{"id":36177,"date":"2014-06-16T12:22:53","date_gmt":"2014-06-16T11:22:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.voyages-d-affaires.com\/nigeria-promesses-dun-african-dream-20140616.html"},"modified":"2022-09-30T10:27:14","modified_gmt":"2022-09-30T08:27:14","slug":"nigeria-promises-an-african-dream","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.voyages-d-affaires.com\/en\/nigeria-promises-an-african-dream","title":{"rendered":"Nigeria: the promise of an African dream"},"content":{"rendered":"

Immense and chaotic. The city of Lagos<\/a> This alone illustrates all Nigeria's potential, but also all its weaknesses. According to the investment bank Renaissance Capital, the country, whose fortune was built on the hydrocarbon wealth of the Gulf of Guinea, will soon overtake South Africa as the continent's leading power. Nigeria is growing at a rate of 7% per year. But for the moment, along the lagoon bordering its economic capital, shanty towns on stilts are lining up. And its daily life is made up of regular power cuts and huge traffic jams. The \"go slow\", as the locals call it, is so Dantesque that you hardly dare plan more than one meeting a day outside your office. You rarely leave your office without a good police or private escort to get to the airport or the outlying districts.<\/p>\n

\"AWhat would have become of this sprawling megalopolis of at least 15 million inhabitants if political power had not moved from Lagos to Abuja some twenty years ago precisely to avoid demographic pressure, while at the same time managing inter-ethnic sensitivities and tensions between the Christian South and the Muslim North? It's hard to imagine. And yet Lagos is preparing for its population to double within a generation. Like Nigeria as a whole, which could, according to the UN, reach 400 million inhabitants by 2050, compared with 170 million today.<\/p>\n

This huge market is the stuff of dreams for many companies, whether European, American or Chinese. <\/strong>For some observers, Lagos will even be THE city of tomorrow, the beacon of the \"African dream\", where all the hopes of a booming sub-Saharan region will be realised. And it's true that, from the top of the towers of the Victoria Island business district, the hub of Nigerian business dreams of being the new New York, a visionary and innovative city. Intellectual and arty, Lagos cultivates a buzzing music scene that keeps the affluent districts of Ikoyi and Victoria Islands alive into the night. Driven by a handful of billionaires and affluent young people, consumption is exploding, with products from both major international brands and local designers.<\/p>\n

No doubt rightly so, Lagos sees a bright future ahead. But that bright future also depends on the pace at which Nigeria succeeds in its transformation. Ever since oil was discovered in the Niger Delta in the 1970s, the country has relied on this windfall for almost all its revenue. Without much benefit for a population half of which lives on less than a dollar a day... Another paradox: the country, 12e<\/sup> the world's largest producer of barrels of crude oil, imports a large proportion of its refined fuel in the absence of a dedicated plant. Aliko Dangote, the richest man on the continent, intends to make this incongruity a thing of the past by providing 3 billion dollars of financing for what is expected to be Africa's largest refinery, due to open in 2016 north of Lagos.<\/p>\n

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<\/strong>There's a lot of work to be done in a country fuelled by petrodollars<\/strong> and has abandoned entire sectors of its economy. Although agriculture employs more than half the population and accounts for more than 40% of GDP, it is still rudimentary. As the former breadbasket of the British Empire, Nigeria spends nearly 11 billion dollars a year on agricultural imports - particularly rice and wheat - even though the country's own agricultural production is still relatively small. \"The basic data - land surface, fertility, climate - point to major potential that is currently being seriously under-exploited.<\/em>as noted by the French Treasury. With this in mind, Minister of Agriculture Akinwumi Adesina intends to reverse the trend by boosting yields to reduce the country's dependence.<\/p>\n

Also completely out of date, with antiquated installations, the national electricity sector was privatised at the end of last year, which augurs an improvement in the coming years for a number of industries penalised by a chronic lack of power. Textiles, steelmaking, mining and the automotive industry, with an estimated 40 million vehicles by 2020 compared with 8 million today, should all benefit from this and move forward again. To support this expansion, quality infrastructure, both for goods and passenger transport, is also strategic. Among the improvements underway, the Nigerian Railway Corporation is rehabilitating the train line between Port-Harcourt, the oil city, and Makurdi, in the centre of the country. This follows the recent reopening, after 17 years of disuse, of the line linking Lagos to Kano, the major city in the north of the country.<\/p>\n

Thanks to its oil, Nigeria is already one of the emerging countries, but its future is still largely uncharted, and there are plenty of opportunities. As a result, foreign direct investment is pouring in. Over the last three years, it has amounted to 20 billion dollars, i.e. one tenth of the investments made on the continent. \"Anyone who is not in Nigeria is not in Africa. I make this saying of the Minister of Finance, Mrs Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, my own\".<\/em>Nicole Bricq said in September 2013 during her visit to Abuja.<\/p>\n

The Minister for Foreign Trade visited the federal capital with a clear objective: to reinvigorate Franco-Nigerian trade. This ambition was underpinned by Fran\u00e7ois Hollande's visit to his Nigerian counterpart Goodluck Jonathan at the end of February. From 5 % in the early 2000s, France's market share fell to 3.5 % in 2012. This has not prevented Nigeria from being France's leading economic partner in sub-Saharan Africa.<\/p>\n

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The French minister's ambition is to be back on track within four years<\/strong> the level achieved in the past by increasing the number of French exporting companies by 50 %. In addition to the major French multi-nationals already present - Bollor\u00e9 and L'Or\u00e9al have recently joined Total, Lafarge, Alstom and Schneider - the Minister is encouraging SMEs active in the agri-food, chemicals and cosmetics industries to take a closer look at Nigeria. Particularly as domestic demand is strong, with a young population (70 % are under 30) and a middle class estimated at 30 million people. Construction, power generation, environment... \"The potential of the Nigerian economy is too well kept a secret!<\/em>explained billionaire Aliko Dangote recently to the magazine Young Africa<\/em> . \"\u00a0Here, investors can benefit from attractive incentives<\/em>\" , <\/em>he added.<\/p>\n

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On another positive note, Nigeria has solid finances, with a relatively stable currency (the naira) and a banking sector that was reformed in 2009. <\/strong>Since the end of General Abacha's military regime in 1998, the country has enjoyed a degree of political stability. With a large majority, the People's Democratic Party (PDP) has won one victory after another, even though the opposition to Goodluck Jonathan, who finishes his term in 2015, is becoming more structured. Another positive point is that, after a long period of squandering the fruits of oil revenues, the country has set up a sovereign wealth fund, which should be operational in early 2014, to support strategic sectors. A new form of governance also seems to be slowly taking shape, a long and difficult road illustrated by Finance Minister Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala in her book Reforming the Unreformable<\/em>.<\/p>\n

But, like many emerging countries, Nigeria also has its dark side.. <\/strong>According to Coface, \"The country is suffering from inefficient administration.<\/em> And corruption is a fact of life, with Transparency International ranking the country 143e<\/sup> world ranking out of 180. Coface, for its part, gives Nigeria a D rating, the lowest, in its analysis of country risk. A striking example of this pitfall is the rampant embezzlement of oil, benefiting a host of intermediaries, politicians and industry professionals. According to a report by the think-tank Chatham House published in 2013, this is worth almost 100,000 barrels a day, or nearly eight billion dollars a year.<\/p>\n

The other black spot is obviously the lack of security. A source of juicy ransoms, kidnappings are commonplace in the Niger Delta as well as in Lagos. It's a real scourge that affects expatriates, wealthy Nigerians and even the country's archbishop Ignatius Kattey, as kidnappers are not afraid to incur the wrath of God. According to NYA Inter-national, Nigeria accounts for 27 % of attempted kidnappings worldwide, well ahead of Mexico (10 %) and Pakistan (7 %). Far more worrying, the jihadist group Boko Haram is taking over the north-east of the country, which is plunged into a virtual civil war. This reveals another buoyant economic sector in Nigeria: private security companies...<\/p>\n