I still can’t believe I beat Andrie with an answer. 🙂
> library(reshape)
> my.df <- read.table(text = "Country 2001 2002 2003
+ Nigeria 1 2 3
+ UK 2 NA 1", header = TRUE)
> my.result <- melt(my.df, id = c("Country"))
> my.result[order(my.result$Country),]
Country variable value
1 Nigeria X2001 1
3 Nigeria X2002 2
5 Nigeria X2003 3
2 UK X2001 2
4 UK X2002 NA
6 UK X2003 1