Nigeria not the only economy moving in on our patch

Planning Minister Trevor Manuel said this week that there was no need for alarm at the news that Nigeria had eclipsed South Africa as the continent's biggest economy.

In many ways he is correct. The upward revision of the West African powerhouse's GDP was widely expected and was a consequence of a statistical adjustment known as rebasing, last carried out in Nigeria in 1990 instead of every five years, which is the norm.

Since then the economy of the continent's most populous nation has grown tremendously, thanks largely to rapid-fire expansion of its oil and gas, retail, finance, telecommunications and film industries.

As a result, Nigeria's economy today is 60% bigger than South Africa's.

Manuel makes the important point that our per capita domestic product is still far higher than that of Nigeria, which will face major challenges, particularly when it comes to per capita expenditure on education.

But South Africa, despite showing impressive growth during the Mandela and Mbeki years, has been expanding at a snail's pace of late, hamstrung by industrial disputes, power supply constraints and worries about our economic direction.

Yesterday, the International Monetary Fund revised down its growth forecast for South Africa to 2.3% this year and 2.7% in 2015.

This is in sharp contrast to many other African countries - such as Ghana, Botswana, Angola and Rwanda - which are growing rapidly, albeit from far lower bases.

On Monday, Senegalese President Macky Sall said his country expected to nearly double its annual growth rate to 7% by 2017 as it transforms itself into a regional transport, logistics and tourism hub.

African countries that are more business friendly than South Africa will increasingly compete with us for precious foreign investment. Unless we keep pace, our status as the ''gateway to Africa'' will be in jeopardy.