Nigeria's intra-African trade reached $9.02 billion in 2025, up from $7.47 billion the year before, according to the African Trade Report 2026 published by Afreximbank.

The figure arrives as Nigerian policymakers are under pressure to demonstrate that AfCFTA membership is producing measurable economic returns, not just diplomatic commitments. A 21 percent single-year increase in continental trade is the most concrete evidence yet that structural changes enacted in 2025 are moving goods across borders. But the data also contains a structural problem that the headline number obscures.

Crude oil remained the dominant component of Nigeria's exports to African markets, according to the Afreximbank report. The document does not break out what share of the $9.02 billion crude oil accounts for, which means the growth figure cannot yet be read as evidence of manufacturing expansion or agricultural export development. A surge in oil shipments to African buyers, driven by price or routing changes, would produce the same 21 percent increase as a genuine diversification of Nigeria's export base. Afreximbank has not published that disaggregated breakdown in the summary reviewed for this report.

What Actually Changed in 2025

The report identifies two policy changes as primary drivers of the increase. The first was the gazetting of Nigeria's Provisional Schedule of Tariff Concessions in April 2025. That document, once published in Nigeria's official gazette, formally activated preferential tariff treatment for Nigerian goods in AfCFTA member states, and extended reciprocal access to African imports entering Nigeria. Before gazetting, Nigerian exporters could not legally claim AfCFTA preferential rates at partner country borders, even though Nigeria had ratified the agreement years earlier. The April 2025 gazette filing closed that gap.

The second change was operational. The report references new logistics infrastructure, specifically a dedicated air cargo corridor linking Nigeria to East and Southern African markets, as a factor in reducing transportation costs for Nigerian exporters. The corridor is not described in further detail in the Afreximbank summary, and the agency or private operator responsible for establishing it is not named in the source document.

Together, these two developments lowered two distinct types of trade friction simultaneously: tariff costs at destination markets, and physical shipping costs from origin. That combination, the report argues, contributed to the $1.55 billion increase in trade value recorded between 2024 and 2025.

The Export Basket

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Beyond crude oil, the Afreximbank report lists the following as key Nigerian exports to African markets in 2025: chemicals, plastics, rubber products, processed agricultural goods, food products, urea, and cement. These categories are described in the report as "non-oil manufactured goods" and "processed agricultural goods and foodstuffs." The report does not assign individual dollar values to each category, so the relative weight of, say, cement exports versus chemical shipments within the non-oil total is not established in the current public record.

Urea is worth examining separately. Nigeria's Dangote Fertiliser plant, which came into full commercial operation in 2022 and has a stated annual capacity of 3 million metric tonnes, is the largest single-train urea plant in the world by design capacity. Its output was always intended for African and global export markets. If urea shipments to African buyers increased materially in 2025, that alone could account for a meaningful share of the trade growth without requiring broader diversification across the export base. The Afreximbank report does not isolate fertiliser exports as a line item.

Nigeria's Position Within Africa

The report positions Nigeria "among Africa's leading intra-African trading nations," a characterisation that requires context. Africa's largest intra-continental traders by value have historically included South Africa, Egypt, and Morocco, all of which have more diversified manufacturing bases and longer histories of regional trade integration than Nigeria. Whether Nigeria has closed the gap with those countries, or whether the 21 percent increase reflects a low base effect rather than structural catch-up, is a question the report's summary does not resolve.

West Africa as a regional bloc presents a more immediate comparison. Nigeria's Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) neighbours are its most natural trading partners by geography, and several are already AfCFTA signatories. The report references Nigeria's trade growth in the context of West Africa specifically, suggesting the continental figure is weighted toward regional partners rather than distributed evenly across all 54 AfCFTA member states. That geographic concentration is not confirmed in the current summary, but it is the more plausible reading of the data.

What the Numbers Do Not Settle

The 21 percent growth figure is a value measure, not a volume measure. Currency movements, commodity price shifts, and changes in the composition of trade can all inflate or deflate value-based trade statistics without corresponding changes in the actual quantity of goods crossing borders. The Afreximbank report does not include a volume-adjusted trade index for Nigeria in the summary reviewed for this report.

The report also does not address Nigeria's trade deficit or surplus position with African partners. Total trade of $9.02 billion combines both exports and imports. If Nigeria's African imports grew faster than its exports, the country could have recorded a wider trade deficit with the continent even as headline trade volume rose. That distinction matters for any policy assessment of whether AfCFTA is generating net export revenue for Nigeria or primarily opening the domestic market to African goods.

Afreximbank is scheduled to present the full African Trade Report 2026 at its annual general meeting. The complete dataset, including country-level trade balances, commodity-disaggregated export figures, and volume indices, will determine whether the $9.02 billion figure represents the diversification story Nigerian trade officials are now citing, or a cruder expansion driven primarily by oil and fertiliser shipments to nearby markets. That full report has not been publicly released as of June 24, 2026.