Africa Economy

Fresh from a rebasing exercise in April 2014 that boosted 2013 GDP by 89% to $509.97bn, Nigeria now ranks not only as Africa’s most populous country, but also its largest economy. It has long played an outsized regional role, making up 76% of West Africa’s GDP and around 60% of its population. Despite concerns linked to short-term and cyclical risks, including unequal...

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...