The African Development Bank, AfDB yesterday projected  that Nigeria’s Gross Domestic Product, GDP, which indicates the economic growth rate, will inch up to 3.1 percent in 2023, saying   uncertainty about policy continuity after the election and rising insecurity will weaken the nation’s growth prospect during the year. 

The Bank has  estimated that the growth rate will decline to 3.0 percent in 2022 from 3.6 percent in 2021. Nigeria’s official GDP for 2022 is yet to be announced.

While the Bank’s projection is 0.65 percentage point lower than the 3.75 percent projected by the Federal Government, it is 0.2 percentage point higher than  the World Bank’s projection  of 2.9 percent for the country. It is also 0.1 percentage point higher than the International Monetary Fund’s, IMF, 3.0 percent  projection.

However, the AfDB projected that Nigeria’s GDP will rebound to 3.3 per cent in 2024. 

Making these projections in its  Africa’s   Macroeconomic Performance And Outlook, January 2023, released yesterday, the AfDB said that in Nigeria, the region’s largest economy, growth is estimated to have declined to 3.0 percent in 2022 from 3.6 percent in 2021, but still above the country’s population growth rate of about Against these headwinds, real GDP growth is projected to remain tepid at 3.1 percent in 2023 before slowly picking up to 3.3 percent later.

Furthermore, the AfDB projected higher economic growth rates of 4.0 per cent and 4.1 per cent for Africa and the West African Region respectively in 2023.