The Nigerian economy posted a 1.9 percent GDP upswing in 2018, with telecommunications and information services accounting for 7.4% of the aggregate, this is according to the Nigeria Mobile Report, a publication by Pan African e-commerce company Jumia.
The report appraises Nigeria’s economic performance in the previous year as well as makes insightful forecasts, with a slant towards the impact of mobile telecoms technology on GDP.
The report was unveiled at a media presentation held on Friday at Jumia’s corporate office in Lagos.
In its bid to put behind its recession nightmare and create jobs for its teeming youth population, Nigeria benchmarked its 2018 GDP growth rate at 2.3 percent. It however performed slightly off its mark, owing largely to unstable global crude oil prices. Also, the report shows the non-oil sector rose by 2 percent, sectors such as Agriculture, ICT, Manufacturing, and Transport Storage offered opportunities for economic growth.
Prominent among the major contributing sectors is the ICT sector, noted to be the second fastest growing at the rate of 9.7 percent. The telecoms sub sector accounted for 7.4 percent of the entire GDP growth and added 700,000 jobs to the economy.
The report estimates Nigeria’s population to be 198 million, of this number 172 million people own a registered phone line, while 112 million are connected to the internet. Jumia projects that from 2019 to 2025, 700 million people will be added to global telecom subscriber population and Nigeria is the only African country that will contribute to the growth by 4 percent.
At the centre of the drive for smartphone penetration and data accessibility is pricing, both have become more affordable, facilitating transactions for millions of people. Jumia prides itself to offer competitive prices for quality smartphones for diverse income groups in its different markets across Africa.
Elaborating on Jumia’s contribution to the growth of the sub sector in Nigeria, the Head, PR & Communications Head, Olukayode Kolawole said, ‘the prices of smartphones on Jumia’s platform from 2014 to date has dropped from $216 to $95, approximately N30,000 when converted to Nigeria’s currency, thereby deepening smartphone penetration’.
The data used for compiling the report is drawn from leading sources such as We Are Social. GSMA. Jumia Business Intelligence. NESG Group. NCC. Data Reportal.
Click on the link to view full report: NG Jumia Mobile Report 2019
