LAGOS, Nigeria — Officials said Nigeria's recalculated economy is worth $510 billion, by far the biggest in Africa and easily surpassing that of previous continental titleholder, South Africa, at $353 billion.
Figures announced Sunday are the first recount since 1990 of the GDP of Africa's biggest oil producer but do little for the 112 million Nigerians scrabbling to survive in poverty.
The International Monetary Fund had used the 1990 base to estimate Nigeria's GDP in 2013 at $292 billion. But that did not take into account new industries like telecommunications, information technology, music, airlines, burgeoning online retail outlets and Nollywood film production that didn't exist when the last GDP count was made in 1990. Then, there were 300,000 landlines. Today, Nigeria has 100 million cell phone users.