A recent Financial Times report has shown that Vietnam exports put millions of people out of poverty in the last 30 years, Akinwumi Adesina, president of African Development Bank Group said.
Vietnam’s export in 2020 was at a whopping $380 billion. Nigeria can learn different things from the Asian country.
“By contrast, Nigeria’s export in 2020 was $33.5 billion which is one tenth of Vietnam. Nigeria exports was dominated by oil exports,” Adesina said at the BusinessDay CEO Forum 2023.
He said Malaysia’s total exports in 2020 was valued at $234 billion dollars. “While the export basket has changed, Malaysia has used diverse ways to move to the high-value market.”
Adesina stated that Nigeria remains in survival mode as it is still unable to substitute its export product, still being the largest producer of oil in the African market but there is a gap between policy gap and utilisation.
Nigeria’s import was dominated by machinery which is what Vietnam and Malaysia are exporting.
“Nigeria export is today where Malaysia was,” Adesina said.
He stated that Nigeria imports mineral fuels, exports crude oil, and imports refined products among others.
“Nigeria is developing too slowly and lower than its potential. An industrial revolution which is deliberate and intentional is needed,” he said.
“Asia focused on the export of manufacturing but Nigeria has been on import.”
He stated that African policies including Nigeria’s policy have a huge gap between policy ideas an actions.
“The reality in view of several challenges is that firms are moving to other economic countries with better ease of doing business,” Adesina said.
Adesina stated that it is not easy to be a manufacturer in Nigeria, it is not the ease of doing business but the pain of doing business.
“Nigeria must shift from managing poverty to managing wealth. It is time to make poverty history in Nigeria,” he said.
