{{South Africa remains the most important economy in the continent despite being overtaken by Nigeria as Africa’s biggest, South African economists said.}}<\/p>\n
The result of a long awaited rebasing of Africa’s most populous nation showed that Nigeria’s GDP of $453bn in 2012 was higher than South Africa’s $384bn.<\/p>\n
“South Africa will remain one of the important economies of the continent, though this rebasing will be a significant step in establishing Nigeria as a true African powerhouse,” said Investec portfolio manager, Roelof Horne.<\/p>\n
Nigeria, with 170 million people, is about three times the size of South Africa by population, but it’s economy is still battling challenges such as poor infrastructure that hampers business activity.<\/p>\n
The new statistics included the contribution of the fast-developing sectors such as telecoms, music and film industry, known as Nollywood.<\/p>\n
Economist Dennis Dykes, at Nedbank, said Nigeria’s new position as Africa’s largest economy should be “viewed positively”.<\/p>\n
“It’s important that economies were measured accurately… it gives potential investors a good picture of activity,” he said.<\/p>\n
“The news figures should help South African investors identify new opportunities in Nigeria, especially in areas that were previously not factored in.”<\/p>\n
Dykes said South Africa’s $7 508 GDP per capita, higher than Nigeria’s $2 688, was still the most important measure of the economy.<\/p>\n
“Being Africa’s number one is definitely a great confidence booster for Nigeria, but it won’t change much,” he added.<\/p>\n
South Africa has been hit by slow economic growth since the 2008 global recession, its growth lagging behind many of the world’s developing economies.<\/p>\n
This year, the World Bank revised the country’s growth outlook to 2.7%, down from 3.2%, amid high unemployment.<\/p>\n
wirestory<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
{{South Africa remains the most important economy in the continent despite being overtaken by Nigeria as Africa’s biggest, South African economists said.}} The result of a long awaited rebasing of Africa’s most populous nation showed that Nigeria’s GDP of $453bn in 2012 was higher than South Africa’s $384bn. “South Africa will remain one of the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2000051506,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[75],"byline":[170],"hashtag":[],"class_list":["post-13728","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-business","tag-homenews","byline-igihe"],"bylines":[{"id":170,"name":"IGIHE","slug":"igihe","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":8}],"contributors":[{"id":170,"name":"IGIHE","slug":"igihe","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":8}],"featured_image":{"id":2000051506,"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton13728.jpg","alt":"","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","width":0,"height":0,"sizes":{"thumbnail":{"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton13728.jpg","width":1,"height":1},"medium":{"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton13728.jpg","width":1,"height":1},"medium_large":{"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton13728.jpg","width":1,"height":1},"large":{"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton13728.jpg","width":1,"height":1},"full":{"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton13728.jpg","width":0,"height":0}}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13728","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13728"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13728\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2000051506"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13728"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13728"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13728"},{"taxonomy":"byline","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/byline?post=13728"},{"taxonomy":"hashtag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtag?post=13728"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}