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Over the past decade Nigeria’s ICT industry has grown to become one of the largest and most dynamic in Africa, with total mobile internet subscribers topping 30.9m at the end of the second quarter of 2012, accounting for the majority of the country’s 48.4m internet users. While the government has taken a prominent position on driving basic penetration, private operators have been influential in expanding local content and buttressing demand, particularly on the corporate side. Mobile phones dominate the telecoms sector, with four GSM operators providing services for more than 114m subscribers as of July 2013. Data services are considered a key driver of future growth in the sector, though insufficient bandwidth and low data speeds are challenges. To this end, local operators have been investing in infrastructure to improve quality of service and expand coverage areas. This chapter contains interviews with Omobola Johnson, Minister of Communication Technology; Pfungwa Serima, CEO, SAP Africa; and Manoj Kohli, Managing Director and CEO International, Bharti Airtel.

With the largest population in Africa and one of the continent’s fastest-growing economies, Nigeria has emerged as a prime market. According to the Central Bank of Nigeria, retail and wholesale trade totalled $45.55bn in 2012, or 17% of GDP. Retailers have found it expensive to operate locally given the need to generate power independently, which necessitates the purchase of both generators and diesel fuel. Online shopping sites offer international retailers the opportunity to outsource the challenges of operating in Nigeria to local companies while still accessing the market. As such changes take root and the middle class continues to grow, the marketplace offers significant opportunities.

As manufacturers scour the globe for new growth opportunities, few markets offer greater long-term potential than Nigeria, which boasts an enormous domestic population, plentiful feedstock and limited market penetration. The total value of Nigeria’s manufacturing sector increased 7.55% in 2012, reaching N761bn ($4.8bn) at current base prices, up from N634bn ($3.9bn) in 2011. A globally competitive manufacturing sector is integral to Vision 20:2020, which aims to transform the country into one of the world’s top 20 economies by 2020. With production under capacity, Nigerian industry is operating well beneath its potential, increasing the challenge of competing with cheap foreign goods. However, the success of some local producers shows plenty of room for optimism about the sector’s long-term potential. This chapter contains interviews with Olusegun Aganga, Federal Minister of Industry, Trade and Investment; and Laurent L Philippe, Group President of Central and Eastern Europe, Middle East and Africa region, Procter & Gamble.

The largest contributor to Nigeria’s GDP, the agriculture sector accounted for a 40.1% share as of mid-2013, according to the National Bureau of Statistics. It is also the main source of employment in the country, responsible for more than 60% of jobs, as per figures from the International Fund for Agricultural Development. Increases in the amount of cultivated land have led to a rise in production, but yields remain low and the sector is performing below its potential. Formerly responsible for 18% of world cocoa production, Nigeria’s market share is now less than half of that. The country remains a world leader is cassava, but has also lost significant ground in crops such as groundnuts and palm oil. The Agricultural Transformation Action Plan, a state-backed market-oriented reform effort, is in the early stages of implementation and is expected to pave the way for the sector’s development going forward. This chapter contains interviews with Akinwumi Adesina, Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development; and Sunny Verghese, Group Managing Director and CEO, Olam International.

Electricity is regularly cited as Nigeria’s chief obstacle to economic growth, but 2013 may mark a turning point for what is often referred to as the country’s Achilles heel. For more than a decade, the lack of reliable power has cut into profit margins and increased operating overheads. Under-investment and mismanagement are generally accepted as being among several primary causes of the power problem. The leadership hopes a privatisation process – now under way for power generation and distribution companies – will remove these obstacles. Despite some last-minute hiccups in the privatisation schedule and challenges still to come, Nigeria’s business community is convinced that a tipping point has been reached in the sector’s reform process, and that the privatisation effort will pay off. This chapter contains interviews with Chinedu Nebo, Minister of Power; and Ute Menikheim, CEO for Africa, Siemens Energy.

In 2011 Nigeria had the world’s 10th-largest oil reserves, at 37.2bn barrels, and the ninth-largest reserves of associated gas, at 182trn standard cu feet. Yet as the country’s proven reserves of both oil and gas start to decline, the imperative will be to clarify the industry’s long-term legal and fiscal outlooks to encourage more investment in exploration and production. Despite legislative delays, Nigeria is making progress in expanding local firms’ share of production and oil services while also catalysing significant investment in gas-to-power projects. The sector’s positive outlook is contingent on progress in the key areas of energy production and the expansion of investment in more sophisticated offshore projects. Alongside implementation of the Gas Master Plan, enacting the long-awaited Petroleum Industry Bill before the 2015 elections would prove a significant help. This chapter contains a viewpoint from Diezani Alison Madueke, Minister of Petroleum, and interviews with Austin Avuru, Managing Director, Seplat Petroleum Development Company; and Emeka Ene, Chairman, Petroleum Technology Association of Nigeria.