Country Profile

Nigeria is Africa’s most populous country, the continent’s largest oil producer and a top destination for foreign investment. As of April 2014, Nigeria is now the continent’s largest economy as well, as a result of an overdue revision of its GDP. The revision added a whopping 89% to GDP, while also revealing the true diversity of the economy, with thriving industries such as agriculture, telecoms and technology, music and film, retail and trade, and services. However, as the economy continues to grow and diversify away from its reliance on hydrocarbons sector – which accounts for more than two-thirds of government revenues – the country’s complexities have become more pressing. Nigeria is in the midst of its third and longest attempt at sustained democratic rule, with the latest landmark coming with the 2015 presidential election, which saw the country’s first peaceful handover of power in more than three decades. The March poll, which involved a new biometric identity system, saw Muhammadu Buhari, a candidate from the All Progressives Congress (APC), an umbrella opposition party formed in 2013 by a coalition of smaller parties, eke out a narrow victory over Goodluck Jonathan, the incumbent and candidate for the governing People’s Democratic Party (PDP).

This chapter contains interviews with Kadré Désiré Ouédraogo, President, ECOWAS Commission; James Duddridge, Parliamentary Undersecretary of State, British Foreign & Commonwealth Office; and Georg Wilfried Schmidt, Regional Director for Sub-Saharan Africa and the Sahel, German Federal Foreign Office