Nigeria has re-emerged as a destination serious investors are willing to bet on again, as about 65 per cent of Nigeria’s recent foreign capital inflows came from the United Kingdom.
This is not accidental. It reflects a deliberate reset of Nigeria’s investment architecture, trade policy, and macroeconomic signalling. At the centre of this shift is a reform-driven attempt to reposition Africa’s largest economy from a reputation of potential to one of execution.
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The Federal Ministry of Industry, Trade and Investment (FMITI) has framed 2025 as a defining year, not because Nigeria suddenly became problem-free, but because the country finally began aligning policy, institutions, and investor engagement in the same direction.
According to the policy document 2025: A Defining Year for Nigeria’s Industry, Trade and Investment, the United Kingdom supplied approximately 65 per cent of recent foreign capital inflows into Nigeria.
Two deals, a $7.5 million investment in agricultural firm Babban Gona and a $40.5 million investment in industrial processor Johnvent Industries, signal a modest but powerful resurgence of UK risk capital into Nigeria’s long-neglected agriculture and manufacturing sectors. This shift reflects investors responding not to rhetoric but to clearer institutional frameworks, including the UK–Nigeria Enhanced Trade and Investment Partnership, sustained bilateral missions, improved market access, and reforms aimed at reducing the policy unpredictability that has historically deterred long-term foreign investment in these critical areas.
One of the most consequential shifts in 2025 was Nigeria’s abandonment of passive investment promotion. Instead of roadshows and memoranda of understanding that rarely converted, the government adopted a systems-driven investment facilitation model.
The initiative has yielded strong results, including $50.8 billion in signed memoranda and an exceptionally high emerging-market conversion rate of over 25%, turning $13.7 billion into active projects while building a de-risked pipeline exceeding $5 billion. This success stems from a disciplined new emphasis on structured deal origination, clear project visibility, comprehensive bankability support, and sustained investor hand-holding, an approach that elevates Nigeria’s competitiveness to align with leading investment destinations in Southeast Asia and the Middle East.
In 2025, Nigeria’s non-oil trade sector delivered a quiet but significant breakthrough, with exports reaching $12.8 billion in the first half of the year, a 21% growth that nearly doubled its target and generated a substantial ₦12 trillion trade surplus. Leading exports like cocoa derivatives, sesame seeds, shea butter, and manufactured goods such as cement and fertilisers helped reduce foreign exchange volatility and deepen industrial value chains. This shift was supported by strategic capacity-building, including the training of over 27,000 exporters and certification for hundreds of MSMEs, signalling a move away from raw commodity dependency.
Complementing this export growth, Nigeria’s Special Economic Zones (SEZs) have become crucial catalysts, generating over $500 million in export revenue and creating more than 20,000 direct jobs by offering controlled environments that bypass systemic bottlenecks. Managed by authorities like the Nigerian Export Processing Zones Authority, these zones serve as vital testing grounds for policy reforms and industrial spillovers, though their long-term success hinges on deeper integration with the domestic economy rather than operating in isolation.
Nigeria’s 2025 economy is anchored by a nominal GDP of around $285 billion, with a robust purchasing power parity (PPP) measure of approximately $2.59 trillion and a real growth rate of 3.98% as of the third quarter. The economy is overwhelmingly dominated by the non-oil sector, which accounts for over 96% of GDP, with the services sector alone contributing 56.5% and trade, which added ₦9.36 trillion in the second quarter, comprising roughly 18.3%, underscoring its critical role in driving growth while portfolio investment inflows provide crucial liquidity and market stability.
Nigeria experienced a significant resurgence in capital inflows and market confidence in 2025, with total foreign investments reaching approximately $14 billion between the first and third quarters, driven largely by foreign portfolio investment. This surge, which propelled the Nigerian Exchange to top global rankings, followed a series of painful but credible reforms, including foreign exchange liberalisation and subsidy remova,l that restored investor trust in the stability and direction of the economy.
A crucial, underreported element of this turnaround was a strategic focus on retaining and empowering domestic investors. Through initiatives like the first Domestic Investors Summit, which resolved the majority of issues within days, and direct ministerial engagement with industrial clusters, the government demonstrated a commitment to addressing the real operational bottlenecks faced by local businesses, recognising that domestic capital is the foundational vote of confidence for any economy.
What distinguishes this current phase from Nigeria’s historically cyclical industrial trajectory is a newfound alignment across policies: trade reforms now support investment, foreign exchange policy bolsters exports, and industrial strategy targets specific value chains, all amplified by proactive engagement with the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA). However, significant structural headwinds persist, including high energy and logistics costs, manufacturing undercapacity, inflation, and credit constraints for SMEs challenges underscored by sluggish manufacturing growth that highlight the urgent need for effective execution beyond policy design.
Nigeria’s strategic opportunity lies in converting recent gains into deeper, sustainable transformation channelling portfolio inflows into productive investment, scaling the success of Special Economic Zones, and leveraging sectors like digital trade and climate-smart industries. The dominance of UK capital in recent inflows is a market verdict on improved policy coherence and institutional credibility. While formidable challenges remain, 2025 marks an inflection point where Nigeria began delivering actionable structure over mere promise, shifting the critical question from attracting capital to effectively disciplining and deploying it for long-term national transformation.
