Multinationals just love coming to Nigeria

It is not all bad news for Nigeria after all. The Frontier Markets Sentiment Index, created exclusively for the Wall Street Journal by Washington DC-based advisory firm Frontier Strategy Group, has rated the Nigerian market as the most attractive to American and European multinationals.

Nigeria is used to being rated among the most corrupt countries, the most difficult places to do business, the most hostile places to be born and even the poorest countries.

But now, Nigeria is the frontier-market economy attracting the most attention from Western multinationals, the report published in Wall Street Journal said.

To her credit, Nigeria is also the biggest economy in Africa and has always ranked high on the happy countries’ list.

The sentiment index, according to the Wall Street Journal, is a based on information collected from FSG’s roughly 200 multinational clients, which include companies such as Coca-Cola KO, General Electric GE, Novartis NOVN.VX, Dell and Akzo Nobel AKZOY.

Matt Lasov, FSG’s global head of advisory and analytics, explained the index thus: “We collect data about which countries the companies are watching for potential future investment. Over time, that gives us a clear picture of their market priorities—which countries are they including in their future plans and which they are dropping.”

Two major insights are provided by the research: the “current state of sentiment” toward countries in the frontier markets and the “change in sentiment” over time.

Of the 20 countries attracting most interest from multinationals, nine are in sub-Saharan Africa, including Kenya, Ethiopia and Tanzania.

Four of the five countries with the highest positive change in sentiment are in sub-Saharan Africa, as well as seven of the top 10.

The Wall Street Journal reports that “in absolute terms, though, Nigeria is still the clear leader among the three with twice the number of companies in the index considering investing there”.