Nigeria
Africa's most populous nation and cultural superpower
Nigeria is the demographic giant of Africa, the most populous country on the continent with well over 200 million people and on track to become one of the most populous on Earth within a few decades. A federation of more than thirty states straddling the Gulf of Guinea, it is a powerhouse of oil, commerce, music, and film, home to the Nollywood industry and the global Afrobeats sound. Its astonishing diversity, with over 250 ethnic groups led by the Hausa-Fulani, Yoruba, and Igbo, and a roughly even split between a Muslim north and Christian south, makes it one of the most complex and consequential nations in the world.
Nigeria descends from the mangrove swamps and oil-rich creeks of the Niger Delta and the southern rainforest, through a central belt of plateaus and savanna around the confluence of the Niger and Benue rivers, to the dry Sahel and the shores of Lake Chad in the northeast. The Jos Plateau rises in the center, and the highest point, Chappal Waddi near the Cameroon border, reaches about 2,419 meters. Oil and gas from the Niger Delta have long dominated exports and government revenue, but the economy is diversifying into agriculture, telecommunications, fintech, and a vast informal sector centered on the megacity of Lagos.
The land was home to sophisticated societies, from the ancient Nok terracotta culture to the bronze-casting Kingdom of Benin and the Sokoto Caliphate, before British forces amalgamated the northern and southern protectorates into a single colony in 1914. Independence in 1960 was followed by the secession attempt and devastating Biafran civil war of the late 1960s, then decades of military rule and oil booms and busts. Since 1999 Nigeria has sustained civilian democracy despite corruption, the Boko Haram insurgency in the northeast, and regional tensions, while its culture radiates across Africa and the world.