Africa Economy

Nigeria’s rich ethnic and religious diversity, coupled with its resource wealth and poor governance, has at times contributed to localised incidences of violence, ranging from an insurgency in the oil-producing Delta region starting in the 1990s to tensions between villages in the country’s “middle belt”, where Muslim and Christian populations regularly mix. Rarely are...

There is no shortage of superlatives to describe Nigeria. It 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 in its GDP calculation.

The product of two years of work, recalibrated figures for Nigeria’s GDP, which shifted the base year from 1990 to 2010, were published in April 2014. As a result, the economy leapfrogged 10 places in global rankings, with 89% growth in GDP in one stroke. As in any rebasing exercise though, the new figures are a double-edged sword. The updated national accounts reveal...

Bolstered by the economic rebound since 2012, double-digit growth in Côte d’Ivoire’s insurance sector is attracting new entrants and product innovation. While it is the largest market of the 15-country Inter-African Conference of Insurance Markets (Conférence Interafricaine des Marchés d' Assurances, CIMA), the sector is fragmented for its size...

THE COMPANY: Société Générale de Banques en Côte d’Ivoire (SGBCI) is the largest bank in the West African Economic and Monetary Union and was created in 1962 from the local branches of France’s Société Générale bank, with the participation of the government and several international...

THE COMPANY: After 60 years in operation, the Société de Limonaderies et Brasseries d'Afrique ( Solibra) has developed production expertise and unparalleled consumer awareness in the beverage market in Côte d'Ivoire. The company has invested nearly CFA47bn (€70.5m) since 2012 to...