Economy

As the world’s seventh-most-populous country and its 26th-largest economy, Nigeria boasts a medium-sized middle class in absolute, if not relative, terms, and benefits from having had its first peaceful handover of power since 1999 following the presidential electoral victory in March 2015 of Muhammadu Buhari over incumbent Goodluck Jonathan. Although it is on track to become one of the world’s 20 largest economies by 2020, with average annual growth of 7% in the past decade, Nigeria requires significant private and foreign investment to attain its economic and human development goals. As part of the Jonathan administration’s Transformation Agenda efforts have been made to ease bottlenecks to growth, ranging from power generation and distribution to the agricultural value chain, premised on total infrastructure spending of $2.9trn over the next 30 years. While the economic policy of the incoming Buhari administration had yet to be clarified at the time of printing, investors expect the structural changes that have already been launched – ranging from power-sector restructuring to streamlining rules for doing business – to be seen through.

This chapter contains interviews with Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, Coordinating Minister of the Economy and Minister of Finance; Aliko Dangote, President and Chief Executive, Dangote Industries; Tony Elumelu, Chairman, Heirs Holdings; Foluso Phillips, Chairman, Nigerian Economic Summit Group (NESG); Saratu Umar, Executive Secretary, Nigerian Investment Promotion Commission (NIPC); and Yemi Kale, Statistician General, National Bureau of Statistics (NBS).