Key questions this article answers:
- How did Nigeria end up in the MINT classification?
- What are the factors that drive foreign investment?
- What can Nigeria do to reach its potential and attract foreign investment?
In 2001, while working at Goldman Sachs, Jim O’Neil and his colleagues created something of a sensation. In their paper titled Building Better Global Economic BRICs, they identified four emerging market economies which were growing faster than the G7 at the time and appeared set to keep growing. They were Brazil, Russia, India and China, the ‘BRICs’ as O’Neil called them. The paper's focus was to call for coordination between the G7 and these large emerging economies on global economic policymaking. Their prediction proved correct. Jim O’Neil said in 2016 that the growth of the group, driven by China, surpassed the most optimistic predictions.
In the two decades since, the BRICS has become about more than booming emerging markets. It has
