The record $6.1 billion earned from non-oil exports in 2025 is shifting the focus of Nigeria’s trade agenda from exporting more commodities to capturing more value through local processing, manufacturing and stronger regional supply chains.
The call dominated the 10th edition of Zenith Bank’s International Trade Seminar on Non-Oil Export, held recently, as stakeholders argued that Nigeria’s next export challenge is not simply increasing volumes but building the industrial capacity to capture a larger share of the value generated before products leave the country.
The 2025 non-oil export figure, disclosed by the Nigerian Export Promotion Council (NEPC) and cited at the seminar, represented an 11.5 percent increase from $5.46 billion in 2024 and a substantial rise from $612 million recorded a decade earlier.
But the decade-long growth has sharpened a structural question for Africa’s largest economy: how much of the value embedded in its agricultural and mineral commodities is being captured domestically?
Under the theme, “Unlocking Value and Harnessing Growth,” participants at the seminar said Nigeria needs to move beyond the traditional objective of earning more foreign exchange from exports towards developing competitive domestic value chains capable of generating higher export revenues, jobs and industrial investment.
Adaora Umeoji, group managing director/chief executive officer of Zenith Bank, said Nigeria needed to accelerate the transition towards exporting finished and processed products.
“Our theme, ‘Unlocking Value and Harnessing Growth’, is not just a slogan. It speaks to the opportunities before us and the need to translate our collective efforts into sustainable economic value,” she said.
Umeoji said Zenith Bank’s work with the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) Secretariat, including the development of the SMARTAfCFTA portal, and its integration with the Pan-African Payment and Settlement System (PAPSS) were aimed at reducing barriers confronting businesses seeking to trade across African markets.
“Wherever our exporters need to reach, Zenith Bank will reach with them,” she said.
Jumoke Oduwole, minister of industry, trade and investment, put the challenge more directly, arguing that Nigeria should measure export success by the value retained domestically rather than simply by the volume shipped abroad.
“The question before us now is not simply how to export more, but how to retain more value in Nigeria from everything we export,” Oduwole said.
She said the government’s focus was to produce and process more competitively in Nigeria, connect businesses to larger markets and ensure that financing, infrastructure and trade systems enable companies to scale.
The minister, who said she assumed the chairmanship of the AfCFTA council of ministers in July, said the continental trade agreement presents Nigerian companies with access to a market of more than 1.4 billion people and approximately $3.4 trillion in GDP.
However, she cautioned that market access alone would not guarantee export success.
Nigerian companies, she said, must invest in productivity, quality and skills if they are to compete effectively in intra-African trade.
Oduwole also urged financial institutions to move beyond financing individual export transactions towards financing the broader capacity required to export, including production, quality upgrades and expansion.
The argument comes as the AfCFTA increasingly shifts attention from negotiating market-access rules to enabling businesses to actually trade under the agreement.
Wamkele Mene, secretary-general of the AfCFTA Secretariat, said the private sector would determine whether the continental agreement delivers its intended economic transformation.
“The success of the AfCFTA will ultimately be measured not by how many protocols and legal instruments have been signed, but by the extent to which our private sector can leverage the AfCFTA to access new markets, scale their investment and scale their productive capacity to create jobs across the continent,” Mene said.
The emphasis on value addition reflects a longstanding weakness in Nigeria’s export structure, where the country remains heavily dependent on commodities while importing significant quantities of processed and manufactured goods.
Patricia Poku-Diaby, founder and executive chair of Plot Enterprise Ghana Limited, said African economies needed to redefine competitiveness around transformation rather than the availability of natural resources.
“The future of our economy will not be determined simply by what we grow or what we mine, but by what we transform,” she said.
Poku-Diaby said African businesses needed to progress from being suppliers of raw materials to becoming processors, manufacturers, exporters and owners of strong African brands.
The same theme featured in remarks from the United Kingdom, with Florence Eshalomi, UK Minister of State at the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, represented by Mujina Kaindama, Head of Trade Policy for UK Business, Innovation, Science and Trade.
Eshalomi said the Nigeria-UK trade relationship had significant room for expansion, particularly if Nigerian businesses could move further up the value chain by processing raw materials and developing branded, higher-value agricultural and manufactured products.
While stakeholders agreed on the opportunity, discussions at the seminar highlighted persistent operational constraints that could limit Nigeria’s ability to translate export ambitions into higher-value trade.
Public-sector representatives from the Nigerian Export-Import Bank, Nigeria Customs Service, Nigerian Ports Authority, Central Bank of Nigeria and Nigerian Export Promotion Council committed to addressing challenges around trade facilitation, customs processes, logistics, export financing and advocacy.
For exporters, these issues are not peripheral to competitiveness.
The private-sector panel identified trade barriers, product certification, market intelligence, competitiveness and structured financing among the factors determining whether Nigerian companies can successfully scale their exports.
Benedict Oramah, Chair of the board of directors of the Fund for Export Development in Africa (FEDA) and immediate past president and chairman of Afreximbank, argued that the continent needed to develop greater capacity to finance its own trade and industries.
He said the global economy was undergoing significant disruption but argued that the changes also created an opportunity for Africa to build stronger internal demand, participate more effectively in global supply chains and develop its own markets.
Zenith Bank launched the International Trade Seminar on Non-Oil Export in 2015, making the 2026 edition a decade-long effort to keep export diversification at the centre of the national economic conversation.
The bank said its support for the sector has extended beyond dialogue to financing, incentives and practical assistance aimed at opening market opportunities for exporters.
The 2026 seminar attracted participants from 97 countries, with the event streamed across Zoom, YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, X and TikTok.
The significance of the 10th edition, however, lay less in the growth of Nigeria’s export headline and more in the challenge now facing policymakers and businesses: converting that growth into an industrial base capable of retaining a significantly larger share of export value.
With non-oil exports having multiplied from $612 million a decade ago to $6.1 billion in 2025, the next phase of Nigeria’s diversification drive will increasingly be judged by what happens between the farm, mine or factory gate and the international market.
For the stakeholders gathered at the Zenith Bank seminar, that means processing more at home, building stronger Nigerian and African brands, financing productive capacity and making it easier and cheaper for businesses to move goods across borders.
The objective, ultimately, is to ensure that Nigeria does not merely export more, but earns more from what it exports.
