Analysts at Renaissance Capital call it the numbers game in Africa’s biggest market with a population of 150 million and note that Nigerians are still spending. One barometer, the sales of first-class and business-class air tickets on flights between Lagos and Europe, indicates the elite is awash with cash. More contentiously, Renaissance predicts that Nigeria’s gross domestic product will hit $308 billion in 2011; the IMF’s projection for South Africa is $262 billion.

Oil, gas, and Africa’s biggest market keep the investors interested despite the increasingly desperate politics in Abuja ahead of the 2011 elections.

After six weeks of billion dollar bailouts, high-level sackings, and the arraigning in court of five top executives, Nigeria’s financial sector is still robust enough to prompt paeans of praise from banks such as Goldman Sachs, Renaissance Capital and Standard Chartered. Not far behind in their pursuit of Nigerian business are South African banks such as Standard, Absa (now controlled by Britain’s Barclays Bank) and FirstRand – all of which are looking at buying stakes in troubled Nigerian banks, such as Intercontinental, Union, and Oceanic. Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: Absa, Banking, Barclays, Central Bank of Nigeria, FirstRand, Goldman Sachs, Intercontinental Bank, James Ibori, Lamido Sanusi, Mansur Mukhtar, Michael Kaase Aondoakaa, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, Nigeria, Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, NNPC, Oceanic Bank, Oil and Gas, PDP, People's Democratic Party, Renaissance Capital, Rilwanu Lukman, South Africa, Standard Bank, Standard Chartered, Umaru Yar'Adua, Union Bank