Thank you for this. Nigerian here, and I have to say that you hit the nail squarely on the head. Population counts in Nigeria are deeply political and essentially every region/state is motivated to fake/overestimate their headcount to get a bigger chunk of the oil revenue, which is pretty much the most significant slice of gov. revenue.
But, once you dig into the figures, you realize it'd be a miracle if Nigeria has up to half of the population it claims.
Every single census that's been conducted has been marred by controversy, with states trying to buff up their populations to make their ethnicity/region look bigger and more important.
But, proxies like registered BVN (like Social Security Number, but for bank accounts) are just under 70M. Registered phone lines (~240M; each person usually owns 3-5) are similarly lackluster. Domestic demand is nothing to write home about if you run a CPG business. Zoom into a satellite view of a city that's supposed to have ~700k to 1M people and it looks like a suburb - just scanty.
Nigeria's most populous city claims to have 20M people - 2* the population of Seoul, one of the most urbanized, dense, vertical cities in the world, meanwhile, Lagos is just a sprawling slum.
Personally, I feel population counts across Africa are grossly overestimated. A good estimate would be 600-800M, but where's the fun in that when we can fearmonger about overpopulation?
Are there any proxy for population count? Like may be mobile users, I understand people use more than one.
Yes, I included that in the brackets. There's roughly ~240M registered SIMs, but unlike American phone line where you sign a contract, Nigerian SIMs are bought OTC and are quite disposable. But, they're tied to the National Identity Number which is biometric and hard/impossible to circumvent.
It's quite common to have up to 2-3-4 SIMs also. When when you account for that, you have ~60M-80M-100M phone users.
Another proxy is the Bank verification Number, which like I said, is Nigeria's Social Security Number, but for banking. Can't have a bank account without it. Even in the super-rural parts of Northern Nigeria, they're still banked, which is impossible without a BVN.
Now, there's been ~66M BVNs issued so far, according to a recent update. If we assume that covers the bulk of the adult population (remember, you can do literally nothing without a BVN) and several million teenagers, and account for the median age being 19 (that is, half the entire population is beneath that age), we can infer that Nigeria's population is close to 2* the BVN count.
My best guess is 120M to 140M max given the measurable, unfalsifiable proxies.
Hey, thanks for the inspiration de look here.
I'm strangely bullish on Nigeria. The population stats and the work y'all are doing is just amazing to me. The EkoAltantic project is so big but under the radar that I love it. I keep trying to tell my management that we need to invest in West Africa today to build up brand loyalty now.
What are you thoughts on Nigeria's future in the next 50 years or so?
This is fascinating, thank you for bringing this to the discussion!
Even better personal experience
You estimate a factor of two for over estimate, believable, but higher than I would have thought. Makes sense with the context of getting more revenue. Thank you
I caution you against the "I looked at satellite image" nonsense. Your lived experience is very valuable. Looking at a satellite image is not