E-Financial
Nigeria, Others Account for half of Africa’s Economy — World Bank
Nigeria, South Africa and Egypt account for about half of the African economy says new data released by the World Bank Group last week.
The report which ranked global economies on the basis of the strength of their currency said that China will overtake the United States of America by the end of 2014 as the largest economy in the world.
The report said that low income economies, as a share of world GDP, were more than two times larger based on Purchasing Power Parity, PPP, than respective exchange rate shares in 2011.
Yet, these economies accounted for only 1.5 per cent of the global economy, but nearly 11 per cent of the world population. Roughly 28 per cent of the world’s population lives in economies with GDP per capita expenditures above the $13,460 world average and 72 per cent are below that average.
The International Comparison Program (ICP) which released the new data said that the world economy produced goods and services worth over $90 trillion in 2011, and that almost half of the world’s total output came from low and middle income countries.
Six of the world’s 12 largest economies were in the middle income category (based on the World Bank’s definition). When combined, the 12 largest economies account for two-thirds of the world economy, and 59 per cent of the world population.
The PPP-based world GDP amounted to $90,647 billion, compared to $70,294 billion measured by exchange rates. Middle income economies’ share of global GDP is 48 per cent when using PPPs and 32 per cent when using exchange rates.
The approximate median yearly per capita expenditures for the world – at $10,057 – means that half of the global population has per capita expenditures above that amount and half below.
According to the report, the six largest middle income economies are China, India, Russia, Brazil, Indonesia and Mexico which account for 32.3 per cent of world GDP, whereas the six largest high income economies are United States, Japan, Germany, France, United Kingdom, and Italy which account for 32.9 per cent.
Asia and the Pacific, including China and India, account for 30 per cent of world GDP, Statistical Office of the European Communities (Eurostat) – and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) – 54 per cent, Latin America – 5.5 per cent (excluding Mexico, which participates in the OECD and Argentina, which did not participate in the ICP 2011), Africa and Western Asia about 4.5 per cent each.
China and India make up two-thirds of the Asia and the Pacific economy, excluding Japan and South Korea, which are part of the OECD comparison. Russia accounts for more than 70 per cent of the CIS, and Brazil for 56 per cent of Latin America.
The report stated that going by the Price Level Index (PLI) which is the ratio of a PPP to a corresponding exchange rate, the most expensive economies in GDP terms are Switzerland, Norway, Bermuda, Australia and Denmark, with indices ranging from 210 to 185.
The United States ranked 25th in the world, lower than most other high-income economies, including France, Germany, Japan, and the United Kingdom.
Twenty-three economies are showing a PLI of 50 or below. The cheapest economies according to the report, are Egypt, Pakistan, Myanmar, Ethiopia and Lao People’s Democratic Republic, with indices ranging from 35 to 40.
Which countries are the richest and poorest in per capita terms?
According to the World Bank, the five economies with the highest GDP per capita are Qatar, Macao SAR, China, Luxembourg, Kuwait, and Brunei.
The first two economies have more than $100,000 per capita. Eleven economies have more than $50,000 per capita, while they collectively account for less than 0.6 per cent of the world’s population. The United States has the 12th highest GDP per capita.
Eight economies – Malawi, Mozambique, Central African Republic, Niger, Burundi, Congo, Dem. Rep., Comoros and Liberia – have a GDP per capita of less than $1,000.
Which countries devote the most spending that directly benefit individuals?
The World Bank report disclosed that “a general measure of material well-being of each economy’s population is measured better by actual individual consumption per capita.
It said that a measure of all expenditures in the economy that directly benefit individuals rather than by GDP per capita is more revealing of the impact of government policy on individuals.
By this measure, the five economies with highest actual individual consumption per capita are Bermuda, United States, Cayman Islands, Hong Kong SAR, China, and Luxembourg, respectively. The world average actual individual consumption per capita is approximately $8,647.
The report further stated that “at 27 per cent, China now has the largest share of the world’s expenditure for investment (gross fixed capital formation); followed by the United States at 13 per cent. India, Japan and Indonesia follow with 7 per cent, 4 per cent, and 3 per cent, respectively.
China and India account for about 80 per cent of investment expenditures in the Asia and the Pacific region. Russia accounts for 77 per cent of CIS, Brazil for 61 per cent of Latin America and Saudi Arabia for 40 per cent of Western Asia.
According to the report: “Under the authority of the United Nations Statistical Commission, the 2011 round of ICP covered 199 economies which is the most extensive effort to measure Purchasing Power Parities (PPPs) across countries ever.”
ICP 2011 estimates benefitted from a number of methodological improvements over past efforts to calculate PPPs.
The ICP’s principal outputs are PPPs for 2011 and estimates of PPP-based gross domestic product (GDP) and its major components in aggregate and per capita terms. When converting national economic measures (e.g. GDP), into a common currency, PPPs are a more direct measure of what money can buy than exchange rates.
ICP implementation was led and coordinated by the ICP Global Office, hosted by the World Bank, in partnership with regional agencies overseeing activities in eight geographic regions: Africa, Asia and the Pacific, Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), Latin America, the Caribbean, Western Asia, Pacific Islands, and the countries of the regular PPP program managed by the Eurostat and OECD).
In addition, two “singleton” economies, Georgia and Iran, participated in bilateral exercises with partner economies, without being part of any regional comparisons.
CitiTrust Financial Services Limited, the parent company of Osun-partly owned LivingTrust Mortgage Bank, has approached the Court of Appeal sitting in Lagos, following the company’s conviction at the Federal High Court, Lagos, over alleged fraud and illegal financial operations.
CitiTrust, is challenging the conviction and asset forfeiture order handed down by the Court in the case brought the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC).
EFCC accused it of money laundering, illegal financial operations, and operating a Ponzi scheme.
Federal High Court, had ordered the forfeiture of the firm’s assets to the federal government of Nigeria, citing evidence of unlawful financial activities.
CitiTrust is fighting back according to the hearing notice No. CA/L/571/2025, issued on April 15, 2026, the appeal against the federal government, will be heard at the Court of Appeal complex in Tafawa Balewa Square, Lagos.
The matter, listed before Court 1, will first address a motion by the appellants seeking leave to file their appeal out of time.
Oyetola Muyiwa Atoyebi (SAN), counsel to the appellants, in a motion dated September 23, 2025, argued that procedural delays necessitated the application.
He explained that although the Record of Appeal was transmitted on May 26, 2025, the defence could not file its Brief of Argument within the stipulated 45 days due to time constraints and competing professional obligations.
Atoyebi further noted that the appellants’ brief exceeds the 35-page limit prescribed under the Court of Appeal Rules, 2021, by three pages, requiring the court’s permission for its adoption.
The appellants are therefore seeking the leave of the court to file and serve their Brief of Argument out of time, an order extending the time for filing, and an order deeming the already filed brief as properly filed.
The EFCC had earlier secured a conviction against CitiTrust and its subsidiaries, CitiTrust Asset Management Limited and CitiTrust Holding Plc, over alleged fraudulent financial operations.
It would be recalled that in a ruling delivered by Justice Friday Nemakonam Ogazi of the Federal High Court, Lagos, the judge held that there was overwhelming evidence linking the firms to unlawful activities.
The court found that one of the entities was not duly registered with regulatory authorities, including the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) and the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), describing the operations as illegal despite corporate registration.
Relying on Section 12 of the Proceeds of Crime (Recovery and Management) Act, 2022, the court ruled that the EFCC had established, on a balance of probabilities, that the assets were proceeds of unlawful activity.
Justice Ogazi also invoked provisions of the Advance Fee Fraud and Other Fraud Related Offences Act and the Companies and Allied Matters Act (CAMA), holding that the corporate veil could be lifted where fraud is alleged.
“The law is that when issues of fraud arise, the corporate veil must be lifted. Statutory provisions cannot be used as a refuge to justify illegality,” the court held.
The court subsequently ordered the final forfeiture of CitiTrust-linked assets, forfeiture of shares held in LivingTrust Mortgage Bank Plc, compensation of investors from recovered funds, and transfer of any balance to the Federal Government.
The anti-graft agency had also declared some executive directors of the firm wanted, alleging that they are currently on the run.
Federal court in Lagos has suspended the enforcement of Nigeria’s most comprehensive framework for regulating digital lending apps.
On April 15, Justice Ambrose Lewis-Allagoa of the Federal High Court in Lagos granted an interim injunction blocking the enforcement of the Digital, Electronic, Online, or Non-Traditional Consumer Lending Regulations 2025, better known as the DEON Regulations.
The order followed an urgent ex parte application filed the previous day by the Wireless Application Service Providers Association of Nigeria (WASPA Nigeria), the industry body representing wireless application service providers operating mainly within the telecoms ecosystem.
The suit targets twelve specific provisions of the text, covering licensing, sanctions, compliance obligations and data-handling rules, according to court documentation published by Lawyard.
Until the next hearing on April 27, 2026, the regulator cannot impose sanctions, enforce compliance directives, or issue new instructions to WASPA members.
The judge also barred the Federal Competition and Consumer Protection Commission (FCCPC) from interfering with the ongoing commercial operations of association members.
The case pits two actors whose respective mandates the Nigerian legal framework has never clearly separated.
On one side stands the FCCPC — the federal agency established in 2018 to enforce consumer protection and competition — which gazetted the DEON Regulations on July 21, 2025, under sections 17, 18 and 163 of its founding Act.
In a press statement dated September 3, 2025, Tunji Bello, executive vice chairman, FCCPC, justified the rules by citing “a long history of complaints” involving exploitative practices, data breaches, abusive debt recovery, and harassment.
On the other side, WASPA Nigeria contests the very legitimacy of the FCCPC’s intervention, arguing that services tied to telecoms — airtime credit, data loans, mobile-financing products — fall exclusively under the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), the telecoms regulator created by the Nigerian Communications Act of 2003.
In the affidavit deposed by Ayo Stuffman, the association contends that the FCCPC is acting ultra vires and creating a regulatory regime parallel to the NCC’s.
A jurisdictional war that stretches far beyond a procedural dispute
The conflict is not limited to a question of legal boundaries. It strikes at the commercial core of the market: who collects the licensing fees, who sets the operational conditions, who governs the financial products embedded in telecom networks.
Nigeria’s consumer credit stock reached 3.82 trillion naira at the end of December 2024, up 21.27% on September, according to Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) data relayed by The Cable and AFP.
In the fourth quarter of 2024 alone, personal loans disbursed amounted to approximately 470 billion naira.
A growing share flows through mobile applications and telecom-embedded lending products — including MTN’s MoMo Airtime Lending, operated by the country’s largest telecom operator.
If the court validates WASPA’s position, these products fall outside the FCCPC’s scope and come under the sole authority of the NCC, a regulator historically less active on consumer protection issues.
Available data on demand illustrate the social stakes. Between 2021 and 2023, the FCCPC recorded more than 11,000 consumer complaints for harassment, data abuse and unethical debt recovery practices, according to the agency.
The number of lending applications approved by the FCCPC rose from 269 in September 2024 to 408 in March 2025, while 47 apps were delisted and 88 were placed on the watchlist, according to data compiled by AFP and OneSafe.
The DEON Regulations were meant to introduce interest-rate caps, precontractual disclosure obligations, continuous supervision of recovery practices and fines of up to 100 million naira per violation, according to Legit.ng. The compliance deadline was set for January 5, 2026, and the FCCPC had issued written compliance notices to operators with an April 16 deadline, according to WASPA’s affidavit.
It is precisely this enforcement pressure that triggered the legal challenge.
Federal government has said that Nigeria has no plans to seek a loan from the International Monetary Fund’s proposed $50 billion support package for economies hit by the Middle East crisis.
Wale Edun, minister of Finance, who stated this, said that Nigeria’s current reliance on domestic economic reforms and fund mobilisation was working.
Edun gave these insights during the African Finance Ministers’ briefing, on Thursday, at the ongoing IMF/World Bank annual meetings, in Washington, DC.
He noted that for over two years, Nigeria’s investment in economic reforms have begun to yield results, restoring policy credibility and strengthening the country’s resilience against global economic shocks.
Edun told the global west and the rest of the world that Nigeria now prioritises market-based adjustments, avoiding administrative controls, particularly in foreign exchange and petroleum pricing mechanisms.
His assertion follows the disclosure by the IMF that a possible $50 billion support to cushion vulnerable economies against the crisis in the Middle East, was on the pipeline.
Despite clarifying Nigeria’s lack of interest in borrowing, Edun, urged the IMF to ensure faster financial assistance for African countries who will need help from the $50 billion global support package.
“Nigeria has no plans at the moment to approach the IMF or any other such body,” Edun said, emphasising that Nigeria’s reliance on market mechanisms had led to smoother economic adjustments, reduced disruptions and is sustaining the country’s macroeconomic trajectory.
“The IMF talked about $50 billion and we all know that the funding will largely go to Africa, because those are the most vulnerable countries. And the reality is that what we’re asking for in this instance, is that the funds and the support be released quickly and at scale.
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