Nigeria will likely become the world’s third most populous country within three decades. I foresee Nigeria surpassing South Africa and Egypt in economic terms within the same period of time. Throughout history, those with a huge population usually do well in the long-term as significant increases in popular is already a positive signal that something is going right despite the short-term economic struggles related to overpopulation. What sets Nigeria apart from the likes of other notable African nations like South Africa, Ethiopia and Egypt is its combination of core competencies. Nigeria, despite its huge population in a relatively disadvantaged part of the world, starve for education and knowledge. Not trying to be funny at all, but Nigerians frequently make the East Asians dumbfounded with all their Ivy League offers in hand. When you think about how much people they have, how long their per capita GDP is, yet still have some of the highest percentage of most educated people, that’s crazy.
When someone educated say they are from Nigeria, you know that person is probably going to be super serious with their craft. Yes, other African countries are great too, the different is Nigeria has the scale, natural resources and geographical advantage to win big. Nigeria didn’t let the resource curse slow them down or make them lazy. They also don’t depend on remittances from expats living abroad to survive as much as Egypt does even though its population is double that of Egypt yet Nigeria only gets less than half the expat remittance Egypt gets. Nigeria has relatively stable relationships in its neighborhood composed of small and relatively weak neighbor states. The fact that Nigeria is still in the Commonwealth while Egypt isn’t tells you a lot about who will become number one in the continent. Nigeria is well-diversified, English speaking and can create unions in certain sectors with a much smaller neighbor like Benin tells you a lot about its diplomacy and soft powers. It has large amount of natural resources, ample amount of high quality Human Resources, with a long coast, Nollywood, strong partnerships with different global entities and is surrounded by weak neighbors?
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Nigeria in Africa, the next regional superpower.
I think that’s a quick recipe for regional hegemony. Ethiopia’s biggest issue is it being landlocked. Landlocked countries almost never dominate in the long-term for the reasons you think you know and for reasons you probably will never know. It’s the provincialism that lead to narrow-mind disorder that makes them the perennial target for “what could have been” or “if I had known.” What about Egypt? It suffers from the same problems as the Italians and Spaniards do. Once you “loose yourself,” people will always suspect you are not who you say you are before the reconquista. History does like losers nor does it like turncoats disloyal entities even if there are legitimate reasons for the betrayal. Funny enough, even the colonized still think the English are true “gentleman” even if their colonization was just as brutal. Certainly no one likes lapdogs or lackeys whose only existence is to serve as a gatekeeper or a buffer of some sort. The doormat never gets taken seriously.
As for South Africa, its issues are in essence no difference than that of certain demographic groups living in America with the same troupe of complaints on why they can’t make it, victimhood mentality that elicited sympathy the first 13% of the time and work ethics challenges that no euphemism is able to fully embellish. Plus, they still suffer from economic dependency issues even though they control the military, an issue much different than the dynamics between the lost tribes people and the true King George New Englanders. Nigeria has its sectarian religious, security and corruption issues like many developing nations do, however if a country is predominately of two major religions split in the middle that can sometimes be adversarial toward each other and have a lot of smart and expressive people living domestically and overseas and embraces new technology like AI intensely, it’s hard to imagine they have less of a chance to work out their problems than any other country with even more challenging situations. Africa is going to experience a lot of growth in the next few decades especially in infrastructure. Africans can be quite Pan-nationalistic and likely won’t accept neocolonialism of any sort from anyone who pretend to be its friends. Nigerians especially know exactly what it wants and are literally the early pioneers in viral marketing via the email 411 princes and princesses among other genuine ingenuities even pre the Asian scam centers.
When they put their minds to legitimate interests, they will likely succeed. Corruption if channeled correctly as shown by certain America’s number one enemy can be conducive to economic and social growth. The killer part is the withdrawal from cold turkeying. Most countries eventually get crumbled by that either acutely or chronically. There are serious arbitration money to be made in this space in the West and many Westerners do not understand the inherent hatred and conflicts between the “lazy as**s” and the “booty scr****ers.” They hate each other almost as much as they hate themselves but the real money play is getting past the cultural biases, act like referees even if you like dressing up for the occasions with period outfits and actually understand the subtle differences between them. They might not all be the princes and princesses of your dreams but they might really be “kings” and “queens” of a small thirty people chiefdom tribe even if they are just working as car mechanics in Europe. What these people are missing is the infrastructure which requires a lot of capital. They are good with the software side of things which means they are probably good investments in the long-run for those with decent cash flow to feed their needs and don’t mind waiting.