What does Nigeria export? Oil, you say, and right you are. The latest annual report from the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) shows that in 2011 the country exported oil and gas worth $90.1bn. The good news is that this was an increase of 21 per cent from 2010, thanks mainly to a jump in the global oil price. Close to a third of the oil went to the US.
The bad news comes when you ask: but what else, besides the black stuff? The answer: not very much.
The petroleum sector accounted for 97 per cent of total exports, as it did in each of the previous two years. Nigeria remains largely a mono-economy. In fat years, like now, the government coffers are adequate, and the huge leaks in the oil system – through corruption and oil theft – keep money sloshing around the economy. But lean years will come, and the results are unlikely to be pretty. As the CBN notes, “the continued dominance of oil exports has made the Nigerian economy susceptible to external shocks”.
The lack of diversification is even more striking when you look at the non-oil exports. More than half of the $3.2bn sales came from agricultural produce, mainly cocoa beans, rubber, cotton, fish and shrimps. A quarter of this was down to one company, Singapore’s Olam, which exported close to $450m worth of cocoa and sesame seeds last year, mainly to Japan and Europe . “Semi-manufactured goods”, such as leather and processed skins, accounted for a further $1bn of sales.
Manufactured goods were a distant third, worth only around $350m. With the manufacturing sector so small, it’s little surprise that the official unemployment rate is approaching 25 per cent, and is much higher among the young.
There is a glimmer of hope. Non-oil exports grew by 20 per cent last year, and manufactured goods sold abroad more than doubled. The handful of exporting manufacturers that have thrived are in very different sectors, proving that success is possible.
The seventh biggest non-oil exporter, for example, is British American Tobacco, which sells packs of Rothmans and Craven A to neighbouring countries. Directly behind it is Eleme Petrochemicals, a subsidiary of Indonesia’s Indorama group, which took over a state-owned factory in 2006 and now exports some $75m worth of plastic products a year.
Perhaps most surprising in West African Rubber Products, in 14th place, whose main product is “assorted bathroom slippers”, or flip-flops, which netted it $35m in export sales last year.
