CASE STUDIES FROM AFRICA

Nigeria has several natural and cultural tourist attractions, including beaches, overland
safaris, national parks, game reserves, water sports, archaeological monuments, and
festivals. Despite these, the number of international visitors to Nigeria has remained static
over the last 15 years. 6 The total number of international air visitors to Nigeria in 2004 was
estimated at 190,000. The level of spending by international tourists in 2004 was estimated to
be N 36 billion (US$ 280 million). 7 Notwithstanding the economic benefits offered by the
tourism sector, the Nigerian tourism industry is underdeveloped and represents a very
small share of world tourism. The poor performance of the tourism subsector has been
attributed to inadequate and underdeveloped facilities at tourist centres; low level of
awareness of tourist attractions in Nigeria; security concerns; low level of investment; and
the poor attitude to recreation and vacations by Nigerians. 8 A new draft tourism policy and
tourism development master plan addressed some of these constraints through the
establishment of tourism incentives such as tax holidays, import duty exemptions,
augmentation of basic infrastructure in tourist sites, demarcation of tourism zones in states,
increase in budgetary allocations to government tourism agencies, enactment of laws on
tourists’ security, and levying taxes on tourism companies to finance the planned tourism
development bank.
The transportation sector in the country comprises roads, railways and pipelines, ports,
inland waterways, and aviation. The effective modes of transportation in Nigeria are road
and air. Rail transportation is moribund, and only has 3,505 kilometers of single narrow
gauge track, old locomotive engines, and antiquated coaches and rail cars. No attempt or
policy statement has been made to open this transport segment to domestic or international
competition. The inefficiencies in the transportation sector—in terms of impassable inland
waterways, inadequate port infrastructure, poor and badly maintained road networks, poor
interconnectivity of all transport systems, and inadequate and poorly maintained airports—
are manifest in the output performance of the transport subsectors. For example, road
transport services declined from 7.02% in 2008 to 6.87% in 2012, and air transport from
7.32% to 6.92% in the same period. 9 The underdevelopment of other modes of transportation
has resulted in a very short lifespan of paved roads. In view of these challenges, Nigeria
currently aspires to develop a multimodal, integrated and sustainable transport system,
with greater emphasis on rail and inland waterway transportation.
Services in Employment
Data on the Nigerian labour market as a whole and for the services sector are not collected
on a continuous basis, and should be treated with some caution. The data for the services
sector shown in Table 4 disaggregate employed persons by gender for the year 2010. The
wholesale and retail trade sector is the largest with a total employment of 12 million people,
which represents 43.6% of the total labour force employed in the services sector. It is
followed by the accommodation and food service sector, which employed 2.73 million
people (9.9%); transportation and storage employed 2 million (7.3%). The education sector
6
AGORA’ 2000, 2010.
7
Nigeria Tourism Development Master Plan, Ministry of Tourism, Federal Government of Nigeria.
8
The National Economic Empowerment and Development Strategy. Available at:
http://www.nigerianeconomy.com/needs.htm [10 November 2004].
9
CBN, 2012.
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