Nigeria is to "rebase" its gross domestic product (GDP) on Sunday 6 April, which should push it above South Africa as the continent's biggest economy.
According to a BBC report, the former British colony is one of the world's largest oil producers But few Nigerians, including those in oil-producing areas, have benefited from the oil wealth.
The Nigerian government is striving to boost the economy. But progress has been undermined by corruption allegations and mismanagement.
The United Nations defines rebasing as the "process of replacing present price structure [base year] to compile volume measures of GDP with a new or more recent base year". Basically, it's a need to update a country's national statistics.
Economies are dynamic things; they grow, they shrink, they add new sectors and technologies and people's behaviours change. One of the uses to which GDP data is put is to track how the economy grows over time.
So, as GDP numbers are only relevant when compared to other GDP numbers, the year that serves as the base for their comparison needs to change as well to reflect the changes in the economy. There are basically two ways to measure gross domestic product (GDP), the sum of a country's goods and services.
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