Nigeria’s 50th independence anniversary is on October 1, 2010. To celebrate it, we are running a series titled Nigeria@50 at the groupblog NigeriansTalk. The first in the series, titled One Nigeria: Nigerian Unity 50 years Post-independence, was written by Kola of KTravula. The second is titled Nigeria at 50: Academic Medicine, and was written by… Read More »
Off to Basel tomorrow for an African Borderlands Research Network conference. As part of a panel on a comparative study of cross-border trade networks in Africa, I will be presenting a paper titled “Benin-Nigeria secondhand clothing cross-border trade in historical perspective”. The abstract: Today, Benin Republic is the main supplier of secondhand clothing to Nigeria,… Read More »
President Goodluck Jonathan says Nigeria’s power industry can only grow through liberalisation: The government will sell 11 distribution companies created out of Power Holding Co. of Nigeria, the state-owned utility, and allow private companies to set up power plants using natural gas, hydro-electric dams and coal-powered stations, Jonathan said in a speech in Lagos, the… Read More »
Apparently, the fairly fragmented but resilient world of money transfer is getting consolidated: Sigue, a US money-transfer company strong in Latin America, is buying the money-transfer business of Coinstar for $41.5m. Coinstar’s network allows users to transfer cash to 23,000 points worldwide – and Sigue’s CEO, Guillermo de la Viña, says the acquisition will make his company… Read More »
1. On the Islamic origins of the World Trade Centre architecture 2. What percentage of salary increase would satisfy Indian lawmakers? (This is not a tip for Nigerian lawmakers.) 3. On the importance of field research for development economics (Almost there, economists, almost there.) 4. What about the foreskin? (On male circumcision.) 5. A Beninese… Read More »
Helon Habila is a Nigerian novelist and poet. His first novel Waiting for an Angel won the Commonwealth Writers Prize (Best First Book, Africa Region) in 2003. His three choices for Nigeria are; 1. Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe 2. The Man Died by Wole Soyinka 3. The Famished Road by Ben Okri From… Read More »
From NEXT: Nigeria’s consumer inflation eased to 10.3 percent year-on-year in June from 11.0 percent the previous month, its lowest level for more than two years, the National Bureau of Statistics said on Friday. Growth in food prices, which form the bulk of the inflation index basket in Africa’s most populous country, also eased, to… Read More »
Three days ago, Nigeria’s Junior Finance Minister, Mr Remi Babalola, said that the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation is insolvent. The Beeb: “NNPC is insolvent as current liabilities exceeded current assets by 754bn naira ($5bn; £3.3bn),” Mr Babalola said at a government finance meeting. He said the NNPC owed about $3bn (£2bn) to Nigeria’s Federation Account,… Read More »
Ever heard of the D8? They are Iran, Nigeria, Bangladesh, Egypt, Indonesia, Malaysia, Pakistan and Turkey. Their central bank governors and foreign ministers met in Abuja on Tuesday. The aim? to seek closer economic cooperation that would help protect the group from another global financial crisis. The decision? Under a draft Abuja declaration, the group… Read More »
By Aljazeera