Digital Nomads: The digital marketer travelling across Africa on a $2,000 budget

“In everything you do in this life, just have money—especially if you’re a woman.”

Lily Dada, 2022.

I speak to Lily on a frigid Thursday morning, from my apartment in Abuja. It’s 3 AM WAT, and I’m wearing a fluffy blue wool sweater that’s begun to fray. The room is almost completely dark, illuminated only by the glow of my laptop screen open to Google Meet, and the flashing colours on my mouse.

Lily tells me her room is brightly lit, a room in the heart of Lagos, Nigeria, where she has been living since she got back from Kenya. Lagos is warm, Lily says, and the memories of Lagos’ humid ember months make me briefly recoil.

In my room in Abuja, the fierce harmattan breeze punctuates our conversation, whistling sharply as Lily and I begin to explore her experience as a digital nomad who has spent the past five years exploring 10 African countries.

At first, we exchange quips on why we’re both awake and willing to meet online mid-morning. I say it’s a hazard of my job, a by-product of managing a daily newsletter scheduled for 6:30 AM every morning. Lily’s response is similar. As a freelance remote digital marketer, travel consultant and digital nomad, she often works well into the night or wakes up early to get some work done. 

I decide to kick off the conversation here—by asking if late nights, early mornings, cross-country travels and multiple streams of income were part of the future Lily dreamed of as a…