Nigeria

In January 2012 the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) launched the first phase of its “cashless” policy, which aims to reduce the volume of cash transactions and in turn cut the cost of banking services. Since then, the move towards electronic payments has spurred the growth of numerous electronic payment and commerce initiatives. The cashless...

Both the government and the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) have identified increased private sector lending as a priority, which has been made all the more urgent by a pressing need to stimulate the economy. As a result, the CBN has employed its monetary and regulatory tools to increase liquidity in the system and shore up banks’ balance sheets...

With a population of 184m, three-quarters of whom are under the age of 30, job creation is critical for Nigeria to sustain its headline growth. Unemployment is increasing rapidly. The official rate climbed from 8.2% in the first quarter of 2015 to 9.9% in third quarter and 10.4% by the year’s end. The ranks of the underemployed – those working...

As Africa’s most populous nation, and with the biggest oil and gas reserves in the region, Nigeria has long been one of the continent’s sought-after markets, but also one of its most complex and challenging. A GDP rebasing in 2014 modernised the country’s statistical measurements, expanding GDP to N94.14trn ($155.1bn at the time of printing)...

The history of the naira as it has alternated between fixed and floating exchange rate regimes has always been closely tied to the price of oil. In June 2016 the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) introduced a flexible interbank exchange rate market, effectively floating the naira in a departure from recent policy. The currency’s value has since...

After a series of delays, Nigeria’s expansionary 2016 budget, which President Muhammadu Buhari submitted to the National Assembly in December 2015, was approved in March 2016. The proposed N6.08trn ($19.2bn) budget represented a 22% increase over the previous year.