Nigeria

For some time, the dominant school of thought regarding central banking was that focusing on low inflation will eventually lead to greater growth, an increase in employment-generating activities and poverty reduction. However, early and recent evidence of central banking in places such as the US, the UK, Japan and France indicates that supporting selected economic...

The final transfer of privatised electricity assets to successful bidders in November 2013 marked a key moment in demonstrating that Nigerian banks can provide significant long-term funding to a structurally important sector. The acquisitions were financed primarily through debt, while international investors and banks largely stayed on the sidelines. Indeed, of the more...

Following two years of rapid, double-digit gains in its equity market and strong foreign investor appetite in fixed income, Nigeria’s capital markets entered 2014 with the wind at their back, thanks in part to the announcement of a favourable reweighting of the MSCI Frontier Index in 2013.

Eight years after securing $18bn in debt relief from the Paris Club and multilateral creditors, Nigeria has firmly repositioned itself on international debt markets. Having staged its second eurobond auction in as many years in 2013, with plans to return regularly to the dollar-denominated offshore bond markets, Nigeria is rebalancing its debt profile by paying down part...

A central conundrum of Nigeria’s past decade of 7% average annual GDP growth has been the consistent rise in unemployment, poverty and inequality of distribution of wealth. Although the conclusions of the rebasing exercise, unveiled in April 2014, lifted per-capita income from $1555 to $2689, this new accounting will no doubt sound hollow to the more than 60% of...