Nigeria’s growth ambition: Connecting global capital and local values

Nigeria’s growth ambition: Connecting global capital and local values

Nigeria’s $1 trillion economic goal by 2030 is ambitious but achievable only if foreign capital is deliberately linked to domestic value creation rather than treated as an end in itself; BENJAMIN UMUTEME writes.

The Renewed Hope Development Plan (2026-2030) explicitly targets a GDP of $1 trillion by 2030, along with 21 million new jobs and lifting 35 million people out of poverty. Current estimates place Nigeria’s GDP between $291 billion and $375 billion, meaning the economy will need to triple or quadruple in nominal terms within four years.

Former Finance Minister Doris Uzoka-Anite had said this would require supporting annual GDP growth of 10-12%, with consumption rising to $166 billion and investment to $72 billion a year.

Experts say Nigeria’s goal of building a trillion-dollar economy by 2030 is progressing effectively as the country is attracting more foreign money than it has in recent years.

Data released by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) showed that total capital importation into Nigeria reached $10.37 billion in the first quarter of 2026, an increase of 83.83 percent from the $5.64 billion recorded in the corresponding period of 2025 and a 60.97 percent increase from the $6.44 billion recorded in the fourth quarter of last year.

On paper, it’s the kind of number that supports the federal government’s growth ambition. Below, the composition tells a different story.

Portfolio investment, the money that moves in and out of stocks, bonds and money market instruments, accounted for $9.86 billion of the total, or 95.09%. Foreign direct investment (FDI), the category typically tied to new plants, infrastructure and permanent jobs, contributed just $135.08 million, or 1.3%.

At a sector level, the banking sector alone absorbed 7.55 billion dollars, or 72.79% of everything that came in, while production and the manufacturing industry took home 152.27 million dollars. The UK remained the largest source of capital, providing $5.08 billion, or 49% of the total.

The scheme matters because it is at the heart of the debate that is shaping Nigeria’s growth strategy: How can a country attract the scale of capital required by a trillion-dollar economy, without simply becoming a conduit for hot money that can leave as quickly as it arrived?

A question of ownership

Political economist Adefolarin Olamilekan in a chat with Project weekendargued that the debate should not be framed as a choice between openness and protectionism. “While global capital is good, it is the country that will decide what it wants to do with it,” he said, adding that the capital used should be harmonized with local content for local value addition.

According to Olamilekan, the emphasis on local values ​​should not be read as resistance to globalization, but as “Nigeria asserting its ability to determine what kind of capital it wants, where that capital goes, and how its benefits are distributed.

“Foreign capital remains important, for technology, infrastructure, skills, productivity and access to global markets, but it should complement rather than replace domestic production capacity.”

H said this is why “Nigeria needs an investment framework that explicitly links foreign investment to local value addition, Nigerian participation, technology transfer, skills development, job creation and export capacity, an approach which he said is largely consistent with the government’s stated policy of linking investment incentives to local content and value addition in the country.”

He incorporated it into President Bola Tinubu’s Renewed Hope Development Plan, which identifies diversification, human capital development and stronger subnational economies as pillars of the trillion-dollar ambition.

Capital management

Once again, Olamilekan was blunt about what the last three years have demonstrated: that economic policy alone will not move the needle unless government steps up its ability to strategically manage the capital it attracts.

He also called for major foreign-funded projects to carry measurable obligations in terms of Nigerian content, vendor development programs and technology transfer mechanisms.

He argued that Nigeria must have sufficient productive, technological, fiscal and institutional capacity to negotiate with global capital from a position of national interest, anchored on bankable projects in agriculture, manufacturing, energy, logistics and digital infrastructure sectors.

Looking ahead, Olamilekan said the urgent task is to build a national value capture framework that ensures investments translate into productive capacity rather than mere financial returns for investors.

He pointed to the ongoing coordination between the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) and the Ministry of Finance as a positive sign, which could more closely link fiscal and monetary policy to industrial policy, trade policy, investment regulation and local content institutions, and support more transparent monitoring of how investment incentives translate into actual economic outcomes.

The broader goal, the economist said, is for global capital to become a partner in building Nigeria’s productive power, moving the country from a market that merely receives capital to an economy that captures value, develops capabilities and exports competitively.

Reaching $1 trillion by 2030, he stressed, should represent a structural transformation, not simply an increase in GDP.

Receive capital and acquire value

This distinction between receiving capital and acquiring value is visible in the recent story of foreign direct investment in Nigeria. The country returned to Africa’s top five FDI destinations this year on the back of around $4 billion in inflows, double the previous year’s figure, and a recovery that the Center for the Promotion of Private Enterprise (CPPE) has linked directly to reforms in the oil and gas sector.

CPPE chief executive Muda Yusuf said the current administration’s reforms, including new incentives for upstream investment and greater security over oil and gas assets, had helped restore investor confidence, aided by a more predictable policy environment following the Petroleum Industry Act.

Yusuf, however, was equally clear about where the gap remains: Foreign direct investment in the broader, non-oil economy, particularly in manufacturing and agriculture, has lagged. These are the sectors, he noted, “where foreign investment delivers the strongest development outcomes, through job creation, local supply chain integration and broader multiplier effects.”

This assessment is in line with capital import data from the first quarter of 2026: although headline inflows increased, the share of the manufacturing sector remained marginal alongside the dominance of the banking sector.

NBS data showed real GDP growth accelerated to 4.43% in the second quarter of 2026, the strongest quarterly pace in five years, from 3.89% in the first quarter, with contributions from oil production, agriculture, construction, trade, financial services, real estate and refining. Non-oil GDP grew by 4.31%.

But the CPPE continues to stress that macroeconomic stability is a foundation rather than an outcome in itself, insisting that the real test is whether stronger numbers translate into cheaper food, more jobs, affordable credit, reliable electricity and greater purchasing power for ordinary Nigerians—the same translation problem that Olamilekan’s value capture argument aims to solve.

The missing link

An economist, Dr Aliyu Ilias, said Nigeria’s ability to productively absorb global capital depends first and foremost on its human capital and innovation base.

Speaking to this newspaper, Ilias highlighted Nigeria’s position as home to two of Africa’s tech unicorns as evidence of the underlying potential, which he said the country is not yet fully positioned to exploit on a large scale.

According to Ilias, Nigeria’s size, its young population and its presence in West Africa and the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA), give it a natural right to capital movement through platforms such as the UN General Assembly and the BRICS bloc.

“Converting that into actual investment,” he said, “requires deliberate investments in human capital, technological skills, creative industries, and production and manufacturing capabilities.”

He identified two additional constraints that he believes will determine whether that potential is realized.

“The first is access to capital for small businesses. The second is energy security, which covers not only stable and affordable electricity, but also reliable and affordable supply of petrol and diesel.”

His recipe reflects Olamilekan’s available energy, available and affordable capital and an environment conducive to innovation, coupled with greater security, as conditions under which global capital can be attracted on terms that build rather than simply finance Nigeria’s economy.

Institutional architecture

The data and expert comments point in the same direction. Nigeria is attracting more capital than it has in years, but the composition, heavily oriented towards short-term portfolio flows and concentrated in the banking sector, still falls short of the kind of productive investment and technology transfer required by the $1 trillion target.

Closing this gap, experts say, will depend less on the scale of inflows and more on Nigeria’s ability to build the institutional architecture, energy infrastructure, human capital and negotiation capacity to convert global capital into local value, jobs, exports and productive capacity that survive any single investment cycle.