Nigeria’s corporate exodus story is now familiar, with ride-hailing app Uber’s September 2nd exit, after twelve years in the market, the latest. Recently, hypermarket giant Shoprite has wound down its stores, Procter & Gamble has shifted to an import-only model, and GlaxoSmithKline has folded its local operations into a third-party distribution arrangement.
Diageo agreed in June 2024 to sell its majority stake in Guinness Nigeria to the Tolaram group, a deal that closed the following year and ended seven decades of direct ownership. Each departure feeds a wider narrative about an economy that repels long-term foreign capital.
The narrative has a hole in it. A smaller, less-discussed group of foreign-backed companies keeps doing the opposite, writing bigger cheques for Nigeria through the recessions of 2016 and 2020, currency crises, and infrastructure gaps that gave other multinationals their rationale for exiting.
Unilever, Nigerian Breweries, Lafarge Africa and MTN Nigeria span four
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