PRESIDENT Jacob Zuma will pay a one-day official visit to Nigeria on Tuesday as Africa’s two very dissimilar giants see if they can put squabbles aside and start pushing in the same direction.

The economic growth happening in parts of the continent could be in jeopardy if an unexpected resurgence of conflicts in other parts — Mali, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Central African Republic (CAR), for instance — is not quickly contained. In order to make the "Africa Rising" trend a long-term one, analysts say Nigeria and SA are condemned to be partners, if not bosom buddies.

"It’s a complicated relationship, marked by both co-operation and competition," said Adekeye Adebajo, executive director of the Centre for Conflict Resolution in Cape Town.

Mr Zuma will meet President Goodluck Jonathan in Abuja and then host him next month during a full-blown state visit to South Africa, the Department of International Relations said.

The superficial focus of competition is about size — the relative size of the two economies. Nigeria is due to rebase its gross domestic product (GDP) figures next year, boosting the total to about $350bn and in sight of South Africa.

If Nigeria’s growth rate remains at nearly 7% — twice that of South Africa’s — the title of Africa’s heavyweight economy will go westwards within a few years.

"Nigeria will soon become the largest economy on the continent thanks both to its rapid growth rates and the current exercise of reweighting and rebasing its national accounts for the first time in two decades," said London-based Gregory Kronsten of Nigerian bank FBN Capital.

"The flavour of the year for the offshore portfolio investor is frontier markets, and Nigeria in particular. The all-share index for the Lagos bourse has risen by 19.9% year-to-date while its counterpart in Johannesburg has shed 0.5%," Mr Kronsten said.

The raw numbers disguise some key realities and not only the fact that Nigeria’s population of 162-million is three times South Africa’s. Nigerian revenue is still excessively reliant on its oil and gas exports. Its overall economy is nowhere near the depth and sophistication of South Africa’s. Per capita annual income in South Africa is $7,000, more than five times Nigeria’s, and as a percentage of the population, twice as many Nigerians are below the national poverty line as South Africans.

South African corporates and their expatriates, spearheaded by MTN, SABMiller and Shoprite, have led the investment charge into Nigeria. The traffic in the other direction is more about individual Nigerians, rich and poor, seeking better opportunities. Dr Adebajo, a Nigerian, reports a degree of resentment in his homeland towards South African companies, which are perceived as making huge amounts of money while Pretoria restricts access to the local market.

The issue blew up last year when South Africa’s immigration department refused entry to Nigerians who lacked yellow fever certificates. The South African authorities backed down, certainly mindful of the financial cost of a drawn-out fight on the matter.

Commercial and economic links are not really the problem area. Politics and diplomacy are.

Nigerians have felt since the end of apartheid that South Africa’s African National Congress leaders have never really acknowledged or repaid the debt to their best and richest African friends while they were in exile.

Mr Jonathan did not support Mr Zuma’s successful but divisive campaign last year to get his former wife, Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, elected as chairwoman of the African Union Commission.

Bilateral relations were sometimes closer during the presidencies of Thabo Mbeki and Olusegun Obasanjo. The two were instrumental in pushing the African agenda in the early 2000s and getting seats at the high international table for key nations and the African Union.

But Mr Zuma and Mr Jonathan are less effective in international arenas than their predecessors.

South Africa’s halo has been damaged by corruption and bad governance, both chronic weaknesses of Nigeria’s, which are now compounded there by the startling rise of domestic Islamic terrorism in its northern states.

"There is a sad decline of Nigerian foreign policy," Dr Adebajo said. "Goodluck Jonathan doesn’t have a good grasp of foreign policy and the most dramatic example has been Mali, where France has intervened and Nigeria has been quietly applauding in the background".

Previous Nigerian leaders, many of them military, regarded their country as being in competition in Africa with France. They would have wanted a central place in attempts to counter Islamic terrorists in Mali in their Sahelian backyard.

Similar suspicions about France’s involvement in the CAR appear to have been one motive for Mr Zuma’s hugely criticised military foray into one of Africa’s least strategic countries. Thirteen South African soldiers were killed in the CAR last month and on Saturday the politician against whom Southh Africa’s intervention was apparently directed, Michel Dodotjia, was formally invested as president.

"I think Mr Zuma and his team are unnerved a bit by CAR. I think they’ll be chastened by the experience," Dr Adebajo said.

But South Africa did the Nigerian government a good turn this year when the South Gauteng High Court sentenced Nigerian national and South African resident Henry Okah to 24 years in prison for ordering bombings in his homeland in 2010 in which nine people were killed.

It was the first outcome of a trial under the Protection of Constitutional Democracy Against Terrorist and Related Activities Act, which gives courts in South Africa jurisdiction to hear crimes of terrorism committed abroad.

sheyie2007: There's something funny about the article above...

dotNaira:

The article or the picture?

sheyie2007: no the pics is fine, as long as uncle Jonah is wearing shoes

solomon111: I disagree with the article in respect to the mali situation.
The Nigerian army have not been relegated to the background,the move was purely tactical.
Btw we can't compare the foreign policy of OBJ with GEJ,without taking one salient fact into consideration.
Nigeria is currently facing the worst internal insurgence in its history.

You don't expect GEJ to focus its military in
foreign lands when we have myriads of terrorist attacks back home to counter.
OBJ never had bokoharam insurgence during his tenure,so the military were not distracted by internal insurgence ,which is why they were able to fully focus and forcefully exert themselves in peace enforcing /peace keeping.

Tolexander: so boko haram menace is worse than the civil war of 1967-1970?
what about the niger delta militant group OBJ had? You think had he not dealt with the militant issue like that, their menace wouldn't have escalated more than this we are experiencing?

solomon111: sorry,you are right.
Nigeria is currently undergoing the second greatest insurgency in its history.
As for your second point;
there is no way you can compare Mend with bokoharam.
The scale and form of attack were vastly different.
Bokoharam are terrorists with international link to alquaeda,MEND are a localized group of 'freedom fighters'.

dotNaira:

LWKMD
U sure he his wearing a complete shoe? He might be wearing it one leg you know can't see the other leg.
At least I can see the hat quality of a good fisherman.

Tolexander: no Mr Solomon. They are just trying to find a link between Boko haram and al aquaeda which no one has ascertained.

The major contributor to nigerian economy is the oil which is majorly in the niger delta. The activities of the niger delta militants is kidnapping adultnapping of the foreign oil staffs which had a very drastic effect on the nigerian oil output.

sheyie2007: no the pics is fine, as long as uncle Jonah is wearing shoes

gboss4sure:

The fisherman can buy your entire generation.

Inik: President Zuma is free to visit Nigeria anytime he likes. Nigeria and South Africa are brothers.....but the South Africans should admit that Nigeria is the elder brother

zaza1:

Another foolish Nigerian applauding corruption.Instead of u to question why a sitting president can afford to buy someone's generation u r there bragging about it.God help us

Tolexander: Can two walk together, except
they be agreed? Amos 3 vs 3