Internet Penetration, Institutional Quality and Bilateral Trade between Nigeria and China
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.64229/h3nw5e05Keywords:
Internet penetration, Institutional quality, Bilateral trade, Gravity model, Nigeria-China trade, GovernanceAbstract
This paper examines whether internet penetration (INT) is associated with Nigeria-China bilateral trade and whether institutional quality is separately associated with bilateral trade relations, using an augmented gravity framework and annual data for 2015-2025. The analysis uses 52 country-year observations (26 per country) a small sample that limits statistical power and is treated throughout as a key limitation of the study, governance measures from the six World Governance Indicators (WGI), UN Comtrade mirror statistics for trade, and Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) subscriber data for digital connectivity. The manuscript was revised in 2026 using full-year 2025 data that had already been released by NCC and UN Comtrade at the time of writing; the 2025 observations are therefore treated as the final observed year in the data-set rather than as forecasts. Panel and country-dis-aggregated regressions show a positive and statistically significant association between INT and bilateral trade. Control of Corruption is also positively associated with trade, while Rule of Law and Regulatory Quality have negative coefficients that are interpreted cautiously because the six WGI indicators are closely correlated. The results are sensitive to whether Chinese- or Nigerian-reported trade values are used, underscoring the importance of mirror-statistics discrepancies and trade-data quality. Given the short annual panel and the small sample, the estimates should be interpreted as conditional associations rather than causal effects or precisely estimated long-run parameters. The paper concludes that digital infrastructure and governance reform should be pursued as complementary policy priorities and that improved trade-data systems are essential for reliable measurement of Nigeria-China trade.References
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Copyright (c) 2026 David Igbadoo Anum, Ilemona Adofu, Obadiah Jonathan Gimba (Author)
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