Ire Aderinokun

Self-taught front-end developer and UI designer Ire Aderinokun on building sites for the next billion users, enabling Nigerians to trade cryptocurrency instantly and going from tinkering with a fan site for online game Neopets to speaking at events all over the world

- Oliver Lindberg

Unlike many of us, Ire Aderinokun has experienced first-hand what it’s like to develop websites for the much-talked-about next billion users – people who are coming online for the first time in countries such as India, Indonesia, Brazil and Nigeria, where Aderinokun lives.

“One of the most annoying things about Nigeria is the lack of consistent internet,” Aderinokun explains. “If it rains heavily, for example, the internet will not work very well and you just need to accept that. I have four or five different ISPs in my house. When one doesn’t work, I just use another one. It’s a lot of patchwork.”

People also tend to use very different devices (typically low-end mobiles) and browsers than those in developed nations, while two-thirds of users in Nigeria are on 2G. For Aderinokun, who went to school and university in England, where she got used to fast, reliable internet connections, that was the biggest shock on her return to Nigeria.

“I was working for a company here in Lagos and in Google Analytics I saw that maybe 20 per cent of the users were using Opera Mini,” she remembers. “I wasn’t even aware of that browser at the time! I downloaded it, opened up the business's site in Opera Mini and almost everything was broken!”

This prompted Aderinokun to think a lot more about the different experiences people have and test more on real devices and browsers. It also helped her understand how every aspect of writing and serving CSS impacts the user, including the selectors and properties you use, the order you write CSS and how the styles are eventually delivered. She found that progressive enhancement and performative CSS were the fundamental things to consider.