Nigeria's recalculated economy is worth $510 billion, by far the biggest in Africa, officials announced Sunday using long overdue revised data that gives the West African nation continental bragging rights but does little for the 70 percent of its citizens living in poverty.
The new value of Nigeria's GDP adds previously uncounted industries like telecommunications, information technology, music, airlines, burgeoning online retail outlets and Nollywood film production that didn't exist when the last GDP count was made in 1990. Then, there were 300,000 landlines. Today, Nigeria has 100 million cell phone users.
The new figures also will take
account of growth in agriculture and tourism that have flourished since
democracy was restored in 1999, ending decades of military dictatorship.
With
one fell swoop, Nigeria knocked out of the ring South Africa, whose GDP
of $353 billion was previously counted the biggest on the continent and
which is the only African member of the G20.
"Nigeria's
success is a reminder that Africa is moving ahead despite its current
challenges," said investment manager Kevin Daly of UK-based Aberdeen
Asset Management, which invests in Africa. He pointed out that it is a
Nigerian, billionaire Aliko Dangote, who is building Africa's largest
privately owned oil refinery.
Nigeria has been Africa's biggest
drawer of direct foreign investment despite myriad woes, from massive
corruption and oil thefts costing the country some $20 million a day to
an Islamic uprising in the northeast that has killed more than 1,200
people so far this year, to a paralytic electricity supply that keeps
businesses dependent on diesel-run generators.
Finance
Minister Ngozi Ikonjo-Iweala told a news conference Sunday that the new
data makes Nigeria the 26th largest economy in the world and raises its
per capita income to $2,688, making it No. 121 in the world, up from
No. 135.
That is still feeble
compared to South Africa's $7,336 for its population of 48 million.
South Africa, bedeviled by mining strikes, violent protests over
services and a lackluster performance that has kept annual growth at
around 3.5 percent, still has infrastructure unrivaled on the continent,
most notably a power sector that generates 10 times more electricity
than Nigeria.
Nigeria's
revised figures will lower its much-vaunted growth rate of 7 percent but
also will decrease an already low debt to GDP ratio of 21 percent,
which should lower interest rates should the government want to borrow
more, economists said.
Ikonjo-Iweala
blamed decades of military rule for the delay in repositioning
Nigeria's economy, but the country is not alone. Ghana's economy jumped
by 60 percent when it recalculated its goods and services production in
2012, and Kenya and Zambia are considering the same.
Ikonjo-Iweala has said that
Nigeria's economy needs to grow at about 10 percent to address massive
poverty and youth unemployment. Government statistics say unemployment
increased from 12.7 percent in 2007 to 23.9 percent in 2011; the World
Bank says unemployment among young Nigerians stands at 38 percent but
analysts say it is as high as 80 percent in many parts of the country.
Financial
analyst Bismarck Rewane called the revisions "a vanity. The Nigerian
population is not better off tomorrow because of that announcement. It
doesn't put more money in the bank, more food in their stomach. It
changes nothing."
Nigerians
took to social networks to share their feelings. "So Nigeria has now
supplanted South Africa as Africa's largest economy. But I've not had
light (electricity) for seven days, so it means nothing to me," said one
tweet.
Another commented: "Nigeria is Africa's biggest economy - on paper. So technically, I'm rich in theory."