What does Nigeria produce and export?

Oil was found at Oloibiri in the Niger Delta in 1956, and by the early 1970s it had reorganized the whole economy. Delta crude is light and low in sulfur, easy to refine into gasoline and diesel, and it loads from offshore terminals into vessels bound for Europe, India and the Americas. Nigeria held 3.1% of world crude oil export value in 2024 (CEPII BACI). Production has been held below capacity for years by pipeline sabotage and organized oil theft in the delta creeks, and by underinvestment in the aging joint ventures that operate the onshore fields. Gas produced with the oil was flared for decades until export capacity was built at Bonny in 1999; Nigeria took 2.2% of world natural gas export value in 2024 (CEPII BACI).

The paradox of the oil economy is refining. For most of the last forty years Nigeria exported crude and imported the gasoline it burned, because its state refineries ran far below nameplate capacity, and a fuel subsidy that made imported gasoline cheap was among the largest single items in the federal budget. Building large-scale refining near Lagos from 2024 was an attempt to close that loop.

Before oil, the export list was agricultural, and the crops did not disappear so much as stop leaving. Nigeria was the leading palm oil exporter in the world in the 1950s; it grows 1.8% of world palm oil production in 2023 (FAOSTAT) and consumes essentially all of it, having lost the export trade to Southeast Asian plantations while an oil-inflated currency made its own farm exports uncompetitive. The groundnut trade of the northern savanna went the same way, though the region still produced 7.5% of the world's peanuts in 2024 (FAOSTAT) and 10% of its sorghum in 2024 (FAOSTAT), eaten at home. Cocoa from the southwestern forest belt is the one export crop that survived the transition, sold by private buyers since the state marketing boards were abolished in 1986: 6.7% of world production in 2024 (FAOSTAT) and 12% of world cocoa export value in 2024 (CEPII BACI). Bread and pasta demand in the cities, which no domestic crop can meet, explains 3.7% of world wheat import value in 2024 (CEPII BACI).