Blue Economy and Unemployment in Nigeria

This study empirically investigates the impact of the blue economy on economic development in Nigeria spanning 1990–2024, with emphasis on sustainable resource utilization and inclusive growth. The blue economy was proxied by fishery production, aquaculture production, renewable freshwater resources, marine transportation, and marine tourism, while gross domestic product per capita and the poverty rate were employed as measures of economic development. Time-series data sourced from the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) Statistical Bulletin and the World Bank’s World Development Indicators (WDI) were analyzed using the Augmented Dickey-Fuller (ADF) test for stationarity and the Auto-Regressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) bounds testing model to explore short- and long-run relationships among variables. The findings reveal that the blue economy significantly influences Nigeria’s development path in the long run. Specifically, aquaculture production exhibited a significant but negative relationship with unemployment, implying structural inefficiencies and limited absorptive capacity in the sector. Conversely, renewable freshwater resources and marine tourism demonstrated positive and significant impacts on unemployment reduction, reflecting their strong potential for job creation, foreign exchange earnings, and rural empowerment. However, fishery production and marine transportation recorded insignificant long-run effects, indicating untapped potential constrained by infrastructure and governance bottlenecks. The study concludes that optimizing Nigeria’s blue-economy sectors is critical for achieving macroeconomic stability, employment generation, and sustainable development. It recommends that the Federal Ministry of Marine and Blue Economy, in collaboration with the Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development, NIMASA, and the Nigerian Ports Authority, implement innovation-driven, climate-resilient, and inclusive maritime policies aligned with Sustainable Development Goals (SDG 8 and SDG 14) to unlock Nigeria’s aquatic wealth and accelerate long-term economic transformation.