Nigeria’s recent economic growth has not brought about economic transformation. The new administration has an opportunity to address new areas of economic growth and the briefing sets about the six key aspects of policy formulation and implementation from the relevant international experience. One clear conclusion is the importance of emphasising global competitiveness, even in a large economy with a growing domestic market.

A key feature of Nigeria policy-making process is inconsistency, which works directly against the key ingredients for successful transformation policy. A good range of industrial sectors and products appear economically promising on the basis of any one of three types of rigorous analytical methods (Revealed Comparative Advantage, Product Space Analysis, and the Growth Identification and Facilitation Framework). The report outlines the key constraints to growth in these sectors.

It concludes that countries that have successfully engaged in economic transformation have been able to both articulate a longer-term economic vision and to deliver on a sufficient number of deliverables to obtain cooperation from various parts of society. What is needed in Nigeria is bold and imaginative thinking about technically sound and politically feasible first steps.