Nigeria intends to set up a mortgage finance company along the lines of the US agency Fannie Mae, according to Bloomberg, who were informed by the government's PR agency, Mercury. Details of the Nigeria Mortgage Refinance Co., which will sell bonds and provide long-term financing to mortgage lenders, as well as helping to standardise lending practices, will be announced today. It has been in the works for a while, with the World Bank's housing unit committed $300m to help establish the Nigeria Mortgage Refinance Co (Nimo Mac?) back in September. So US politicians pondering the future of their own mortgage agencies, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, should perhaps keep an eye out for emails from Nigeria officials seeking assistance. But it catches our eye in part due to the newly fashionable status of Africa's second largest economy. Ex-Goldman Sachs Economist and Bric coiner Jim O'Neill is now employed touting the Mints - Mexico, Indonesia, Nigeria and Turkey - helped by a BBC Radio 4 documentary series on the subject. Note Albert Edwards" More Irritating New Terminology aside please too Presumably building more houses will be good for Dangote Cement, responsoble for 30 per cent of the Nigerian All Share Index, but do please realise that we are about to glide swiftly past analysis of a frontier market market into the realm of interesting facts here. For instance, the entire electricity generating capacity of Nigeria, the most populous country in Africa with c170m residents, is about 4,000MW - the same as the surprisingly picturesque Drax power station in Yorkshire. Nigeria also happens to be the second largest market for Guinness Foreign Extra Stout, the 12th largest producer of crude oil, and boasts the most diverse array of butterfly's in the world. Please do point us to more interesting facts, and perhaps even some serious research, in the comments. To start you off, here is Renaissance Capital, who point out that a re-basing of Nigerian GDP is now due in mid-Febuary that they expect will show the country to actually be the continent's biggest economy last year at $405bn, vs around $355bn for South Africa. Has Nigeria ever been this interesting? A post-Abuja visit report should only take a day to write. This has taken three. We are revising up our estimate of Nigeria's GDP by 53%. Our outlook on the currency has changed. We have done some funky analysis of the budget; just like my dancing - I think it looks OK, but it might be wrong on so many levels. There are even some super-cautious paragraphs on the escalating political noise. The GDP re-basing is the biggest change of all. When this was first announced, we produced three scenarios (20%, 40%, and 60% like Ghana in 2010) for the possible up-lift to GDP. Our 40% scenario rapidly became the consensus figure. The NBS has nearly completed its work, and our new estimate is that a 45-60% up-lift is likely and we are taking 53% as the mid-point figure. We expect the data in January (delay is possible). This means Nigeria at $405bn in 2013 would be the largest economy in Africa, ahead of SA at around $370bn. We must emphasise that while per capita GDP would appear to rise from around $1,700 to $2,400, in fact the NBS is just doing a better job in measuring the output that is already happening. No one in Nigeria should suddenly find 53% more naira in their pocket. Sectors that may show the biggest upward revision range from Nollywood to IT and telecoms, while we think agriculture will shrink from around 40% of GDP to 25-30% of GDP.