Much has been made this past week in the international press of the announcement by the Nigerian government of their new GDP figures. And the fact that
they now are officially Africa’s largest GDP – surpassing #2 South Africa by a decent 30% margin. This also clearly reflects the shift in power base of South Africa to Nigeria. Much of the new success has been attributed to Africa’s largest Telecomms market in Nigeria – as well as the World 3rd largest movie industry commonly dubbed "Nollywood".
These are of course relatively new industries since their last GDP figures were released 15 years ago. The core tradition powerhouse industries such and Oil & Gas have also maintained a steady growth. Just take a look at how Aliko Dangote has built a personal empire rivalling those of many other global players.
However – maintaining this impressive growth is going to need a far more intense focus on their Energy and Natural Resources (ENR) market. Streamlined operations and far more focus on asset reliability and efficiencies are absolute musts to continue this growth in the Oil and Gas, Mining (yet to be fully tapped), Milling and Chemicals and of course the ever desperately needed Utility Industry where there is a complete lack of reliable generation, infrastructure and delivery to the consumer! SAP Industry specific solutions for these industries have been adopted by some key players in the Nigerian market – however many more are still to make that investment.
Yes – know – I may appear to be a bit of a broken record here – however there is a desperate need for these foundation industries to improve in many aspects in Nigeria – for the better of all Nigerian citizens! Implementing the SAP solutions from core back office ERP, to industry specific solutions such as
Utility billing, Oil & Gas Hydrocarbon accounting and cross industry Enterprise Asset Management will set them on the right path to achieving their goals. Never mind the levering of the SAP in-memory technology to deliver analytics and reports in real time – on anywhere via the SAP mobility solution suite! What’s more - with the ever improving and geographically expanding telephony and data networks in Nigeria – why not leverage the SAP Cloud Based solutions?
Coming back to my point. Are the citizens of Nigeria benefiting from the GDP? In general not yet! Although the GDP exceeds that of South Africa, Nigeria with their 170M+ citizens has an average GDP per capita of approximately one third of that of South African citizens. In addressing the core foundation industries and making them both more profitable and more transparent through the implementation of SAP solutions I am confident that the GDP per capita value can rapidly catch up to that of South Africa – if not overtake it! It doesn’t take a lot – of time nor investment – to implement the basic controls and enabling applications from SAP to start delivering these readily measureable and tangible results.
Nigeria is officially Africa's biggest economy. Can it continue?
Absolutely YES! And with SAP Even Better!
