From IT support in Lagos to travelling seven European countries

In March 2023, Adewale Adekomaiya lay trapped in a mangled car in Lagos while passersby filmed and a bystander tried to rob him. That near-death experience shattered his assumption that travel could wait for “later.” Within months, the Senior QA Architect and his wife packed their lives into a €900 ($1,048) digital nomad visa to Malta, spending two years working remotely across seven European countries. Now back in Nigeria with a newborn son, Adekomaiya tells JOHN ADOYI about the true costs of constant mobility, navigating racism abroad, and why his family’s next journey is taking them across Africa.

Passers-by stood around the wreckage and filmed. 

Adewale Adekomaiya was trapped in a car in Yaba, a neighbourhood in Lagos, Nigeria, in March 2023, just months after getting married. No one came to help. The only person who approached, Adekomaiya said, was trying to rob him. 

As he waited for help that didn’t seem to come, his thoughts wandered somewhere else: to his new wife, and to all the things they had planned to do together.

“I just got married,” he told TechCabal. “If I had died, I would have just gone without experiencing the world with my wife.”

Until then, Adekomaiya had treated life as something to be enjoyed later. He would work and save, thinking he would eventually have the time and money to see the world. 

The fateful accident made “later” feel less certain.

Within months, he and his wife had left Nigeria for Malta, where they built a life around remote work and travel. Two years later, after returning home for the birth of their son, Adekomaiya is preparing to leave again.

This time, he wants his child to see the world with him.

From IT support to remote work

Adekomaiya’s career in tech started with helping other people use computers.

He worked in IT support at Great Nigeria Insurance, an insurance underwriting and financial advisory firm, where he helped his colleagues resolve computer problems, according to him. Soon after, he returned to school to get a degree. In 2018, someone introduced him to quality assurance (QA), a field in tech that allowed him to combine his IT experience with the programming knowledge he had picked up as a support tech specialist.

“I was able to merge that with my little knowledge of programming,” he said.

Adekomaiya has worked in QA ever since, eventually becoming a senior engineer in the field. Today, he works as a QA architect. By the time he and his wife decided to leave Nigeria, he was working for a US company, which meant he could take his job with him. 

That flexibility would become important when the couple began figuring out how to turn their idea of travelling into an actual life outside Nigeria.

 Why Malta?

Adekomaiya did not simply choose Malta because it had always been on his bucket list of places to travel to. Rather, the country offered an easy route for him and his wife to begin their nomadic life as far back as 2023.

Portugal was also on his mind, but its embassy in Lagos was closed when they were making their plans, he said. Meanwhile, Malta had a digital nomad visa that Adekomaiya could apply for from home.

He needed to show that he met the minimum income requirement and worked for a company outside the European Union (EU). Since he was working remotely for a United States-based company, he already had the documents to support his application.

The process suited him because it did not require the kind of repeated embassy visits he wanted to avoid.

“I hate stress when it comes to all this application of trying to apply for visas and the like,” he said. “But for this one, I saw that we could do the whole application from the comfort of the house.”

Adekomaiya said the Malta application cost him about €300 ($350) per person—for himself and his wife—in 2023. 

A dependent attracted an additional €300 ($350), putting the couple’s application costs at €600 ($700); additional costs, including primary health insurance, which was a mandatory requirement for applicants, took the total package to €900 ($1,048), according to Adekomaiya.

Malta visa applicants also had to meet a minimum income requirement, which he said was about an additional €2,000 ($2,330) at the time. 

Insurance was another requirement. Applicants had to provide an insurance contract covering a year and renew it annually. Adekomaiya and his wife opted for coverage that included outpatient treatment, which does not require hospital admission, and inpatient treatment, which covers care requiring a hospital stay. 

The plan also included Schengen coverage in case they needed medical attention while travelling to another country, according to Adekomaiya. 

Adekomaiya found a step-by-step guide online that made the application easier and helped him put the required documents together. In 2023, the application worked out, and Adekomaiya and his wife moved to Malta. 

The couple spent about $2,400 on their flights from Nigeria to Malta, partly because they booked late, Adekomaiya said.

When they arrived in Malta, they initially rented an Airbnb, a short-let apartment, for about two weeks, paying between €100 ($116.50) and €120 ($140) a night before moving into a three-bedroom apartment. 

The apartment cost between €900 ($1,048) and €1,200 ($1,400) a month, with one of the rooms serving as his workspace, he noted. 

Two years on the move

Malta became Adekomaiya and his wife’s home base, but they did not spend all two years between 2023 and 2025 there. The couple used the island as a base for exploring Europe.

They travelled to Hungary, Portugal, Spain, Italy, France and the UK, visiting cities including Milan, Barcelona, and Madrid, according to Adekomaiya. They also went to Tenerife, the most populous island in Spain’s Canary Islands region. For the newly married couple, the appeal was seeing new places and experiencing how people lived beyond Nigeria.

“We were just travelling. We were just moving around, trying to understand different cultures,” Adekomaiya said.

Their travels were often guided by personal interests rather than a fixed list of destinations. Adekomaiya’s wife had studied in Hungary and spent years talking about the country, making a return visit an obvious choice. Barcelona, meanwhile, appealed to her interest in architecture and history. 

“My wife is very big on travelling and big on architecture and the likes,” he said. “For me, I just want to have fun.”

The United Kingdom became the place they spent the most time outside Malta, partly because they had built a community of friends there. 

They travelled between London, Bradford and Manchester, using the trips to catch up with people they knew. Paris, the capital of France, was another regular stop, while Budapest, the Hungarian capital, became Adekomaiya’s favourite city. 

He said his work made this lifestyle possible. He could work as long as he had an Internet connection, allowing him and his wife to leave Malta for another city or country without taking time off or putting his career on hold. They could spend weeks or even months elsewhere before returning to the Maltese apartment that remained their base.

The freedom to move, however, did not mean that every part of travelling came easily.

In countries where English was not widely spoken, including Spain and Hungary, Adekomaiya used Google Translate, the online language translation service, to communicate. He spoke into his phone in English, converted his words into the local language, and played the translation back to the people he was speaking with. He also used the app’s text feature when it was easier.

Over time, he found that making even a small effort to speak the local language could make communication easier.

“When you go into a different country, learn how to say hello. Learn how to say bye. Learn how to say yes,” Adekomaiya said.

But no matter how much new food and culture they encountered, Adekomaiya still looked for one familiar thing wherever they travelled: Nigerian food. 

Before visiting a new city, he would often search TikTok for Nigerian restaurants nearby. His wife cooked Nigerian meals at home, but travelling abroad made him appreciate being able to walk into a restaurant, scan the menu, and order something familiar.

“If you want me to enjoy my trip, my wife knows that already,” he said. “And once I get my Nigerian food, then we can experience any other culture.”

The cost of freedom

But the freedom Adekomaiya and his wife had built came with trade-offs.

They still had to maintain their home in Malta while travelling. Rent cost between €900 ($1,048) and €1,200 ($1,400) a month, while their day-to-day expenses could add another €500 ($582) to €600 ($700).

Yet, travelling around Europe could be cheap. Adekomaiya said they sometimes found flights between countries for as little as €20 ($23) to €50 ($58). But the low fares only covered the journey. They still had to pay for accommodation, food, and other expenses, while their rent in Malta continued to run up even when they were away.

They still saved and invested while living in Malta, but at a slower pace than they might have if they had stayed in Nigeria, Adekomaiya said.

“You will save, but you will not save money as much as you used to while you were in Nigeria and not travelling,” he said. “You are spending money on flight tickets, accommodation, food.”

They always had a budget, but Adekomaiya said he and his wife did not let it stop them from having experiences they valued. 

“We move as we see or we have,” he said. “Definitely, there’s always a budget, but I don’t let that limit me.”

On black tax as a digital nomad

Adekomaiya also had family responsibilities in Nigeria, a financial burden he described as the “black tax” that often comes with being an African man. Living abroad changed the way he thought about the money he sent home. 

“When I was outside, I didn’t know what was ongoing in the country,” he said. “So, if I give ₦50,000 [$37.21], in my head, it is a lot because that was what I was giving back in 2023.”

From Malta, sending home €100 ($116) or €200 ($233) was often enough for Adekomaiya to meet his monthly financial obligations, according to him. Returning to Nigeria later, however, gave him a clearer sense of what that money could buy. What had felt like a modest amount abroad could stretch much further at home. 

Their biggest expense came when they decided to have a child.

The health insurance they took out for their visa covered outpatient and inpatient treatment, as well as pregnancy complications. It did not cover the cost of a normal delivery. In Malta, Adekomaiya said childbirth could cost between €6,000 ($6,990) and €25,000 ($29,121), depending on whether complications arose.

“We planned ahead because we’ve heard a lot of stories,” Adekomaiya said. “We were lucky we didn’t pay as much as everybody was paying, but it was still a lot of expense.”

The limitations of their life on the move were not only financial.

Adekomaiya enjoyed travelling, but the uncertainty of a nomadic life made it harder to plan for the future. Malta was home, yet they knew they would not stay there permanently.

“You cannot say, okay, I want to buy a house because you know that you are not there to stay,” he said. “So we could not make a great commitment in any country.”

“The three years we spent outside were just three years of no plan. We were just enjoying. We were making our money and all that. But we could not do any major commitment apart from buying stocks.”

Then there was the reality of being Black abroad.

Adekomaiya said their freedom to move and the money they earned did not shield them from the assumptions some people made about them. His wife was once stopped on the street in Malta and asked what she was doing there, according to him. When she said she was a digital nomad, the people questioning her refused to believe her and suggested that she had arrived by boat.

“As a Black man, you will always be a Black man,” Adekomaiya said. “Regardless of how much you earn.”

Coming home, then leaving again

In November 2025, after two years of moving across Europe, Adekomaiya and his wife returned to Nigeria when caring for their newborn became difficult without adequate support. 

Coming home, however, did not mean Adekomaiya had stopped thinking about life abroad.

He still valued the people he met along the way. Some friendships began on a beach, on a plane, or in a passing conversation with someone he might otherwise never have met.

“One thing people don’t get to say about the lifestyle is the networking,” Adekomaiya said. “You get to meet people at the beach. In planes. You will talk to them, and you guys will exchange contacts, and you will become friends.”

Travelling exposed him to ways of life far removed from what he had known in Nigeria. He met people from different backgrounds and experienced how other societies lived, worked and organised their daily lives. 

“I could tell you for a fact that my mentality three years ago and now is way different,” Adekomaiya said. “I have travelled, I have seen things that are making me push for more. I want to be better and all that.”

The next time, however, he wants to look closer to home.

Adekomaiya is planning to explore Africa with his wife and son, starting with countries such as Kenya, Rwanda, and Tanzania. He wants to group nearby countries into single trips, making it easier for the family to travel from one country to another. 

“If I’m going to East Africa, I will go to Kenya, then Rwanda, and then Tanzania,” he said. “[I’ll] try to put them together, so that when I’m moving from one country to the other, it’s not too difficult for me in terms of the expenses.”

Travelling with a child will require a different kind of planning from the life Adekomaiya and his wife had when it was just the two of them. Accommodation and reliable internet will still matter because he plans to keep working wherever they go, but every decision will now have to account for their son. 

For now, Adekomaiya is waiting for his son to grow a little older before the family starts moving again.

He already has a clear picture of what that next chapter will look like.

“I used to see myself on a yacht, [on the] Mediterranean blue sea, with my son in my [arms],” Adekomaiya said. “So, I just don’t want it to be a dream. I also want it to be my reality.”

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