Nigeria has for long been regarded as the poster child for the ‘curse’ of oil wealth. Yet despite this, Nigeria achieved strong economic growth for over a decade in the 21st century, driven largely by policy reforms in non-oil sectors. This open access book argues that Nigeria’s major development challenge is not the ‘oil curse’, but rather one of achieving economic diversification beyond oil, subsistence agriculture, informal activities, and across its subnational entities. Through analysis drawing on economic data, policy documents, and interviews, Usman argues that Nigeria’s challenge of economic diversification is situated within the political setting of an unstable distribution of power among individual, group, and institutional actors.
Since the turn of the century, policymaking by successive Nigerian governments has, despite superficial partisan differences, been oriented towards short-term crisis management of macroeconomic stabilization, restoring growth and selective public sector reforms. To diversify Nigeria’s economy, this book argues that successive governments must reorient towards a consistent focus on pro-productivity and pro-poor policies, alongside comprehensive civil service and security sector overhaul. These policy priorities, Nigeria’s ruling elites are belatedly acknowledging, are crucial to achieving economic transformation; a policy shift that requires a confrontation with the roots of perpetual political crisis, and an attempt to stabilize the balance of power towards equity and inclusion.
The eBook editions of this book are available open access under a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 licence on bloomsburycollections.com. Open access was funded by The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
By:
Zainab Usman
Imprint: Zed Books Ltd
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Dimensions:
Height: 222mm,
Width: 140mm,
ISBN: 9781786993946
ISBN 10: 1786993945
Series: Politics and Development in Contemporary Africa
Pages: 352
Publication Date: 30 June 2022
Audience:
College/higher education
,
Professional and scholarly
,
Primary
,
Undergraduate
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active
Description Acronyms and Abbreviations Glossary Nigerian Leaders and Heads of State Since Independence Nigerian States by Geo-Political Region Acknowledgements Chapter 1 – The Challenge of Economic Diversification Chapter 2 – Economic Diversification: Concept, Application and State-Market Relations Chapter 3 – Unpacking Politics: Power, Actors, and Institutions Chapter 4 – The Economic and Political Transition to Becoming Africa’s Top Oil Producer Chapter 5 – The Economic and Political Transition to becoming Africa’s Largest Economy Chapter 6 – The Successful and Failed Policy Choices of Becoming Africa’s Largest Economy Chapter 7 – Lagos: The Political Foundations of Economic Diversification in Nigeria’s Commercial Capital Chapter 8 – Kano: The Political Foundations of Nigeria’s Failed Agro-Industrial Transition Conclusion References
Zainab Usman is the director of the Africa Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington, D.C., USA. She is a political-economist working at the intersection of institutions, policy and politics in economic development, energy, natural resources and the future of work.
Reviews for Economic Diversification in Nigeria: The Politics of Building a Post-Oil Economy
This book ably demonstrates that what is seemingly absurd and contradictory about Nigeria has to be traded carefully with the results an investigative and inquisitive mind may find. In a country of paradoxes only a few can offer us plausible and documented explanations as to why you can be the largest oil producer or economy of an entire continent and fail to convincingly diversify its economy. An exciting read for all those struggling to explain structural transformation slow pace in Africa. * Carlos Lopes, Professor, Nelson Mandela School of Public Governance, University of Cape Town, South Africa *
