Faced with commercial exile, London's merchants pressured the debtor and within a year he had paid up the 1,600 pounds.

This old drama illustrates something fundamental about platforms: markets don't emerge spontaneously but require active management to thrive. The Count of Champagne had transformed his region into Europe's commercial hub by acting as a market maker - attracting the right participants, setting rules, enforcing contracts, and taking a cut of every transaction. His wardens' power to exclude entire cities from the fairs gave them leverage to ensure trust and payment across vast distances. Just as modern platforms like Visa, Facebook, and the iPhone carefully manage their marketplaces by connecting different groups and maintaining standards, the Champagne fairs succeeded because they were actively designed and governed platforms, not '“anyhow” gatherings.

Enter Amoke Oge

This brings us to Chowdeck, a Nigerian food delivery platform that recently spotlighted one of its vendors, Amoke Oge. The video went viral - not just because it showed a woman building a thriving business, but because she did it in Nigeria, where entrepreneurial success requires overcoming extraordinary obstacles.

The video celebrated Amoke Oge becoming the first woman-owned business to reach 500,000 deliveries on Chowdeck. She tells her story with infectious warmth, speaking in Lagos Yoruba with a constant smile on her face the whole time.

But the moment that would delight Jean Tirole comes halfway through. Amoke Oge describes her pre-Chowdeck days with crowds jamming her store, endless queues, frustrated customers and overwhelmed staff. Then she delivers the punchline that validates Tirole's entire body of work - after joining Chowdeck, foot traffic to her store decreased while her revenues increased.

This is economics at its best - theory perfectly matching reality. Tirole's abstract models suddenly become tangible: a platform owner carefully balancing the needs of restaurants, drivers, and customers; a vendor reaching customers who would never have run the gauntlet of the chaos of her physical store with its combustible mix of hungry, frustrated people waiting in line for their food.

Amoke Oge's testimony proves platforms aren't academic gibberish but practical tools that transform lives. She gained access to a vast customer base she couldn't reach before, earning billions of naira in revenues in the process, while those customers avoided an unpleasant shopping experience. Everyone wins, exactly as Tirole predicted.

Organise, every other day

Nigeria's economic struggles often boil down to one problem: too little structure and too much friction in how economic transactions gets done. This lack of organisation persists for predictable reasons. Some profit from “anyhowness” and actively resist change as they are unable to conceive of anything better than the bird in their hand. Others can't resist using their platform position for corruption, destroying the trust platforms need to thrive. Many simply don't care enough to build something better - as John Collison observed, the world is a museum of passion projects.

Stories like Amoke Oge's (and Korede Spaghetti, too) reveal what becomes possible when platforms do their job: reduce friction, connect people efficiently, and create value for everyone involved. A platform can organise any kind of economic activity but the principle never changes. Make transactions smoother. Keep all sides happy. Expand the pie rather than fight over small slices. Set your face like flint against Anyhowness.

It sounds simple because it is. But why then is there a scarcity of platforms in Nigeria and indeed much of Africa? Congratulations to Amoke Oge as we ponder the answer to that question.