There are few investments more treacherous than buying land in Nigeria. In 2017, Ndifreke Ikpoku paid ₦23 million ($13,000) for what appeared to be a legitimate plot on the outskirts of Port Harcourt, a growing urban city in the country. The documents checked out—until they didn’t. On closer inspection, the “asset” he believed would cement his place in Nigeria’s aspirational middle-class was little more than paperwork for land that had already been sold multiple times over. He lost the money—and the pride that comes with being a landowner in Nigeria—but not his resolve. That loss would become the foundation of a startup. Alongside Nnamdi Uba, Ikpoku set out to tackle one of the country’s most entrenched property-market failures: ownership verification. They founded Sytemap, formerly H...