How Africa’s Export Model Is Sabotaging Its Own Industrialisation
Nigeria holds over 200 trillion cubic feet of proven natural gas reserves, enough to power a continent. Yet its citizens sit in darkness, its factories run on diesel, and its neighbours inch closer to economic collapse for want of the very resource buried beneath their feet. This is not misfortune. It is policy.
That damning conclusion sat at the centre of a ministerial roundtable jointly convened by Nigeria’s Decade of Gas Initiative and the World Bank in Abuja, where energy ministers from across West Africa confronted a crisis hiding in plain sight. The question posed was blunt: who is Africa’s gas actually serving?
The data provides an uncomfortable answer. While nearly 46 per cent of utilised gas was exported on average, only about 27 per cent was supplied to Nigeria’s domestic market, according to analysis of data from the Nigerian Upstream Petroleum Regulatory Commission (NUPRC). Total gas production fell from 233,961.47 MMSCF in January to 212,615.22 MMSCF in February 2026, a 9.1 per cent drop, while domestic gas supply declined from 62,944.93 MMSCF to 52,300.45 MMSCF over the same period, a 16.9 per cent decrease. Meanwhile, Nigeria exported a total of 942,743 MMSCF out of 2,706,014 MMSCF of total gas produced in 2025.
The consequences stretch far beyond Nigeria’s borders. Benin’s Minister of Energy, Kègnidé Paulin, told the roundtable that his country currently receives just 27 million standard cubic feet per day through the West African Gas Pipeline, while projected national demand by 2030 stands at 153 mmscfd, a deficit of 126 mmscfd or 82 per cent of required supply. The country’s flagship Glo-Djigbé Industrial Zone alone requires 66 mmscfd to function. “A matter of urgency requiring immediate action,” Paulin said, warning that the shortfall threatens to render an entire industrial zone a monument to foreseeable failure.
Togo’s Energy Minister, Robert Eklo, confirmed that his country’s electricity grid is “heavily dependent on gas supply through the West African Gas Pipeline,” with supply meeting only a fraction of demand. The result, he told the roundtable, is “higher costs, increased emissions, and operational disruptions.” When the grid fails, industry reaches for diesel, a fuel that costs three to five times more per kilowatt-hour than gas-fired electricity and one that has systematically hollowed out manufacturing competitiveness across the region. Nigeria’s Manufacturers’ Association confirmed that at least N1.2 trillion was spent on alternative energy last year alone.
The Coordinator of Nigeria’s Decade of Gas, Ed Ebung, acknowledged “infrastructure deficits, pricing inefficiencies, and market structure constraints” as compounding barriers that prevent domestic gas supply from meeting demand. The former Chief Executive of the NMDPRA, Saidu Aliyu Mohammed, called for “transparent and competitive pricing frameworks that reflect regional realities,” a recognition that existing pricing architecture actively discourages domestic industrial supply in favour of export revenue.
NUPRC Chief Executive Oritsemeyiwa Eyesan framed the required shift as moving from “resource control to resource optimisation,” acknowledging that controlling a resource and deriving economic value from it domestically are fundamentally different things. The World Bank’s Justin Beleoken was equally direct: “Financing alone is insufficient without strong institutions, coordinated policies, and actionable frameworks.”
Three structural reforms emerged from stakeholders as non-negotiable prerequisites. First, domestic pricing must be restructured to make industrial gas supply commercially viable. Second, regulatory fragmentation across borders must be resolved through a regional coordination body, with enforceable offtake agreements and functional cross-border dispute resolution mechanisms. Third, a $22 billion infrastructure gap covering the Nigeria-Morocco Gas Pipeline, mini-LNG terminals, virtual pipeline networks, and regasification facilities must be treated as a capital investment priority, not a budget aspiration.
Gas production increased from 6.8 billion ft3/d in 2023 to 7.5 billion ft3/d in 2025, confirming that the problem is not a shortage of gas. It is a shortage of will to redirect it.