Even before Nigeria rebased its 2013 GDP up 85 percent to $503 billion, we were forewarned that Nigeria’s GDP growth rates would be revised down. The higher base has resulted in lower growth rates, as noted in Yvonne Mhango’s released piece “Nigeria – Growth rates revised lower.

Nigeria has not been growing at around 7 percent and nearly as fast as China – as previous growth data suggested. Instead Nigeria has been growing at very similar rates to those seen in Kenya. This is encouraging for anyone who has been long Safaricom, Equity Bank and KCB – in preference to taking a long position in Nigeria ahead of the presidential elections likely in early 2015.

But what does this do to our Fastest Billion thesis as laid out in 2012? The key point in our thesis was that countries development paths tend to echo what we have seen before. So we assumed that India’s recent growth dip which echoed the slowdown seen in Developing Asia in the 1990s would be reversed.

Fortunately for our thesis – Modi’s election victory in 2014 was indeed the pro-reform response that India needs to get its growth trajectory back on track. On the confusing chart below, that India growth dip of 2012-13 coincides with what might see in SSA around 2032.

We also argued that as SSA was 20 years behind India, so then its growth rate would not equal India’s today – but would equal India’s trajectory 20 years ago. This implied that SSA would grow at 5-6 percent a year through 2010-19. It would rise above 7 percent a year only in the 2020s. Nigeria’s growth revision – now showing growth of around 5-5.5 percent then fits much better within our thesis, than it did previously.

The last point we need to reiterate is that Nigeria is an oil poor country. This is much more evident now that the GDP growth rates have been revised. Its net oil exports per capita are less than Colombia or Ecuador.

Nigeria’s growth is more about manufacturing, cement, construction, retail and banks – and less about oil even though exports and the budget are highly dependent on oil revenues.

Refer to Mhango’s piece:

Last Friday’s first release of Nigeria’s growth rates under the rebased GDP reveal that growth is 2 percentage points (ppts) lower.

An analysis of the growth drivers shows that telecoms is a maturing and slower-growing sector. The growth sectors are manufacturing –particularly food, cement and textile producers – and real estate.

Telecoms maturing; Manufacturing growing strongly, despite power deficit; a country under construction – positive for cement; and upside for finance given lower penetration, lower rates outlook.

Conclusion: The Nigeria growth revision fits with what we think SSA should be recording at this point on the growth trajectory. The big acceleration in growth to 7 percent+ should come in the 2020s across SSA. Note that we do expect Nigeria to out-pace Kenya’s growth in 2014 and 2015, and our bank analysts still favour Nigerian banks today.

Charlie Robertson is the global chief economist, Renaissance Capital