The Q4 report of 2019 indicates that the economy grew by 2.27% marking the highest increase since the recession of 2016. According to the data published by the Nigerian Bureau of Statistics (NBS), Nigeria’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) grew by 2.5% (year-on-year) in real terms beating the International Monetary Fund (IMF)’s projection of 2.1%.

“Nigeria’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) grew by 2.55% (year-on-year) in real terms in the fourth quarter of 2019. Compared to the fourth quarter of 2018, which recorded a growth rate of 2.38%, this represents an increase of 0.17% points and an increase of 0.27% points when compared with the third quarter of 2019.

“In Q4 2019, aggregate GDP stood at N39,577,340.04 million in nominal terms. This was higher than the fourth quarter of 2018 which recorded an aggregate of N35,230,607.63 million, representing year on year nominal growth rate of 12.34%,” NBS report said.

The report showed that the non-oil sector put up outstanding performance, growing 2.26% in real terms.

“The non-oil sector grew by 2.26% in real terms during the reference quarter (Q4 2019). This was lower by -0.44% points compared to the rate recorded in the same quarter of 2018 but 0.42% point higher than the third quarter of 2019. This sector was driven, during the fourth quarter of 2019, mainly by Information and Communication (Telecommunication), Agriculture (crop production), Financial and Insurance Services (Financial Institutions), and Manufacturing. In real terms, the non-oil sector contributed 92.68% to the nation’s GDP in the fourth quarter of 2019, lower from shares recorded in the fourth quarter of 2018 (92.94%) but higher than the third quarter of 2019 (90.23%). The annual contribution of the non-oil sector stood at 91.22% in 2019,” the report added.

In the non-oil sector, businesses picked up from their underperformance in the corresponding year of 2018. This is how the 10 best performing industries fared according to BusinessDay.

Air Transport

Air transport grew 13.17 percent year-on-year in 2019 to emerge the fastest expanding sector.

The growth, though below the 20.70 percent recorded last year, followed a steady increase through Q1-Q3 (9.09%, 12.31% and 15.23%) before a decline in the last quarter to 14.98 percent.

Coal Mining

A brilliant first quarter and third quarter for coal mining was enough to offset the impact of a contraction in the last quarter of the year and push sector’s growth 13.15 percent higher year-on-year. In 2019, coal mining was the second-fastest expanding sector in Nigeria.

Interestingly, the sector had contracted by almost 6 percent in 2018.

Telecommunications & Information Services

It might have been an anti-climactic year for the ICT services sector but it emerged the third best performing sector in the year, marginally surpassing its 2018 growth rate. (11.41% vs 11.33%).

Road Transport

Road Transport was the fourth fastest-growing sector in Nigeria last year after a brilliant 21.48 percent in the first quarter of the year.

Road Transport grew 11.24 percent year-on-year in 2019 although it shrunk 2.58 percent in the final quarter of the year.

Water supply, sewerage, waste management and remediation

This sector was the fifth fastest-growing last year with after growth printed at 4.59 percent year-on-year compared to a measly 0.97 percent in 2018.

Although the sector started the year with a contraction, growth picked up in Q2, eased in the third quarter and was more-or-less maintained in the last quarter of the year.

Arts, Entertainment and Recreation

Growth rose impressively from 2.53 percent in 2018 to 4.12percent last year.

Arts, Entertainment and Recreation started the year on steroids but quickly lost momentum in Q2 afterwards recovering in the latter quarters of the year.

Insurance

The insurance industry rose 3.59 percent to end 2019 the 7th best performing sector in terms of growth. The sector however grew below its 2018 rate of 6.12 percent.

Fishing

Fishing grew 3.33 percent year-on-year in 2019 following a brilliant Q1 that supported growth in the year. Compared to 2018’s 1.64 percent growth, 2019 is nothing short of a leap.

Cement

At 3.11 percent the cement industry is at least growing faster than the broader economy. Q3 was the best quarter for the sector last year while growth slowed compared to 2018 (4.5%).

Accommodation and Food Services

The Accommodation and Food services sector picked up from 2018, growing at 2.85 percent last year to be the 10th fastest growing sector in the economy. Growth peaked in Q1 and averaged 2.41 percent for the remaining quarters.

2019 was not a good year for the oil sector, factors ranging from climate concerns to surplus oil production kept oil prices dwindling below benchmark. But the Q4 2019 saw a little improvement compared to the Q3 2019, which added to the unprecedented growth recorded in the end.

“During the fourth quarter of 2019, average daily oil production of 2.00 million barrels (mbpd) was recorded, indicating a rise of 0.09mbpd over the daily average production of 1.91 mbpd recorded in the same quarter of 2018.

“However, it was -0.0mbpd lower than the production volume of 2.04mbpd recorded in the third quarter of 2019. Nevertheless, it is notable that oil production remained consistently at or above 2.0mbpd all through 2019.

“Real growth of the oil sector was 6.36% (year-on-year) in Q4 2019 indicating an increase of 7.98% points relative to the rate recorded in the corresponding quarter of 2018,” the NBS Q4 2019 report said.

It is coming as predicted: Amazon will not invest in African ecommerce but will push more into African cloud by possibly partnering/investing in major telcos in key African markets. My thesis that investing in Africa ecommerce would be hard is purely based on the heterogeneous and disparate natures of our economies, unlike India which is one market of a “continent” or China which Amazon failed but not for lack of trying. The logistical challenge to get scale in Africa in order to reduce marginal cost might have scared Amazon on any ecommerce plan.

In Africa, you have to work really harder on pockets of economies which are so small that a small American city can give you more sales than a country! But as the journey to the cloud and broad digitization continues, Amazon Web Services (AWS) understands that Africa is a huge growth opportunity because with our infrastructural paralyses, cloud is even optimized for businesses: when you are not sure the electricity will be there, it is better to put that data in the cloud than a local data center which will require a 24/7 generator. 

So, the news that Amazon is partnering with Safaricom to sell cloud services in East Africa should not come as a shock: “In addition, Safaricom will be able to offer AWS services to East-African customers, allowing businesses of all sizes to quickly get started on AWS cloud and accelerate innovation.”

Safaricom has announced a strategic agreement with Amazon Web Services (AWS), which will see the Telco become a reseller of AWS services.

The agreement is designed to accelerate Safaricom’s internal IT transformation, lower costs and provide it with a blueprint and skilled resources to assist customers with their journey to the cloud.

Safaricom Plc CEO Michael Joseph said the agreement will allow the company to accelerate its efforts to enable digital transformation in Kenya.

“We chose to partner with AWS because it offers customers the broadest and deepest cloud platform, overall commitment to security excellence, and a strong culture of customer obsession,” Joseph said.

In addition, Safaricom will be able to offer AWS services to East-African customers, allowing businesses of all sizes to quickly get started on AWS cloud and accelerate innovation.

In Nigeria, I expect either 9Mobile or Airtel to get that opportunity; MTN has a big cloud business and may not be open to such. Sure, MTN Cloud is mainly enterprise cloud, not for the startups, SMEs, etc which Amazon has built a tribe. Glo is also invested in enterprise cloud. 

Yet, while Amazon deploys the solutions, indigenous players like Layer3.cloud which are hosted in Abuja with full sovereignty blessing provide opportunities for highly sensitive businesses. You must not miss that mark.

As coronavirus (Corvid-19) ruffles economic ordinances, market systems and puts more humans at risk, the Board of Medcera, this morning, approved to share our Medcera technology to any public health institution that needs a modern health care tool to manage the virus containment. Medcera is the world’s first location-agnostic electronic health record system, making it possible that patients’ medical records are stored in one location, irrespective of city, hospital or domain. In other words, your medical record is always up to date, no matter where you are, provided the clinics are using Medcera. Medcera has integration with labs, imaging centers, pharmacy and insurance.

To collate and aggregate data, health institutions can use Medcera for their  agents and field workers. And in real time, via Medcera Insights, experts can see a heat map of potential risks as data is collected. While our technology cannot reveal the patient identity due to HIPAA compliance, we can tell you locations with risk vectors. That way you can activate the traditional protocols based on the healthcare regulations in your locality. 

If you reach out, our team will set up accounts for all your field workers and provide you access to Medcera Insights which has an advanced data analytics system to give you insights on data collected in real time. We are waiving all associated costs to any institution, private or public, in Africa and beyond. One requirement is that you must work with us via a licensed medical doctor fully licensed to practice medicine in your constituency as only doctors meet certain HIPAA requirements on patient data even if that data is anonymized.

All fees have been waived including training your team.

Our contact is info@medcera.com

Thank you Africa Integrity Prize for recognizing FASMICRO. We remain focused on our drive to “cure” extreme poverty in Africa through Zenvus.

In this connection, Africa Integrity Prize (AIP) is a value-driven project of the African Child Foundation for identifying, recognizing and rewarding Africans and friends, brands, products, individuals and organizations who put the continent first in positive light, for their demonstrated ability to sustain Integrity, innovate and invent for the social economic progress of the Continent, individuals and organizations who have proffered way forward using home grown solution to solve the devastating effect of corruption, ineptitude, poverty, quackery, i.e Africa’s solution to African Problems rather than begging for foreign aid and also for the promotion of excellence in the academic system towards that end.