Top players in the Nigeria energy sector will converge on Monday, February 9 at the Nigeria Local Content African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) Energy Summit 2026.
The Nigerian Content Development and Monitoring Board has thus outlined a practical framework for positioning Nigeria’s energy sector to access the AfCFTA following a strategic webinar focused on meeting rules-of-origin requirements for continental trade.
The board held a pre-conference webinar at the weekend ahead of the energy summit.
The engagement was attended by stakeholders from the oil and gas, power and renewable energy sectors.
The stakeholders addressed how Nigerian products and services can qualify for preferential market access across 54 African countries with a combined gross domestic product of $3.4tn and a population of about 1.4 billion people.
Titled: “Meeting AfCFTA Origin Requirements in Energy Trade,” the webinar focused on one of the major barriers facing Nigerian exporters under AfCFTA, structuring production and operations to meet origin requirements that determine eligibility for duty-free and preferential trade.
Speaking during the session, a communications analyst, Joseph Nwokedi, representing the acting National Coordinator of Nigeria’s AfCFTA Coordination Office, Mrs. Patience Okala, stressed the central role of energy in Africa’s economic integration under AfCFTA.
He urged Nigerian companies to shift their focus from the domestic market of about 200 million people to the wider continental market of 1.4 billion consumers.
“Without energy, there’s no industrialization. Without energy, regional value chains remain aspirational,” Nwokedi said.
“With AfCFTA, energy transforms from a domestic infrastructure issue into a tradable, investable and exportable sector within an integrated African market.”
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He noted that even one per cent penetration of the African market translates to about 14m consumers, underscoring the scale of opportunity available to Nigerian energy firms.
The webinar identified four key pathways through which Nigeria’s energy sector can participate in AfCFTA-enabled trade.
First, Nigeria’s Electricity Act of 2023 allows independent power producers to supply electricity directly to industrial clusters and export processing zones, positioning power generation as a foundation for trade-ready manufacturing.
Secondly, the country has submitted commitments under AfCFTA that enable professionals such as engineers, electricians, geophysicists and energy auditors to export services across Africa, subject to mutual recognition of qualifications.
Thirdly, refined petroleum products, gas derivatives, electricity and renewable energy components can be traded across borders under preferential tariffs, provided they meet AfCFTA rules of origin.
Lastly, AfCFTA’s investment protocol, combined with recent domestic reforms, including the presidential directives on investment incentives for 2024–2025, strengthens Nigeria’s credibility for attracting cross-border investments in power generation, transmission, renewable energy and storage infrastructure.
