Nigeria’s Economic Reset: Scores See New Opportunities Amid Pain

*THISDAY editors review impact of devaluation on Africa’s largest market

*Present five ideas for a new Nigeria (Part I)

Emmanuel Addeh in Abuja

While Nigeria is  experiencing her worst economic reset since independence, compounded by naira’s free fall, many analysts and economists however see new opportunities for rebuilding a new economy if handled properly.
Experts have identified five areas they described as low hanging opportunities that could significantly redefine the economic direction for the country and boost its FX position. They are the oil and gas, technology, social media influencing, security services, and agriculture.

Oil and Gas

In the oil and gas sector for example, despite being Nigeria’s lowest hanging fruit, many see new opportunities after years of decline and low investments.
This is because with the International Oil Companies (IOCs) quitting the Niger Delta, resulting in dwindling financing of oil and gas projects, the belief is that the time to ramp up crude oil production and refining is now.
The IOCs are therefore giving new opportunities to Nigerian professionals.
Besides, the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPC) and the federal government use most of Nigeria’s production to importation of fuel and subsidy to raise cash in international markets.
But with that drying up in capacity, Nigeria needs to ramp up oil production to begin to meet its original OPEC quota.
A number of oil analysts believe that with the right fiscal incentives, Nigeria can add 500,000 bpd of oil in the near term, which in turn will produce the dollars needed to stabilise the currency market.

Technology

Another area of opportunity is technology. Given Nigeria’s new tech revolution, many see opportunities in data centres, data aggregation, cloud computing, IT outsourcing, software development, networking, etc, for Nigeria’s growing tech talents, who will stay in the country to provide tech services to global players around the world and earn dollars.
So, instead of leaving the country, they have naira costs but earn revenue in dollars.

Social Media Influencing:

Social media influencing is yet another opportunity that is being leveraged heavily.
A lot of young Nigerians have become influencers and are thriving in the e-commerce space on the social media. These influencers are earning dollars and the more they drive markets, the more they earn.
Curiously, with the devaluation, many of the influencers, who earn dollars have seen their revenue quadruple and that is engaging young people to become influencers across social platforms like the Tiktok, Instagram, Snapchat and to some extent Facebook. These influencers earn big revenues. And this is growing by the day.

Security Services:

The fourth opening is in security services. With insecurity all over the country, new security companies driven by tech are springing up.
These include bodyguard services, tech services, CCTV services and so on. With the right husbanding, security will be big business, partly driven by Israeli experts, who are advising Nigerians.

Agriculture:

Agriculture is equally playing big. Nigeria’s food has become very cheap and people in neighbouring  countries are coming into the country to buy food.
Tackling the current hunger in the land requires massive food production to not only feed its large population but to also feed the West African sub region and beyond. Nigeria has rich and fertile lands in abundance to scale production.  
So, it is believed that this is the right time for the agriculture sector to ramp up production with massive mechanised farming, where they can produce to feed West Africa.
In addition, young people can build greenhouse farms in-compound to grow food. With food inflation high, there’s an opportunity for production because it is the only chain that can reduce inflation, and not high interest rates.
There is however a high demand for the Nigerian food across West Africa and the only way to tackle food inflation is through massive production.