Nigerian Economy & Health

STM Update 11.6.25

According to recent UN data (i), Nigeria now has the lowest life expectancy of any country in the world. It is now the only country with an average life expectancy below 55. While the health of Nigerians has generally improved since the 1960's, it has struggled in recent years to keep pace and has now fallen behind the rest of the nations in the world. There are many measures of wellbeing besides life expectancy, but to have a life expectancy of less than 55 years in the 6th most populous country in the world is a strong indicator of exceptional challenges. Explanations are complex, but Nigeria has much in common with its West and Central African neighbors (ii) who also have generally low life expectancies. On the map, the green-tinted countries all have life expectancies higher than 70 years while the red-tinted countries are all below 70 years. You can hover over a country for its current life expectancy. West Africa, as a regional group of countries, has the lowest life expectancy for any region in the world with the large majority of those nations being well under 65 years.

1. Malaria: Nigeria is the most populous country within the highest risk zone for contracting malaria (iii). It is endemic in all 36 Nigerian states. Nigeria accounts for more than 1/4 of the global cases and over 30% of the global deaths due to malaria. The large majority of these deaths occur in children under 5 years old (iv). Lack of access to nutritious food and adequate healthcare is also a contributing factor to malaria deaths.
2. Unsafe water supply: this leads to diarrheal disease deaths, especially in children who do not have adequate access to health care.
3. Childbirth: Nigeria is the riskiest place on earth to have a baby and to be born (v). Mothers frequently die due to pregnancy complications or due to blood loss during birth. Infants die from birth asphyxia and trauma. The underlying cause is low quality, unavailable or unaffordable health care.  On average there are over 15,000 people per doctor in Nigeria. The US, by comparison, has about 360. But the situation is worse in northern Nigeria, where in several states there are well over 30,000 people per doctor (vi).
4. Tuberculosis: Low quality, unavailable or unaffordable health care leads to failure diagnosing TB and therefore failure to halt its subsequent transmission at high rates. Lack of access to nutritious food is also a contributor to TB mortality.
5. Road/vehicle injuries: poorly designed and maintained roads, high numbers of pedestrians on and alongside roads, high numbers of motorcycles, and licensing that doesn't require driver training combine to produce many deaths each year.
6. Violent attacks in rural agricultural areas. While the number of deaths resulting directly from these attacks is not one of the top 10 causes of death in Nigeria as a whole, it likely is a top 10 cause of adult deaths in some regions. But nationally, the greater toll of the continuing attacks is that millions of farmers are displaced into IDP camps and other areas where they will have poor nutrition and little access to medical care and greater exposure to malarial mosquitos - all of which are major contributors to the official leading causes of death. It is difficult to quantify this indirect mortality cost, but it certainly is significant. Furthermore, if these several million displaced people are not farming, the cost of food is higher for everyone and harder to access, again contributing to the overall poor health of the region and its low life expectancy (vii, viii).

It should be noted that lower respiratory tract infections as a category is one of the leading causes of death in Nigeria, however the Nigerian rate per 100,000 is actually lower than the rate in the US, probably because Nigerians are so often dying from one of the other causes listed above.

(i) http://data.un.org/en/iso/ng.html - select "Social indicators" to see life expectancy data
(ii) Population health outcomes in Nigeria compared with other West African countries
(iii) https://www.gs.international/learning-centre-articles/malaria-world-map-risk
(iv) Factors contributing to under-5 child mortality in Nigeria
(v) https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c5yk8ek86kdo - a BBC report on maternal mortality in Nigeria
(vi) https://sbmintelligence.substack.com/p/the-2025-sbm-health-preparedness
(vii) Violence related deaths in Nigeria: a public health crisis
(viii) https://injuryprevention.bmj.com/content/29/6/482 - Trends and patterns of violence-related mortality in Nigeria

STM Update 5.15.25

Recent reports raise concerns about worsening situation in West Africa and Nigeria in particular with regard to upcoming food shortages. Especially during the lean season (July - August) there is an expectation that hunger and food insecurity will be worse this year than last year. For more information see:

Leaning Into Hunger - SBM Intelligence

United Nations says Nigerian Children in Need has doubled since aid cuts - Africa News

Orignal Post 5.1.25

Recent reports from the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank paint a grim picture of Nigeria over the next few years. Already suffering from sustained inflation between 20% and 30% per year, and the severe devaluation of their currency (naira) over the last couple of years to about half of what it was against the dollar, Nigeria's outlook is not improving. The World Bank, in their April "Africa's Pulse" report indicates that Nigeria is now home to 15% of the world's extremely poor people - meaning they earn $2.15 or less per day - which is some 106 million people, just in Nigeria. That is about the same number of extremely poor as Ethiopia and Sudan combined. An estimated 13 million more could sink into extreme poverty in Nigeria during 2025.  At the same time, oil prices are going down and are expected to stay there for some time - oil is Nigeria's primary export and low prices put intense pressure on the Nigerian economy.

Nigeria's annual GDP per capita continues to go down and is currently around $835.  This does not exactly mean that the average Nigerian earns $835 per year, but it isn't a bad estimate. What is clear is that it is harder and harder for typical Nigerians to make ends meet and their standard of living continues to fall.  By comparison, the same measurement in 2014 was over $3000.

For more information:

The World Bank "Africa's Pulse"
Punch Nigeria article
Vanguard Nigeria article
Business Day Nigeria article