Nigeria’s trade with other African countries grew from $7.47 billion to $9.02 billion in 2025, with the Dangote Petroleum Refinery playing a central role in that expansion by enabling Nigeria to export refined petroleum products to regional markets including Cameroon, Ghana, and Togo for the first time at meaningful scale, according to Afreximbank’s African Trade Report 2026.
The report said Nigeria had intensified its focus on intra-African trade by leveraging the African Continental Free Trade Area to expand market access and lower costs for domestic exporters, with the April 2025 gazetting of Nigeria’s Provisional Schedule of Tariff Concessions enabling Nigerian goods to qualify for preferential tariffs across AfCFTA member states while granting reciprocal access to African imports.
Beyond petroleum, Nigeria’s key African exports included chemicals, plastics, rubber products, processed agricultural goods, urea, and cement. The report identified new logistics initiatives, including a dedicated air cargo corridor to East and Southern Africa, as reducing transportation costs and improving the competitiveness of Nigerian exports across the continent.
The broader African picture in the report showed real GDP growth accelerating from 3.4 percent in 2024 to 4.5 percent in 2025, outpacing global growth, while aggregate inflation moderated from 21.6 percent to 13.1 percent, merchandise trade expanded 6.1 percent to approximately $1.5 trillion, and intra-African trade grew 5.5 percent to about $213.8 billion. The report estimated West Africa’s unrealized intra-African export potential at slightly more than $7 billion out of a total export potential of approximately $13 billion, identifying processed foods, fish and shellfish, vegetable oils, and precious metals as the categories with the largest gaps between capacity and actual performance.
