by How we made it in Africa / Zhann Meyer
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But while politicians from Nigeria’s neighbouring countries rightly rushed to pat the new African economic powerhouse on the back for its achievement of a GDP in excess of US$450bn in 2012 – and in all probability set to hit the $500bn mark for 2013 – these African neighbours would do well to take a leaf out of Nigeria’s book and apply the many lessons it offers in successful economic turnaround to their own countries. And South Africa is no exception.
Granted, with a population of 170m, Nigeria is roughly three times bigger than South Africa, and it enjoys access to significantly more arable land (around 84m ha) than South Africa. But when one considers that Nigeria’s agriculture sector is said to contribute roughly 22% to the country’s GDP, while South African agriculture’s economic contribution tends to hover somewhere around the 2% mark, it’s clear that our neighbour is doing something right when it comes to fully leveraging the economic potential its agriculture offers.
