The Economics of Weddings in Nigeria

Posted on November 28, 2018 by Ken Ochieng' Opalo

This piece highlights some interesting facts about the wedding industry in Nigeria.

How much do weddings cost?

When an upper-class Nigerian couple throws a wedding, at least 1,000 guests are invited. This equates to about ₦20 – ₦100 million [$55k-$275k], indicating that our celebration culture is nothing short of extravagant.

For perspective:

In India, with 3-5 days set aside to mark the union of two people, a single wedding can earn the economy about as much as $300,000.

Here’s more:

There is evidence that Nigerians’ desire to “flex” has provided a boost to the economy. For example, during the country’s last recession, the entertainment industry continued to expand even as other sectors shrunk. This similar pattern is observed with big-budget weddings. The cost of living has risen, but it hasn’t deterred the big wedding spenders.

And this has had a rippling effect on the rest of the economy.

Today, weddings are major employers of catering services, makeup artists, photographers and so on, directly supporting key growth drivers for any economy- small businesses. For example, a mobile toilets startup estimates that marriage celebrations account for 40% of its revenue. Trickle down economists might have a point. Our booming wedding culture is now supporting so many businesses today that would have struggled to survive in the past.

… Even though Nigerians are still famous for being net importers of many products, the wedding industry appears to be directing more spending within the country’s borders. Designers like Deola Sagoe and Mai Atafo have become favourites among brides for their bridal train outfits, instead of foreign designers like Vera Wang.

Lately I have been thinking a lot about socially-embedded economic sectors on the Continent, and their potential for mass job creation — think housing, agriculture, textiles, logistics, carpentry, funerals, weddings. These sectors provide low hanging fruits for policymakers for value addition and productivity gains. And their social embeddedness ensures that the surpluses are shared across the entire SES spectrum.

Unfortunately, most African governments spend all their energies on attracting FDI that ends up in enclave economies that create very few jobs. And to make matters worse, these sectors also get a ton of subsidies:

For example, multinational companies [in Nigeria] are entitled to tax incentives worth an estimated $2.9 billion a year– three times more than our entire health budget. By comparison, small and medium-sized businesses and workers in the informal sector face multiple taxes. Regressive tax policies like this work to keep wealth concentrated amongst a few.

FDI is great for capital intensive sectors. But governments should also be thinking creatively about how to promote local (micro) SMEs that touch a wider base of households.

Perhaps its time for the World Bank to consider issuing “An Ease of Doing Business for Local Firms” index.

The U.S. tops list of FDI projects in Africa

Posted on October 30, 2018 by Ken Ochieng' Opalo

This is from EY’s 2018 Africa Attractiveness report:

Mature market investors continue building on their deep-seated ties to Africa. In 2017, the US remained the largest investor in the continent, with a noticeable 43% growth in FDI projects. Western Europe, another well-established investor, also built on its already strong investments into Africa, up by 17%. However, emerging-market investments fell, with both intra-regional and Asia-Pacific investment declining by 12% and 13%, respectively. This is, in part, attributable to slower emerging markets growth and weak commodity prices.

It is odd that this report does not give the dollar values of FDI projects. But it has a summary of the distribution of projects and the number of jobs created. This is an important indicator because it reveals projects’ real impact on the real economy — as opposed to projects designed to create enclave economies. Notice that China is far and away the leader on this metric — with Chinese projects resulting in nearly three times as many jobs as American projects (FDI from Italy appears to be particularly good at producing actual jobs).

Screen Shot 2018-10-30 at 5.40.30 PM

Here’s another interesting observation on the sectoral focus on FDI projects from the report:

Over the past decade, we have discussed a shift from extractive to “consumer-facing” sectors, thanks to Africa’s growing consumer market. Mining and metals, along with coal, oil and gas, previously the major beneficiaries of FDI flows, have slowed, while consumer products and retail (CPR), financial services, and technology, media and telecommunications (TMT) have risen.

In 2017, FDI shifted somewhat, with consumer-facing sector investments slowing, in line with challenging operating conditions. The focus changed instead to manufacturing, infrastructure and power generation.

And finally, here are of “FDI-to-jobs” conversation rates. On this measure South Africa and Kenya stand out for their apparent inefficiency in converting FDI projects into jobs.

Screen Shot 2018-10-30 at 5.54.29 PM.png More on this here.

Who is the African child on the cover of William Easterly’s new book?

Posted on December 21, 2013 by Ken Ochieng' Opalo

UPDATE: A reader, C. Mwangi, just brought to my attention this quote from William Easterly’s 2009 review of Dambisa Moyo’s Dead Aid.

Moyo is onto something important but, as she says, seldom discussed openly. One of development’s dark secrets is its still-influential origins in the “poor people are children” view, a view with a deeply rooted and very long history. The “development” metaphor was itself is a biological one: poor people “develop” from childhood (poverty) into adulthood (prosperity). Some of the signs of this mindset are subtle but unmistakable. Just think of who was pictured in the last glossy “aid to Africa” brochure you saw? I am willing to bet it was African children. As David Rieff said in his classic book A Bed for the Night, “There are two groups of people who like to be photographed with children: dictators and aid officials.” And of course, you don’t let children manage their own affairs; the adults must do it for them.

The rest of the review, originally meant for publication in the LRB, is available here.

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They say don’t judge a book by its cover, but if it wasn’t for Bill Easterly’s reputation for sound thinking on matters to do with Development, I would not have pre-ordered his upcoming book The Tyranny of Experts.

Seriously, as a new year resolution can we all promise never to fall into the temptation to include anonymous African children (invariably looking poor and shabby with flies on their faces or carrying guns, among other things) on the cover of books on poverty and development?

PLEASE? It is no longer good form (and never has been), especially coming from people who ought to know better. Were the boy’s parents or guardians consulted? Do they even know that their kid is on the cover of Easterly’s book?

The book title suggests that Easterly cares about the forgotten rights of the poor, yet the use of the cover image violates an important right of the poor: the right against unfair objectification. There is research out there suggesting that African states face an FDI inflow penalty simply because they are African. Images like these on the cover of books do not help the cause to reverse this reality.

To be fair (as a commenter pointed out to me on twitter) it is the publishers who decide these things to drive sales. But authors still have a right (and in my view, a duty) to ensure that this sort of stuff doesn’t happen.

I feel bad calling out Easterly on this because he is one of the more nuanced and very sane development economists/practitioners out there (and there are certainly far much worse instances of this phenomenon out there); but the habit of using a whole region and its peoples as shorthand for poverty, underdevelopment and dysfunction has to stop. And it starts with each and every one of us.

How does Chinese aid interact with level of democracy in poor countries?

Posted on September 20, 2013 by Ken Ochieng' Opalo

It is a commonly accepted idea in IR theory that states have the habit of externalizing their domestic institutions [and accompanying economic and political systems] in their engagements within the international system (See Katzenstein, 1976 [pdf, gated]) – think democracy promotion, Reagan-Thatcherist free market evangelism, or Sino-Russian coziness with states that have an authoritarian bend.

This phenomenon has non-trivial implications for development assistance. For instance, poor countries receiving capacity development assistance from say a Scandinavian liberal democracy often need to also adopt related practices beyond the narrow specific field (say tax reform) that is being addressed by the capacity development program. Many projects fail to produce the desired results because of this. Indeed past research has shown that “though aid [from wealthier, mostly Western democracies] does not affect quality of life in the aggregate, it is effective when combined with democracy, and ineffective (and possibly harmful) in autocracies.” [Kosack, 2003- pdf]

So does the effect of Chinese aid/finance to poorer countries follow this pattern? In other words, does the institutional incongruence effect also hold for autocratic donors?

The folks at Aid Data blog think it does:

…… we estimate the relationship between Chinese development finance and human development in democratic and autocratic recipient countries. Our results show a negative relationship between Chinese development finance and human development in democratic countries. Interestingly, these results also suggest that Chinese development finance can successfully promote HDI growth for autocratic recipients. Kosack found the opposite pattern in his study of Western aid.

The findings are preliminary and may not withstand robustness checks, but all the same interesting.

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