Nigeria/South Africa: How different are we? Part A

Africa's two biggest economies, Nigeria and South Africa, have many similarities when it comes to the research numbers.

Like most people, I find it much easier to learn about new things if I can frame them around something I already know. What easier way to learn about a country that’s new to you, than to frame or compare it to a country you know very well, like South Africa.

Let’s start with size: South Africa is 1.221 million km² whereas Nigeria is 923 768 km². So South Africa is a third bigger but hey, that’s still pretty hard to visualise. The map below makes it easier, with Nigeria overlaid on South Africa and clearly South Africa is the larger land size.

Nigeria, has significantly more people with a total estimated population of over 182 million whereas South Africa has an estimated 54.96 million people. Now imagine a square km: in South Africa there would be 45 people standing in that space versus 195, four times more, in Nigeria. That’s pretty crowded!

 

 

Nigeria has 36 states, whereas in South Africa we only need to deal with nine provinces.

If you took R1 to Nigeria you would get 12.88 Naira (₦). If you thought R15.22 to the $ was bad try ₦199 to the $.

 

Both countries rely on commodities to generate critically needed export revenues but Nigeria relies massively on oil revenues while South Africa has a far more diversified economy. In addition, albeit less frequent in South Africa, electrical outages plague businesses in both regions with generators being a necessity to continue trading.

South Africa has incorporated 11 different official languages into its constitution but imagine if Nigeria were to do the same with 512 languages spoken there. There used to be 521 languages spoken in Nigeria but nine are now extinct.

Both countries have invested age pyramids as you can see from the graph below. This is the direct opposite to the aging population of first world countries, which bodes well for the future growth of both countries.

40% of South Africa’s population is younger than 20 and 52% of Nigeria’s population is younger than 20. The challenges of having a significantly large, young population impacts on all levels: economically, the provision of education, employment, medical facilities and so forth.

- Sources: Worldometers, SA & Nigerian AMPS 2015, NPC, Statssa, Unesco, Exchange rates as at 25 March 2016. This piece was originally written by Karen Phelan.