Do you want to start a business and make fast money this dry season? If YES, here are 50 best small business ideas for dry season in Nigeria. There are two distinct seasons in Nigeria; the wet season that starts from April to October, with generally lower temperature, and the dry season that lasts from November to March, with midday temperatures that surpass 38°C (100°F).
The dry season is usually accompanied by a dust laden airmass from the Sahara Desert, and this is known in local parlance as Harmattan. The dry season is also famous for its lack of rainfall and its high temperatures which make the whole land look dry and barren, hence the name dry season.
This season is a special aspect of the Nigerian climate as Nigerians get to find relief from the incessant rains, bad roads, flooding etc. that typically accompany the rains. The arrival of the dry season in Nigeria gives life a whole new meaning as people and their behaviours get to change to accommodate the needs of this season.
Not only do behaviours get to change in the dry season, but businesses do change as well to accommodate all the heat, dust and discomfort. So if you want to take advantage of this season to make some money, here are a few businesses you can set up.
50 Best Small Business ideas and Opportunities for Dry Season in Nigeria
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Windshield cleaning business
The dry season in Nigeria is synonymous with dust especially up North where they regularly experience dust storms. You can start a small business where you help commuters to professionally wipe their dusty windshields. You can get stationed in areas prone to traffic gridlock and offer this service while cars are in traffic and you get to charge a small fee for doing this. You can as well set up a stall in a busy area where people can drop in for a quick wipe before going off.
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Car wash
With the whole lot of dust going around, cars tend to get coated easily. A car wash business that is set up in a very visible area would make loads of profit. You can do just that so as to earn from this niche in this period.
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Leaf raking business
Trees lose a lot of leaves in the dry season because the sun and harsh winds whittle them up easily. For areas with a lot of trees, that would mean a lot of work. You can offer your services to hotels, resorts and the likes as a leaf raker. You can either do it the old fashioned way of sweeping up and burning the refuse, or you can purchase better suited equipment for it in order to make your work easier.
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Bottle water making and selling
One common ailment in the dry season is dehydration as people usually don’t get to drink enough water. If you have the capital and the capacity, you can set up a bottled water factory where you get to make bottled water for sale. Note though that in this business, you may not be free to set your own price regime as you must abide by the established market price if you are to make good sales.
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Sell cold soft drinks
Cold drinks on a very hot day feels just like heaven. You can open a shop where you get to sell varieties of cold drinks people can use to quench their thirst during the heat. You can also add snacks to your offers so that it can make a passable lunch for some people. You would make a lot of sales if you set up this business in a busy area such as camp grounds, offices, schools, markets, etc.
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Water refilling business
In the alternative to starting a bottled water factory, you can start a water refilling business. Here people get to bring their containers, especially dispenser water bottles for you fill them with well treated water for a fee. This business is essentially new in the country so you are guaranteed a good market share if you start now.
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House cleaning business
In the harmattan (a strong dry wind that kicks off in the dry season), houses and furniture get covered in dust everyday. A lot of people, especially busy executives may not have the time to clean their homes everyday. You can offer to keep their houses clean for a small fee.
You can charge your fee depending on how many times you provide your cleaning services in a month or week. Also, you need to make sure that you have high integrity as a person so that your customers can trust you with their homes when they are not around.
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Start a cake baking business
It is usually the norm in Nigeria to move most of the major celebrations to the dry season. This is why one would always find occasions and events getting fixed around the dry season especially December. With a lot of events taking place around this period, you can start a business of baking cakes people can use for their events.
People having white and traditional weddings, birthdays, anniversaries etc would appreciate your services especially if you are good at what you do, and your prices are reasonable.
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Become an event planner
A lot of people in Nigeria these days especially those in big cities like Lagos are too busy to start planning occasions for themselves, and with the dry season being the perfect time to hold outdoor events, you can offer your services as an event planner.
To get jobs in this business, you would have to know where to get the best deals in meals, halls, decoration etc. Since this industry is still new in Nigeria, you can get to fix your own prices as it suits you and still have patronage.
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Rent out event centers
This business idea would suit a real estate savvy person. With the high rate of weddings and other celebrations in the dry season, you can be the go-to person for event centers. To get started, you should know every event center in your locality so that you can be able to pick ones that suit every budget once your services are required.
You can have a catalog that you take along with you on appointments, or you can start your own website where all that information can be gotten. This service would stop people from going around from place to place looking for event centers.
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Sell/rent budget party paraphernalia
Not only the rich get to celebrate, those who have little money to spare also have right to a great party. You can stock budget party paraphernalia for those who want a great party but cannot afford it. You can also offer your products for rent for those who want to rent instead of buying them. You can pick up more money by offering to do the decorations – on a budget of course.
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Start an outdoor restaurant
Nothing can beat the pleasure of having dinner under the night sky, with the stars as your only cover. You can take advantage of this pleasure that can only be enjoyed in the dry season to start an outdoor restaurant. You would surely get patrons if your restaurant is well situated and you prepare a variety of meals.
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Become a commercial cook
With big events always going on in the dry season, if you have the stamina and skill, you can become a commercial cook who prepares meals that get eaten at occasions. If your meals are good and your services are excellent, you can get referrals by word of mouth from your satisfied clients.
But you have to note that you should be able to prepare huge volumes of food at the same time. This business can be quite stressful, so you need to be able to withstand stress. You can as well hire people to help you with the cooking if you cannot handle it alone.
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Sell of firewood
Nigeria is a nation where a lot of people still cook with firewood. They get to burn wood and make fire out of it to use to prepare their meals. With the absence of rain, the bushes get dry and as such it is easy to harvest wood. You can start harvesting firewood for sale to people who use them to make meals. This business is quite profitable as you do not need to invest any capital before you start.
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Start a mini ice cream shop
Ice cream is always a welcome treat in the dry season especially in the middle of the day when the sun is at its peak. You can open an ice-cream shop where you get to sell various flavours of ice cream. You need to ensure that your shop is located in a place that sees a lot of leg traffic if you want to make good sales. You can also start a mobile ice cream shop where you get to move around the neighborhood while selling your sweet treat from a van.
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Start an open air hang out
The dry season comes with very clement weather but temperatures can be too hot for the indoor. You can start an open air hang out where people can come and relax under the sky after a hard day’s job, probably with a bottle of cold drink and local delicacies.
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Start a bar
Bars are favorite hang outs for people, and bars tend to be very full at this period because people can’t usually bear the heat of the indoors. You can start a bar where you stock varieties of cold drinks to suit every taste.
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Sale of water based fruits
There are certain fruits that contain lots of water that help people quench their thirst. Fruits like water melon, pineapples, cucumbers, sugarcane etc are good sellers during the dry season. You can start selling these fruits wholesale, or you can retail them by slicing them and making them ready to eat before you start selling. You can as well make fruit salads and sell them along with your whole fruits.
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Start a club
Who wants to stay home at night in the sweltering heat and probably with no power supply? Definitely not the youth of today. With the good weather making way for good night life, you can capitalize on this to start a club where people can come and dance the night away. Your major profits would always come from the drinks you sell.
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Start a laundry service
The dry season in Nigeria is characterized by copious sweating, and people can get to wear two or three clothings in a day making the laundry pile up faster than one can wash. You can start a dry cleaning service to help relieve people of this burden of clothe washing, because a lot of people see hand washing of clothes as a burden. You can as well offer home delivery services to make things easier for your clients and to also increase your profit base.
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Sale of solar panels
Nigeria which is situated in the tropics have a lot of sun in the dry season. This then is the perfect time to install solar panels for efficient use. You can start selling solar panels to communities that rarely see the general power supply. You can also offer installation services as well as repair if you have the capacity. Market your services well and you would make profits.
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Sale of sunglasses
During the dry season in Nigeria, the sun tends to get so hot and bright that it is not advisable for one not to wear eye protection. You can start a business where you import and sell sunshades to people. This business is a really fast moving business during this time of the year, and to make more profit, you can target pedestrians, those who work under the sun and even drivers. You should equally stock both cheap and expensive sunshades so as to have something for every pocket.
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Sell roadside snacks
The dry season brings nightlife to its peak in Nigeria and as such people can always be found outside at all hours strolling around. You can start a roadside business where you get to sell snacks in the evenings. You can get to fry and sell seasoned fish, bean cakes, yam, potatoes etc. This is one cheap but profitable business one can start in the drought season.
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Start a shoe polishing business
Because of the volumes of dust that characterize the dry season, shoes almost permanently wear a brown look. You can start a shoe polishing business where you get to polish shoes for busy executives. You can stay close to offices so you can get people going to their places of work in the morning. Who doesn’t want to come to work looking sharp?
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Run a public swimming pool
It is a fact that most states in Nigeria experience heat waves in the dry season as the weather can get exceedingly hot. You can take advantage of this natural phenomenon to make some cash for yourself. You can rent or buy a land and build a swimming pool that is meant for public use. People would be made to pay to swim for a particular number of hours in your pool. To make the deal more exciting, you can add other recreational facilities targeted at children.
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Dry produce for sale in the next season
In Nigeria, the sun is effectively utilized as a method of food preservation. You can sun dry produce like meat, fish, tomatoes, pepper, tapioca etc which you can then sell in the next season for profit. These products are sometimes cheap in the dry season especially tomatoes. You can sell your stuff in the rainy season with good profit.
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Start a motel
People travel a lot in the dry season especially in the month of December when a lot of people have holidays from work. You can start a mini motel to accommodate people looking for accommodation. A motel would cost you less to start then a hotel, and if your facilities are kept neat and tidy, you would not lack patronage.
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Start a poultry
Poultries do great in the dry season as the cold and dampness of the wet season leads to high chick mortality. You can start a poultry business in this season and become quite successful because of very low chick mortality. You may have to sell of your stock twice before the rains come.
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Start a mini amusement park
Though this business may require a lot of startup capital but it can prove very successful if you manage to start it up with the right facilities. It is a fact that people always look for places to take their children in weekends when the weather is quite good. This business, if given the right publicity would net you a lot of profits in a short time.
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Start a borehole business
Scarcity of clean water for cooking, drinking and carrying out other household activities is one of the issues most Nigerians face especially during the dry season when streams and other sources of water may have dried up.
If you are a trained geologist, you can start drilling boreholes in the dry season for communities who have challenges with water supply. Also, you can drill your own personal borehole and start selling the water to people. You can charge them a certain amount for fetching the water, maybe per gallon or per bucket.
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Start a sachet water plant
Sachet water is a cheaper way for Nigerians to obtain clean drinking water on the go. You can set up a plant that packages sachet water for sale. This business gets a lot of patronage in the dry season because people tend to drink a lot. You need to get a truck to help you out with distribution of your products.
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Retail fire extinguishers
The dry season is characterized by the outbreak of incidental fires which can be caused by a lot of things such as faulty electrical appliance, gas leak etc. You can start retailing fire extinguishers and try to convince home owners on why they should own one.
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Graphics designing
Some of the things that are seen frequently in this season are posters, brochures, and printed materials, and it is people that design these things. As a graphics designer, you would not lack works to keep you busy because of the rate people hold celebrations in this season.
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Start a house painting business
Houses that were ravaged by rains always need to be given a face lift after the season. Besides, December is the month where all things celebration happens so people always want their homes to be presentable for this. If you are a painter, you can offer your services to people to paint their homes. You need to approach new buildings or buildings that you feel would need a fresh coat of paint and convince the owners why they should be painted.
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Sell warm weather apparels
With a lot of people developing heat stroke at the peak of the dry season, people are forced to wear lighter clothing because of the heat. You can start selling weather appropriate clothing and you would sure get a lot of patronage.
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Fruit Juice Making
This is a capital-intensive business, but if you can manage to get the funds, your business would surely become profitable and stable after a short while. To break into this already competitive market, you have to do extensive publicity and also ensure that your juices are quite good so that you can leverage on word of mouth publicity.
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Sachet water retailing
Although you may not own a sachet water plant, but you can still make money by retailing the products of this plant. It is a fact that a lot of people are making a living out of this business. You too can start retailing sachet water. You need to situate your business in an area that sees a lots of leg traffic so that you can easily sell off your sachet water. This business thrives on quick turnover so you have to ensure that you sell off your stock fast.
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Become an MC
To be successful as a master of ceremony, you need to have an outgoing personality and you need to be quite funny as well in order to be able to engage your audience. With the volumes of events that take place in the dry season in Nigeria, you would never lack jobs, at least for the season.
To break into this competitive industry, you need to start handling occasions for your family and friends in order to get a reputation. This business pays good money and it would not cost you anything for startup, well except money to get good clothes because you always need to look sharp at any event you are handling.
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Store palm oil for sale in the rainy season
Palm oil is one commodity that gets cheap in the dry season because that is when palm nuts ripen. Like a lot of people, you can get into the business of basically buying and holding a good quantity of palm oil in the dry season and then selling them off in the rainy season when the produce gets expensive. This business has been going in for ages in Nigeria and it is quite profitable for those who practice it.
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Start a water tanker distribution business
A lot of communities in Nigeria live in perpetual lack of water, and they totally depend on rain water during the wet season, but when the dry season comes, they now have to look for an alternative source of water.
These days, people hire the services of water tanker operators to help them fill up their water storage tanks at home. This service is a bit pricey, so your target market should be affluent homes that can afford it. This is another good business that can thrive in the dry season.
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Distribute water in gallons
It is a fact that some homes, even in the cities depend on people who distribute water in gallons for their daily water allocation. It should be noted that water distributed in gallons is usually meant for household purposes but not for drinking.
If you live in an area, city or community that has no public water supply, you can take up this business. It is a fact that a lot of people are making a decent living out of this business, and in Lagos, such people are called mairuwa. What you need to start the business are a couple of gallons and a cart.
You go daily to a good source of water, fill up your gallons and start hawking them around the street. You would get permanent customers after a short while if you are consistent with what you do.
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Start an ice block making business
The dry season is known to be quite hot, dry and humid, and people are always looking for cold drinks to cool off with this period. With the Nigerian power supply being epileptic at best and non-existent at worst, the making and selling of ice blocks looks to be a very viable business one can start in the dry season. You can target households, restaurants, soft drink and bottled/sachet water retailers etc. as your basic customers.
This business requires medium startup capital as you would need to acquire a freezer, procure ice block containers, or you could use nylon bags if you are just starting out, get yourself a good fuel efficient generator, and of course you need to have money to buy fuel on a daily or weekly basis. But regardless of all these financial expenses, you can start making money in a short while if you market your products well.
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Start a home service beauty business
With the myriads of events that take place in the dry season, people would always want to be professionally made up to look their best. It is a fact that there are a lot of beauty salons in every city in Nigeria, and for you to stand out from among them to get a fighting chance in the market, you need to serve your customers in a unique way.
Instead of just opening up the usual beauty store, you can choose to style your customers in their homes on the morning of their events. When running this type of business, you get to charge more than what others in the salons charge for a beauty regimen. If you are proficient with tying gele, you can add this as part of your services too.
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Start a body/bikini line waxing business
What better way to while away the weekend in a dry hot weather than to go to the beach or swimming pool to cool off. It is also a fact that a lot of ladies would love their bodies looking an feeling very smooth especially while wearing revealing clothings. If you are knowledgeable in the business, you can open a waxing business where you help ladies get ready for the beach or to wear that sexy LBD that only leaves the hanger on a special occasion.
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Dry season farming
Dry season farming usually includes planting vegetables and maize. It is a fact that vegetables do great in the dry season. It is also worthy of mentioning that food collected during the dry season appears to be healthier and stays fresh for longer.
The process of farming in the dry period is largely the same as in the rainy season, but the farmer has to water the crops himself. It is recommended to plant your vegetables along the riverside, as this is a more profound and less expensive solution than to always ferry water to your garden every morning and evening.