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The size of Nigeria’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) could expand to $3.595 trillion, making it the 15th largest global economy by 2050, Jim O’Neill, former chairman, Goldman Sachs Asset Management, predicted yesterday.
The prediction is only dependent on the country getting its act right and investing in quality education to harness the huge potential of its young and large growing labour force, he added.
According to him, one of the critical ways that Nigeria could ascend to the 15th position is through technology, trade and particularly education by ensuring that the brightest brains get attracted to teach.
O’Neill’s predictions would mean that by 2050, Nigeria’s economy at $3.595 trillion would be trailing behind Turkey at $3.634 trillion and would have overtaken key countries like Italy, Spain and South Korea which rank among the largest 15 economies today.
His predictions further indicate that by then, China would have overtaken United States, becoming the number one global largest economy with a GDP size of about $619.28 trillion while US in turn occupies the second position staying around $35.818 trillion.
O’Neil made these predictions at the closing session of the 20th Economic Summit (NES#20) in Abuja before an audience that had Vice President Namadi Sambo, state governors, ministers, academia and policy makers present.
In his keynote address titled, ‘From BRICS to MINT: Centrality of education and learning to nations building and economic development’, O’Neil said Nigeria, substantially, has one of the critical ingredients to growth, which is a large and young population that is also expanding significantly.
“That population can be harnessed in the ways to boost productivity. You will be the 15th largest economy in the world by 2050. So it is up to you to deliver on the things that you set yourselves that are necessary for that to happen”, he said.
In 2001, O’Neill also predicted the BRICS, an acronym for the economies of Brazil, Russia, India and China, which would be the next thing after the G7- seven biggest economies.
Last year, he also identified the ‘MINT’ which means Malaysia, Indonesia, Nigeria and Turkey as emerging economic giants.
According to him, economic growth is driven over the long term by two things- the size of a country in terms of labour force and
