On Nov. 27, 2014 Nigeria and Angola were among the 12- member Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) that voted with their feet at a Vienna meeting to keep their oil output unchanged despite a 40 percent fall in its price on the global market in just five months.

The two Nation are the top crude oil producers in Africa with a combined output of over 4.7 million barrels per day. Their the economic stability of these countries is almost entirely tied to their oil exports and the decision to keep their output steady as prices fell has come back to haunt them.

In a budget document seen by Reuters, the Nigerian Treasury has been forces to cut its infrastructure spending by more than half to 387 billion naira ($2 billion), which is just 8.9 percent of the total 4.36 trillion naira the government plans to spend this year.

In comparison, the largest economy in Africa spent 23.7 percent of its 2014 budget on capital expenditures.

“The capex was severely affected by the huge reduction in revenue,” Budget office director general Bright Okogu told Reuters, adding that it was easier to wield the axe on infrastructure projects than other recurrent expenses.

Oil at six-year low

“You cannot reduce staff numbers overnight.”

Nigeria’s benchmark oil price for this year’s budget is set at $65 a barrel, a figure the finance ministry Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala says will not be changed again despite crude falling as low as $45 a barrel in January.

The benchmark oil price, that is used to gauges the amount of foreign reserves the west African nation need to keep was changed twice in the last quarter of the last year, from $78 to $73 and finally to $65, The Guardian reported.

On the other hand, Angola, the second largest oil producer on the continent, cuts its benchmark to $40 a barrel from $81, which slashed over $41 billion in spending from its budget and might force it to slush major infrastructure projects and social spending.

Oil accounts for about half of Angola’s gross domestic product (GDP), 80% of tax revenue and 90% of export earnings, a Reuters report said.

With the price of crude oil at a six-year low, even other smaller African oil producers like Libya, Algeria and Equatorial Guinea are faced growing fiscal challenges because of their overdependence on oil revenue.