Nigeria

Nigeria’s inclusion in JPM organ’s emerging markets bond indices for eurobonds is not affected by its exclusion from the index series for Federal Government of Nigeria (FGN) bonds, and with good reason. Eurobonds are broadly traded on the sovereign’s external balance sheet, whereas the FGN exclusion was driven by the Central Bank of Nigeria’s...

After three consecutive years of losses the All-Share Index (ASI) accomplished a marked recovery in the second half of 2017. As of August 2017 the ASI had gained 37.9% year to date (YTD), compared with a 2.9% YTD loss for the same period in 2016, and a 6.2% loss over the course of 2016. Despite the double-digit YTD gain, the market had still...

Boasting Africa’s largest economy and population, but facing a number of structural constraints, Nigeria is a market ripe for digital disruption. It benefits from a high level of internet and mobile penetration. It also skews young: by 2020, roughly half of the country’s population will be under the age of 25.

Despite the challenges to Nigeria’s economy, many of the country’s banks enjoyed healthy revenue and asset growth in 2016. Asset quality issues continue to hinder the sector, but banks have found avenues outside of lending activities to expand their balance sheets.

Financial intermediation – the process of matching savers with borrowers – is a primary function of the banking sector. Intermediation channels excess funds towards productive uses, spreading the risk across a bank’s entire depositor base so no single saver bears the losses in the event of a loan default. However, in Nigeria intermediation is...

A primary issue affecting Nigeria’s economy in recent years has been the decline in foreign reserves, particularly the shortage of US dollars, which have been hit by low oil prices. This slump in the price of oil has caused major complications for the Nigerian economy as a whole, particularly given the increasingly high demand for imports...