President Muhammadu Buhari has signed into law the Nigeria Startup Act, which aims to improve the country's tech ecosystem and help the sector grow. 

The Nigeria Startup Act was started last May by the Nigerian presidency and a group of leaders in the country's tech industry. Its goal is to set up rules and systems for how startups and government and regulatory bodies can work together to help the country's growing tech ecosystem.

What was until recently known as the Nigeria Startup Bill was approved by the Federal Executive Council in December and passed by the Senate in July. Prof. Isa Pantami, Nigeria's minister of communications and digital economy, tweeted that it had become the Nigeria Startup Act.

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The goal of the new law is to make Nigeria's ecosystem for new businesses the best in Africa. The full bill is available to the public here, while a summary can be found here.

The first specific startup law globally was passed in Italy in 2012, and Tunisia and Senegal were the first two African countries to enact them. A host of countries, including Mali, Ghana, Ivory Coast, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Rwanda, and Kenya, are at varying stages of enactment.