Nigeria Economy become Africa's biggest

Call it the emergence of the sleeping giant. Call it a rebasing or data revamp. Call it a revision or revolution or whatever you want. Nigeria economy is officially set to overcome South Africa as Africa's biggest economy. Nigeria is to "rebase" its gross domestic product (GDP) on Sunday 6 April, which should push it above South Africa as the continent's biggest economy.

The National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) is set to release gross domestic product figures based on 2010 production patterns in Africa’s most populous country, the first time Nigeria has overhauled the data in two decades. A report will be released at a press conference in the capital, Abuja, at about 2 p.m. local time on April 6.

The revision may boost the size of the economy by as much as 60 percent to between $384 billion and $424 billion, according to London-based Renaissance Capital Ltd., lifting Nigeria ahead of South Africa in the World Bank’s global rankings.

“This will make it increasingly hard for companies looking at Africa to overlook Nigeria, especially considering the size of the domestic market and its potential,” Samir Gadio, a strategist atStandard Bank (STAN) Group Ltd. in London, said in an e-mailed response to questions.

The World Bank calculated Nigeria’s GDP at $263 billion in 2012 and South Africa’s at $384 billion. The West African nation’s population of 170 million is more than three times bigger than South Africa’s.

Nigeria is following Ghana and Zambia in recalculating the size of its economy. When Ghana, a West African oil and gold producer, rebased its data in 2010 in a similar exercise, the value of GDP increased by 75 percent to about $31 billion. The economy of Zambia, Africa’s second-largest copper producer, increased by 25 percent to about $24 billion following data revisions in February.