It must have been a brilliant speech: Andrew Nevin, Chief Economist at PWC, outlines the critical frameworks to accelerate economic development in Nigeria. He gave the talk at a birthday dinner for Pascal Dozie, founder of defunct Diamond Bank. Here are some great lines picked from the diaspora portion (not in this order).
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If this applied to Nigeria, it would mean that diaspora remittances would be close to $40 billion and more than 3 times the USD the government receives from oil
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Nigerian Americans already earn more than the average American, an incredible accomplishment for such a new immigrant group
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Nigeria is not an oil economy and our biggest export is not oil … Our biggest export is Nigerians. What it also means is that the only thing holding up the economy is the Diaspora; if we didn’t have this massive flow of remittances, I am pretty sure the economy would collapse
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What is confusing to me is why this is not discussed more … official figures keep repeating that oil is our biggest export when it is not true. We have a flow of almost $40Bn that is not discussed much … very difficult for me to understand how someone can claim to be analyzing the Nigerian economy when they don’t look at the biggest item
Besides diaspora, he provided four other enablers to take Nigeria to the mountaintop: “branding” the nation, deepening informal sector & self-organizing institutions, improving public sector and modernizing the real estate sector. The full talk courtesy of Business Day.
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