August 23, 2014
Lagos
...Nigeria’s (click here) promise has made it a test-bed for the Africa strategies of consumer-goods firms. This is not only because of its size. It is also because of the spread of Nigerian culture—its music and movies—around Africa, says Yaw Nsarkoh of Unilever. The Anglo-Dutch company has been trading in Nigeria for nearly a century and is expanding its operations. Nestlé, a Swiss rival, plans to triple sales over the next decade. Procter & Gamble, another global consumer giant, has just completed a factory near Lagos, its second in Nigeria. SABMiller, the world’s second-largest beermaker, built a state-of-the-art brewery in Onitsha, in the Niger Delta, in 2012 and is already adding capacity....
April 13, 2014
Abuja and Lagos
Yet, since its 167m people (click here) make it twice as populous as any other Africancountry, Nigeria is plainly the giant of a fast-growing continent. The GDP of Lagos alone exceeds that of Kenya, east Africa’s beefiest economy. When Nigeria’s GDP is reassessed (“rebased”, in IMF jargon) by new criteria that include earnings not on the official balance-sheet, its gap with South Africa, the continent’s largest economy, will narrow. Nigeria’s GDP may rise, according to its own bureau of statistics, by 40% to around $350 billion, not far off South Africa’s $400-plus billion. If Nigeria goes on growing by 7% a year (as it is expected to in 2013) against South Africa’s present 3%, it will become Africa’s biggest economy within a decade. Together, the two economies already account for a good half of the GDP of sub-Saharan Africa’s 49 countries.
Lagos
...Nigeria’s (click here) promise has made it a test-bed for the Africa strategies of consumer-goods firms. This is not only because of its size. It is also because of the spread of Nigerian culture—its music and movies—around Africa, says Yaw Nsarkoh of Unilever. The Anglo-Dutch company has been trading in Nigeria for nearly a century and is expanding its operations. Nestlé, a Swiss rival, plans to triple sales over the next decade. Procter & Gamble, another global consumer giant, has just completed a factory near Lagos, its second in Nigeria. SABMiller, the world’s second-largest beermaker, built a state-of-the-art brewery in Onitsha, in the Niger Delta, in 2012 and is already adding capacity....
April 13, 2014
Abuja and Lagos
Yet, since its 167m people (click here) make it twice as populous as any other Africancountry, Nigeria is plainly the giant of a fast-growing continent. The GDP of Lagos alone exceeds that of Kenya, east Africa’s beefiest economy. When Nigeria’s GDP is reassessed (“rebased”, in IMF jargon) by new criteria that include earnings not on the official balance-sheet, its gap with South Africa, the continent’s largest economy, will narrow. Nigeria’s GDP may rise, according to its own bureau of statistics, by 40% to around $350 billion, not far off South Africa’s $400-plus billion. If Nigeria goes on growing by 7% a year (as it is expected to in 2013) against South Africa’s present 3%, it will become Africa’s biggest economy within a decade. Together, the two economies already account for a good half of the GDP of sub-Saharan Africa’s 49 countries.
President Goodluck Jonathan takes as much credit as he can. “A new political culture has emerged,” he says, along with “a clear electoral process”, a reference to his victory in 2011. “Corruption and issues of governance are being vigorously tackled on all fronts.” He hails Nigeria as “the largest destination of FDI [foreign direct investment] in Africa”. Calling for a revival of the moribund farm sector, he promises that Nigeria will have “no imports of rice by 2015-2016”, whereas it is now the world’s largest buyer of it....
