Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, Director-General of World Trade
Organisation (WTO), has applauded Nigeria’s Afrobeats stars, Burna Boy and
Wizkid, for winning awards at the 2021 Grammy, saying such services should be
encouraged for export in Nigeria.
OKonjo-Iweala, on Tuesday in Abuja, while meeting with
captains of the industry sector, said with Nigeria’s large number of educated
people, it has a comparative advantage in services.
Burna Boy, whose real name is Damini Ogulu, won the Best
Global Music Album category with his `Twice as Tall’, while Wizkid won the Best
Video for his song with Beyonce.
The WTO director-general described the entertainment
industry as a vibrant services sector embodied by artists, writers and the new
generation of Nigerian musicians, actors and filmmakers.
“Recently Nigeria’s Burna Boy and Wizkid won the grammy
award for their music and I will like to congratulate and applaud them because
they were an example of services we can export.
“We are exporting so much of our creative arts abroad, and
this seems to be encouraged,” she said.
She further said Nigeria’s economy was at a critical
juncture, adding that insufficient structural change had made Nigeria more
vulnerable to shocks from the fall in oil prices five years ago.
This, she said, was coupled with the impact of the COVID-19
pandemic.
She said the looming transition to a low carbon global
economy implied more changes ahead, hence careful economic planning and
management will be vital.
Speaking on change, she said Nigeria and WTO could help
support the process of change because economic growth had been sluggish since
2016 when fallen oil prices pushed Nigeria’s economy into recession.
The director-general recalled that before COVID-19 hit the
global economy, the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growth in 2018 and 2019 was in
the neighbourhood of two per cent, with population growth at around 2.5 per
cent.
“The world bank estimates that even without the pandemic,
two million Nigerians would have fallen into poverty in 2020, the pandemic
induced recession is likely to have pushed an additional five million Nigerians
into poverty in 2020.
“Nigeria’s economy shrinked by 2.2 per cent in 2020 and will
only recover to 1.5 per cent growth in 2021 according to IMF data.
“With the domestic market of over 200 million people
accounting to Africa’s economic outlook Nigeria has the potential to be an
engine of investment, innovation and job creation in West Africa,” she said.
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