Nigeria Harnesses Services Sector For Economic Diversification, Infrastructure Development
By Oxford Business Group
Oxford Business Group has launched The Report: Nigeria 2023, its 10th edition of the annual business intelligence report.
The report focuses on the role of Nigeria’s services sector in driving non-oil growth as the country intensifies efforts to diversify its economy.
It provides a comprehensive analysis of various economic segments, including financial services, transport and logistics, telecommunications, and the mining industry.
The report also highlights the renewed emphasis on infrastructure development and the growing contribution of the non-oil sector to the country’s GDP, with the digital economy driving new growth.
Other focus areas include the mobilisation of financial resources, industrialisation initiatives and the repositioning of the energy sector towards optimising oil production, expanding infrastructure and capitalising on natural gas reserves.
According to the report, Nigeria’s global strategic importance derives from its position as having both Africa’s largest population and economy, a reality undergirded by the entrepreneurial drive of its young population.
Despite the lingering effects of the Covid-19 pandemic on the economy, aggressive intervention programmes by the Central Bank of Nigeria and support from international partners fuelled a recovery in 2021, with GDP growing 3.6% that year and 3.3% in 2022 after contracting 1.8% in 2020. Growth is projected to drop slightly to 3.2% in 2023.
If its population reaches 377 million by 2050 as is projected, Nigeria is poised to become the world’s third-most populous country, with a diverse and complex social architecture comprising more than 250 ethnic groups and a plethora of faiths.
The peaceful handover of power at both the executive and legislative levels following elections in March 2023 buttressed Nigeria’s status as a symbol of political stability in the region.
The new government faces several pressing issues, ranging from an Islamist insurgency in the north and secessionist agitation in the southeast, to an underperforming oil sector in the south-south, in addition to sluggish economic growth and a depreciating currency.
