Financing Nigeria’s Next Industrial Chapter
Nigeria’s growth story is being written by its businesses, from manufacturing plants scaling up production to agile SMEs powering the country’s tech hubs. But turning that ambition into industrial output has always come up against the same obstacle: access to long-term finance.
As Nigeria’s premier development finance institution, the Bank of Industry (BOI) exists to close that gap. BOI’s mandate is to provide long-term financing that helps Nigerian businesses scale, compete globally, and create jobs, but delivering that at scale requires a sustainable, sizeable pool of capital.
Why the BOI Development Bond
For many Nigerian entrepreneurs, particularly MSMEs, the high cost of borrowing is the single biggest barrier between an idea and a fully scaled business. The BOI Development Bond was introduced to close that gap: a market-based instrument, structured in line with international best practice, that mobilizes capital from the domestic market and channels it directly into BOI’s operations and into priority sectors of the Nigerian economy.
For investors, it offers access to a credible, highly rated issuer. For the real economy, it means more Nigerian manufacturers get the patient capital they need to build, expand, and employ.
Real Businesses, Real Impact
The clearest evidence of the bond’s impact is on the factory floor. A few of BOI’s customers:
- Henry & Henry Limited: Began in spare parts and expanded into plastic PVC, bank card, and SIM card production. New robotic machinery funded through BOI has roughly halved production costs.
- SecureID Group (Kofo Akinkugbe, Founder/CEO): One of Africa’s leading smart card manufacturers, serving Nigeria’s banking, telecoms, and public sectors with debit/credit cards, SIM cards, national ID cards, driver’s licenses, and more. Akinkugbe describes BOI as more than a financier; a genuine stakeholder in the company’s long-term vision.
- A tubular battery manufacturer: Nigeria’s first indigenous producer in its category, built on 95% local input since 2016. With the cost of capital as its biggest structural challenge, BOI financing has let the company compete directly with imported alternatives.
- Blackhorse Logistics / Terra Oil Mills (Muhammad Sani): Grew from a logistics company into full-scale rice milling, creating more than 250 direct jobs and over 1,000 indirect jobs. More than half of that expansion was financed through the BOI Development Bond, the first instrument of its kind issued by any Nigerian DFI. Sani notes that growth which would normally take a decade was achieved in roughly two and a half years with BOI’s support.
Mobilizing Capital, Powering Industry, Transforming Lives
The BOI Development Bond is a practical answer to one of Nigerian industry’s oldest constraints: the cost and availability of long-term capital. By mobilizing domestic capital markets, BOI is turning that finance directly into factories, jobs, and import-substituting production across the country.