{"id":777,"date":"2015-01-21T13:00:18","date_gmt":"2015-01-21T12:00:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/africa\/?p=777"},"modified":"2016-10-28T13:14:30","modified_gmt":"2016-10-28T12:14:30","slug":"the-strength-of-nigeria-is-its-people","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/africa\/2015\/01\/21\/the-strength-of-nigeria-is-its-people\/","title":{"rendered":"The strength of Nigeria is its people"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I once heard a Nigerian saying proudly that <strong>the strength of Nigeria is its people.<\/strong> That statement stuck in my mind: in fact, its <strong>170 million (or so) people<\/strong> makes Nigeria the <strong>most populous African country<\/strong> \u2013 <strong>but what did he mean exactly?<\/strong> A number of things come to mind:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>the most immediate and obvious, <strong>Nigerian&#8217;s middle class is expanding:<\/strong> more than <strong>seven million households will be ranked as middle-class<\/strong> between now and 2030, according to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.blog.standardbank.com\/node\/61428\" target=\"_blank\">information by Standard Bank.<\/a> In fact, more than four million have been added since 2000, and the total accounts for <strong>11% of Nigeria&#8217;s total population<\/strong><\/li>\n<li><strong>Nigerians are very entrepreneurial \u2013<\/strong> precisely because the population is so large and the environment is not favorable, they know that <strong>they need to provide for themselves.<\/strong> <a href=\"http:\/\/www.huffingtonpost.com\/mary-olushoga\/12-young-entrepreneurs-wh_b_5600368.html\" target=\"_blank\">Stories of Nigerian entrepreneurs<\/a> illustrate this drive (including those of <a href=\"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/africa\/2015\/01\/14\/a-new-era-of-indigenous-entrepreneurship\/\">indigenous entrepreneurs<\/a> about which I talked last week)<\/li>\n<li>not-so-obvious to the outsider,<strong> &#8220;having people&#8221; helps you make it in Nigeria \u2013<\/strong> <strong>access to social resources, including higher education, depends often on kinship networks.<\/strong> The Igbo people refer to this as &#8220;having people&#8221;\n<figure id=\"attachment_780\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-780\" style=\"width: 633px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/africa\/files\/2015\/01\/2014-01-26-16.07.59-2.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-780 size-full\" src=\"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/africa\/files\/2015\/01\/2014-01-26-16.07.59-2.jpg\" alt=\"&quot;Having people&quot;: a key to social resources\" width=\"633\" height=\"252\" srcset=\"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/africa\/files\/2015\/01\/2014-01-26-16.07.59-2.jpg 633w, https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/africa\/files\/2015\/01\/2014-01-26-16.07.59-2-300x119.jpg 300w, https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/africa\/files\/2015\/01\/2014-01-26-16.07.59-2-624x248.jpg 624w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 633px) 100vw, 633px\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-780\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">&#8220;Having people&#8221;: a key to social resources<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>At the end of the day,<strong> a &#8220;wealth in people&#8221;<\/strong> (to use an expression by <a href=\"http:\/\/www.brown.edu\/academics\/population-studies\/about-us\/people\/daniel-jordan-smith\" target=\"_blank\">Daniel Jordan Smith,<\/a> an anthropologist at Brown University) <strong>helps economic activity<\/strong> as &#8220;kinship continues to be the most reliable and trustworthy basis for creating and navigating patron-client networks.&#8221; That&#8217;s the <strong>particular <a href=\"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/africa\/2014\/10\/22\/how-personal-networks-matter-in-africa\/\">way personal networks matter<\/a> in Nigeria,<\/strong> though they are important not only in the rest of Africa but across the world.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Any other views on why Nigeria&#8217;s\u00a0 strength is its people? On why this is different from in other parts of Africa or the rest of the world?<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I once heard a Nigerian saying proudly that the strength of Nigeria is its people. That statement stuck in my mind: in fact, its 170 million (or so) people makes Nigeria the most populous African country \u2013 but what did he mean exactly? A number of things come to mind: the most immediate and obvious, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1654,"featured_media":780,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[247,99106],"tags":[79903,8024,560,157,5461,171,1080],"class_list":["post-777","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-strategy","category-future-and-perspectives-for-africa","tag-communal-mentality","tag-economic-activity","tag-education","tag-entrepreneurship","tag-middle-class","tag-networks","tag-nigeria","megacategoria-mc-africa","megacategoria-mc-leadership-and-people-management"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/777","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1654"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=777"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/777\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":798,"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/777\/revisions\/798"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/780"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=777"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=777"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=777"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}