🍞 Playing the long game

Rise and Shine!

Oil, move out of the way. It seems Nigeria has found a new fixation: Mining

From the CBN investing in buying locally mined gold in naira, to the government deciding to focus on using locally mined resources for manufacturing rather than exporting, this seems to be the year of digging through the dirt to find economic growth.

Nigeria has attracted over $2.6 billion in foreign investment into its mining sector in the past two years, as it tries to position itself as a serious player in the global race for critical minerals. The FG is also negotiating up to $5.7 billion in strategic investments from China’s GCL Group, as part of a push to deepen industrial capacity and reduce reliance on raw commodity exports

Why the sudden interest?

It’s partly timing. Demand for minerals like lithium, tin, and other inputs for electric vehicles and renewable energy is rising fast. Nigeria has the resources but has historically underdelivered, with mining contributing less than 1% to GDP. Now, the government says reforms like digitised licensing to crackdowns on illegal mining are making the sector more credible to investors.

The bigger play

This isn’t just about digging things out of the ground. At the Powering Africa Summit, Dele Alake made the case for regional “mining corridors” — shared infrastructure across African countries that would allow for local processing, better energy access, and smoother cross-border trade.

The idea is that instead of exporting raw minerals, Africa keeps more of the value chain. Think rail, power, and processing hubs stretching across regions, similar to projects like the Lobito Corridor.

What Nigeria is offering

To attract investors, the government is putting forward a mix of incentives and assurances:

The reality check

Interest is there, especially from U.S. institutions like the Export-Import Bank of the United States. But they’re not jumping in blindly. Naturally, they’re worried about policy consistency, political stability, and whether reforms will actually stick.

Bottom line:

Nigeria is trying to turn mining into its next big economic lever and reduce its reliance on oil. The opportunity is real, but so is the execution risk. If the reforms hold, this could be a meaningful shift. If not, it’s another case of strong headlines, weak follow-through.

🏓The EU is playing the long game: The EU is putting €288 million into Nigeria under its Global Gateway strategy, reflecting a shift from aid to more investment-style partnerships. Healthcare, agriculture (especially dairy and cocoa), digital infrastructure, and climate projects are getting the most focus. The package is part grants, part loans, meaning some of this will still land on Nigeria’s debt pile. Nigerian officials, such as the Minister of Budget and Economic Planning, Abubakar Bagudu, are framing this as validation of ongoing economic reforms. The EU, meanwhile, is trying to stay close to Nigeria for premium access to one of Africa’s largest economies. They are investing to nudge development in practical areas like local manufacturing and job creation, positioning itself to benefit from that growth later.

💰Unilever Nigeria just had a very good year: Unilever more than doubled its profit-after-tax to ₦32.2 billion in 2025. Even with rising costs, the company managed to significantly boost margins, and investors are also getting a healthy final dividend payout of ₦18.67 billion. What’s behind the glow-up? According to CEO Tobi Adeniyi, it’s all thanks to tighter operations, doubling down its biggest hitters (like Knorr, Vaseline, Close Up, Pepsodent, and Rexona), and moving faster in a tough consumer market.

🔍Nigeria is getting serious about cybersecurity: Nigeria has entered a new agreement with Finland to collaborate on digital innovation, covering everything from e-government to emerging tech, but the real headline here is cybersecurity. The deal, signed by Bosun Tijani and Jarno Syrjälä, comes at a time when cyberattacks in Nigeria are climbing fast. Nigerian organisations are now facing an average of 4,701 attacks per week, the highest on the continent, targeting sectors like government, finance, and consumer services. Finland brings experience in building digital public infrastructure and secure systems. Alongside this, the government is also working on a new cybersecurity framework that could require companies to meet minimum security spending thresholds.

Moniepoint, one of Nigeria’s most successful fintechs, is no longer satisfied with just moving money around. They now want to run your entire business while they’re at it.

Moniepoint has acquired Orda, a restaurant management platform, and is folding it into its all-in-one tool, Moniebook. Essentially, if you run a food business, Moniepoint wants to handle everything from your orders to your inventory to your payments, and eventually, your access to credit.

Why food, though?

Because the food business is lowkey one of the most powerful parts of the African economy. It’s informal, cash-heavy and enormous. The sector is worth about $50 billion across Africa, with Nigeria alone projected to hit roughly $19 billion by 2030. Also, people eat every day, which means constant transactions. For a fintech company, that’s basically a goldmine with receipts.

The problem Moniepoint is trying to solve

Most restaurants today are running on someone’s mother’s prayers and spreadsheets. Orders in one place, payments in another, inventory somewhere in a notebook. By plugging Orda into Moniebook, Moniepoint is trying to clean all that up. Now, a restaurant can track orders, manage stock, process payments, and even access loans from a single dashboard. Less chaos, more data.

And that “more data” part is where we see what’s really in it for Moniepoint.

Between the lines

By embedding itself into daily operations, Moniepoint gets a front-row seat to how businesses actually run: what they sell, when they sell it, how often they restock, and how steady their cash flow is. That kind of insight makes it much easier to decide who gets a loan, how much, and at what risk.

In other words, better data = smarter lending = more money.

Zooming out

This deal isn’t happening in isolation. It’s part of a wider consolidation wave in Nigeria’s startup scene. Everyone is trying to become a “one-stop shop”.

In just the past few months, Flutterwave acquired Mono, Paystack acquired Ladder Microfinance Bank, and Andela acquired Woven.

What does this mean for restaurants?

For food business owners, this could actually be useful. Better tools, less manual stress, and potentially easier access to financing. This is especially useful for small vendors who’ve historically been locked out of credit because they don’t have clean records.

But it also means relying more heavily on one platform to run everything. Helpful when it works, slightly stressful if it doesn’t.