Question: I enjoyed your lectures at Tekedia Institute. But Sir, could you explain why Nigeria keeps borrowing money? Is this ever going to stop in this decade?

My Response: I will respond as a teacher; you can of course reach out to your senator for a political response. I understand there is a new $2 billion oil-backed loan that the nation will be picking.  Please read the lecture notes on how I have classified the invention society, innovation society and accelerated society eras. 

Let me add one more thing, drawing from my junior secondary school lecture in agricultural science on Rev Malthus postulation. Malthus noted that resources (say food production) were growing in arithmetic progression and the population was on a geometric progression (more rapid and faster in multiples). He came up with an inflection point – called the Malthusian catastrophe –  and that happens when the population has overtaken the resources required to support the people. 

Typically, every great nation unlocks innovation to “create” more resources so that you will keep having more resources to support the growing population. At the basic state, all nations begin in the invention society era. The plot below shows how the US and China expanded the resources (here GDP) to support the rising populations. In other words, they shifted the equilibrium and avoided the Malthusian catastrophe via the parabolic growth which reversed centuries of economic stagnation.

For Nigeria, our unlocked resources via GDP, aggregate of all economic activities, have shrunk over the last few years due to many factors, including energy price, currency loss, etc. As that was happening, the population continued to grow, creating a double whammy where more people have to share lesser resources, seeding an imbalance where policies have moved from tactical to operational (Nigeria abandoned strategic policymaking many years ago), as every week is a crisis!

In my thesis as noted in the lecture material, Nigeria is still at the invention society era. So, to overcome this paralysis, it needs to move to the innovation society era.  In the lecture note, we explained the pillars and enablers for innovation. Unfortunately, for Nigeria, that transition has not happened. 

Consequently, it has to borrow hoping to “create” more resources to support the population. This is typical in most African economies as they remain stuck in the invention era and are unable to expand opportunities by moving into the innovation era. Loan provides that operational support and that is why Nigeria will keep taking loans.

At close to $20 billion, the Nigerian diaspora group is the largest investor in Nigeria. It sends more money into the Nigerian economy than any organization. Yet, it is also the least consequential “group” before the Nigerian government. If the World Bank plans a $2 billion loan, it will send us a sermon. If the IMF wants to ship a $1 billion loan, it will ask for reforms. Yet, a group of people wire close to $20 billion, and cannot get a simple shift on how the leaders and the governments act or behave. That is unfortunate!

The funds to rebuild Africa are already available. The lineage of the first generation African diasporas (Robert Smith, Tiger Woods, etc)  and the recent diasporas have the capacities to fund Africa. The challenge, unfortunately, is that no one has a vehicle, on how that could be executed at scale.

We like to quote these “monetary figures” as success. Sure, remittance is great. But it is a limited gain. About 90% of my Chinese PhD school mates in Johns Hopkins are now in China (using their LinkedIn profiles). The government has this secondictor fund which is now worth about $100 billion, and if you have ideas, you can apply and the government will fund your mission.

So, what do they do? You work for AMD, Nvidia, ADI, Intel, etc for 4-6 years, you send a proposal to the government, and within months, the government will help you relocate with $10m in the bank to build products!

Our continent needs to explore how to build such enablers even as the diasporas drop their leftovers for their homelands. Get me right: remittance is great, but it has to go beyond that. There needs to be a framework around this money in the homelands.

Comment on Feed

Comment: “Remittance is not investment.”

My Response: Noted, but you can remit money and the receiver can invest it.  People build houses and the funds are remitted and counted as remittance. So, while it is not an investment in the typical sense, the funds are also invested. That said, in my usage, while it cannot be classified as an asset class in the typical investment framework, when you send money into an economy, you are investing in that economy.

That is why cities compete to host sports games because when people come, they help the local economy. If you agree that customers are investors, you can extrapolate that when you sell to that person, that person is investing in your business. So, when diasporas send funds into Nigeria, they’re investing in the Nigerian economy but that would be spent!