The Opportunities That Abound In Our Current Economic Malaise

image: businessgross.com

Just as the country is different from an individual, so also the national economy is different from the situation of individual companies.

Nigeria's economy is in a very bad shape. The nominal GDP has been growing between 2% and 10% for the past 10 years. Normally, it should be a good thing and a sign of improvement. Unfortunately it is not, because during the same period, our inflation has been growing way faster and our population has been skyrocketing. So in true fact, we have been regressing economically and not progressing. We have been experiencing negative real GDP growth and less per capita income as our population keeps outpacing our GDP growth.

It's a sorry state we are in. And worse, I think our leaders are clueless. They have got the wrong macro-perspective of things. They keep looking at the nominal figures and saying things have never been better. They don't have any clear agenda of where they want Nigeria to be in the next 10 years. It's almost like if you don't want to emigrate and not fair worse forever than your friends/family who moved to a better country, you will have to create your own everything: from opportunities to social amenities.

I tell myself that if a nation's economic output is a multiplicative factor of its labour, capital and technology and an individual can only get to be one unit of labour. Then for me to get as much output from my labour as the guy in US or UK or Australia, I will have to get myself a comparable capital and technology access. Meaning, I'll have to create my own/artificial one-man macro-economy. Or I'll always be subject to the very low labour productivity and stone age technology (total productivity factor) of Nigeria. And risk never being well off than the guy on welfare in the US.

The one thing all Economists have been kind enough to make clear is that a macro-economy is simply the aggregate of the individual (either by industry or even by each company or citizen) economies in the country. And just as there are slums in US, UK and France; there is also a Paris in every Nigeria, Ghana, Kenya and India. The realities among the individual constituents are at far extremes of the average. Some much poorer and some much richer. And the great thing is one can choose where to be.

I have a friend who nets an average of $5,000 a month. That's N1.5 million. The national economic malaise is making things great for him, especially the exchange rate. He is into online publication business. And he is just one of the many who are benefitting from having a strong need meeting business that earns monthly dollar income. Do you know why online businesses are the new rave? It's because the opportunities there are real and massive. That's why they even pull foreign investment.

Another field of opportunities is large scale farming. Another is software/programming.