NEWS
Bamboo, Cowrywise Platforms Struggle Under Massive Traffic As Nigerians Rush To Subscribe To Dangote Refinery IPO
Two of Nigeria’s popular investment platforms, Bamboo and Cowrywise, experienced service disruptions on Monday as a surge of investors attempted to access their platforms to participate in the much-anticipated Dangote Petroleum Refinery & Petrochemicals FZE initial public offering (IPO).
The platforms separately acknowledged the disruptions on X, attributing the difficulties to unusually high traffic as investors moved to take advantage of the opportunity to acquire shares in the Dangote Refinery.
Bamboo informed its users that the unprecedented volume of traffic was affecting access to its application, with a significant number of investors attempting to participate in the Dangote Refinery share offer.
“Hey everyone, we’re getting much higher than expected traffic trying to get into the Dangote IPO and it’s making it difficult for some users to log into the Bamboo app. We’re working on a fix and it will be up and running shortly,” the investment platform said.
Cowrywise also confirmed that its platform was experiencing an unusually high volume of activity, assuring customers that its technical team was working to restore normal service.
“We’re currently seeing more traffic than usual on the Cowrywise app. Our team is already on it and working to get things back to normal. Thanks for your patience, everyone,” the investment platform said.
The disruptions came as the Dangote Refinery officially opened its IPO subscription window on Monday, marking a major development in Nigeria’s capital market and one of the country’s most closely watched investment offers in recent years.
The offer comprises 4.1 billion ordinary shares priced at ₦525 per share, with the subscription scheduled to run until October 13, 2026. If fully subscribed, the offer is expected to raise approximately ₦2.15 trillion, making it a landmark transaction in Nigeria’s capital market.
The scale of the public offering has generated considerable interest among retail and institutional investors, with the refinery seeking to broaden ownership beyond traditional large-scale investors.
Dangote Industries has indicated that the refinery hopes to bring as many as 10 million African retail investors into its shareholder base through the transaction. The target encompasses Nigerians and other Africans across different income groups and professions, including cooks, drivers, traders, managers and other ordinary members of the investing public.
The push represents an attempt to deepen retail participation in the Nigerian capital market while allowing a broader segment of the population to take an ownership position in one of Africa’s largest industrial projects.
The heavy traffic recorded on Bamboo and Cowrywise therefore underscored the intense interest generated by the offer, particularly among younger and technology-driven investors who increasingly use digital investment platforms to access financial markets.
Monday’s disruptions also highlighted the pressure that major investment opportunities can place on digital financial platforms when thousands of users attempt to transact simultaneously.
While the technical difficulties caused frustration for some prospective investors, both platforms moved to reassure customers that their teams were actively working to restore normal access.
The Dangote Refinery IPO is expected to remain a major focus of Nigeria’s investment community throughout the subscription period, as investors assess the opportunity to become shareholders in the refinery and participate in the future growth of the massive petroleum processing and petrochemical enterprise.