Nigeria Now Africa’s Biggest Economy

Nigeria has overtaken South Africa as a the continent’s biggest economy after it ‘rebased’ its gross domestic product(GDP).

Nigerian GDP now includes previously uncounted industries like telecoms, information technology, music, online sales, airlines, and film production.

GDP for 2013 totalled 80.3 trillion naira (£307.6bn: $509.9bn), the Nigerian statistics office said.

That compares with South Africa’s GDP of $370.3bn at the end of 2013.

Rebasing of national accounts series means replacing the old base year used for compiling the constant price estimates to a new and more recent base year.

This is Nigeria’s first ‘rebase’ in 24 years.

It is expected that the ‘rebase’ will change investors’ perception of the country and should see the country’s grade being improved in the world.

However for a country that has a high poverty rate, said to be over 60% (over 110 million people), this might mean very little for locals.

With information from BBC

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