Nigeria's economy in numbers: growth, prices and reserves

Scale: output, income and people

The World Bank series carried in the Invest Global dataset puts Nigeria's population at 237.5 million for 2025 and gross domestic product at $291 billion in the same period. Gross domestic product per person is $1,224.

The dataset also carries an official exchange rate of 1,518.4 local currency units per US dollar for 2025.

Growth and prices

Real GDP growth was 4.0% in 2025. Consumer price inflation for the same period was 23.0%. The World Bank defines the inflation series this way: "Inflation as measured by the consumer price index reflects the annual percentage change in the cost to the average consumer of acquiring a basket of goods and services that may be fixed or changed at specified intervals, such as yearly."

Unemployment in the series is 3.1% for 2025. The series label identifies it as an ILO modelled estimate.

The external position

Total reserves are $46.0 billion, equal to 7.1 months of imports in 2025. The current account balance is 4.8% of GDP for 2025. Foreign direct investment net inflows are 1.4% of GDP for 2025.

The data status page lists when each of these series was last refreshed, and every figure here carries the source and period in the sources list at the end of the article.

Public debt

The IMF World Economic Outlook series puts general government gross debt at 35.5% of GDP for 2025. The IMF describes the measure this way: "Gross debt consists of all liabilities that require payment or payments of interest and/or principal by the debtor to the creditor at a date or dates in the future."

The dataset used for this article carries no revenue or interest series for Nigeria, so it makes no statement about the cost of servicing that debt.

Where the model says Nigeria stands out

The Invest Global exposure score has a published method. In the model's own words: "Each score is a weighted average of percentile ranks. For every indicator, a country's latest observation (not older than 2014) is ranked against all other countries with data (mid-rank percentile, 0 to 1). Where a lower raw value signals more headroom (for example electricity access), the rank is inverted. The weighted average of the available percentiles is scaled to 0 to 100. A cell is published only if indicators holding at least 60 percent of the weight are available; otherwise the country is omitted for that sector." The model also states what the score means: "The score describes how large and relevant a sector is in a country's economy and opportunity set, relative to other countries. It is not a measure of attractiveness, return or risk, and it is not investment advice."

For Nigeria the highest score is 87 out of 100 for energy. The inputs to the energy score are: Oil rents (weight 35%); Fuel exports (weight 35%); Natural gas rents (weight 20%); Coal rents (weight 10%). The model's stated rationale for Nigeria: Fuels are 85.9% of merchandise exports; oil rents are 6.2% of GDP (2021, 2025).

Infrastructure scores 74 out of 100. Its rationale: 62.5% of the population has electricity access; container port traffic is 1.6 million TEU (2023, 2024). Telecom scores 67 out of 100, with this rationale: Population is 237.5 million; 41.2% of people use the internet (2024, 2025). Agriculture scores 64 out of 100, and the rationale is: Agriculture is 23.0% of GDP; 40.8% of land is arable (2024, 2025).

How to use this snapshot

A snapshot gives a fixed set of dated facts. For the full indicator list, open the country profile. The energy sector page shows how Nigeria compares with the other scored countries.

Every value in this article comes from the World Bank, the IMF or the Invest Global exposure model, and the sources list shows the retrieval date for each. The chart data panel repeats the model scores with their source and as-of date.