7 economic events that defined the year 2022

No one expected the painful jabs from 2022. At best, many only looked forward to the Covid-19 vaccine shots.

Interestingly, the latest data from the World Health Organisation (WHO) estimates that 92 million vaccines have been administered in Nigeria, with only 51 million people fully vaccinated (26% of the total population). That's a far cry from late 2021 when only eight million Nigerians had been partially vaccinated. Still, this is nowhere near countries like the US and the UK, where over 60% of their population is fully vaccinated.
 

Vaccine inequity aside, several important events took place this year, but Russia’s invasion of Ukraine dominated headlines. As you will see in the rest of today’s article, this event has had second-order effects that reverberated throughout 2022. Based on the invasion (as well as China's zero Covid lockdown policies and weak post-pandemic growth), the International Monetary Fund (IMF) revised its global growth forecast downwards to 3.2% from its earlier prediction of 4.4% in January.

2022 was also the year of the war on inflation, marking an end to zero and low-interest rates, which ushered in increased borrowing costs. Inflation in advanced economies like the UK, the US, and the EU are at 40-year highs, and global central banks have hiked rates by over 300 basis points.

In Nigeria, 2022 was also defined by the campaign kick-off for the 2023 general elections and a naira redesign policy that became tied up with the currency reaching one of its all-time lows.

This article tells the story of Nigeria in 2022 in typical Stears fashion—with data and charts.

We kick off with a short story