*Commits $280m in first year of operations
Nume Ekeghe
The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) yesterday announced plans to invest at least $1.5 billion in Nigeria over the next three years, following the country’s admission as a shareholder of the multilateral lender in July 2025.
The bank also disclosed that it had already committed $280 million to investments in Nigeria within its first year of operations.
The lender further said Nigeria’s power sector presents both one of the country’s biggest development challenges and one of its largest investment opportunities, pointing out that resolving longstanding electricity constraints would reduce operating costs for businesses, improve productivity and unlock greater private sector investment across the economy.
The Managing Director, Sub Saharan Africa (SSA), EBRD, Heike Harmgart, disclosed this during a media chat following the opening of the European bank’s Lagos office, its first in SSA.
She reiterated that EBRD was encouraged by the pace of opportunities in Nigeria and expected investments to accelerate as its local operations expand.
She explained that Nigeria only became eligible for EBRD financing after becoming a shareholder in July 2025 and a country of operations in October of the same year.
Harmgart said: “Nigeria only became a shareholder of the EBRD last July and became a country of operations last October. So, we can only invest and start developing projects in Nigeria since October 2025. Before October 2025, we could not work in Nigeria because Nigeria was not a shareholder.
“Since October 2025, we have invested including the trade finance $280 million. Since the beginning of the year, it is $180 million because we did $100 million last year.
“We are very demand-driven, we are working on projects as they come. We don’t have an envelope that says Nigeria we will do X in 2026, or we can maximally do this amount.
“If we have lots of good projects, we will do lots of investments. We still have to learn a lot as we are new and just opened our office and have only recently started building the team.”
According to her, “This year is looking good. We are probably looking at around $300 million this year, but we don’t have a ceiling or fixed target as such, but we want to use as many opportunities as possible.
“Over the next three years, our expectation is that we would do a minimum over three years of $1.5 billion. That is an estimate and I hope we do more.
“I also don’t want to be overly optimistic, and I think it’s just good for us. We have the capital as an institution. We have new shareholders that are ambitious.
“We just had the meeting with the Nigerian Minister of Finance, who wants us to do more. He is now a shareholder representing Nigeria on board, so I think we want to respond.”
Also speaking, EBRD Country Head of Nigeria, Hamza Al-Asaad, said the institution had no predetermined sector allocation for the West African country, stressing that it was largely demand-driven but had identified infrastructure, energy, agribusiness, manufacturing, digital infrastructure and financial institutions as priority areas with strong investment potential.
He said the bank would continue to partner with commercial banks, noting that Access Bank was its first financial institution client not only in Nigeria, but across Sub-Saharan Africa through a $100 million trade finance facility.
According to him, the EBRD was already engaging most of Nigeria’s tier-1 and select tier-2 banks and expects those partnerships to expand as its local team grows.
Asaad also noted that beyond financing, the bank was supporting financial sector reforms, including working with the Central Bank of Nigeria and other market stakeholders over the past year to help develop the Nigerian Overnight Financing Rate, which was recently launched by the apex bank.
On the investment climate, Harmgart identified Nigeria’s electricity challenge as one of the biggest constraints to private sector competitiveness, saying high energy costs continue to weigh heavily on businesses despite their resilience.
She explained, “I would say, for me, also surprising coming to Nigeria is the challenge around the power sector. I mean how much people pay for power, because everyone has to have their generator with the power cuts, the limited capacity of the transmission grid, the losses on the distribution network.
“I’m even more impressed by Nigerian businesses that they are so successful given what they pay for power. We need to help Nigerian businesses reduce the cost of power because that is really holding a lot of businesses back. The government can do something about it through transmission and distribution infrastructure, but the private sector can also come and invest in this sector.”
Asaad described the power sector as both one of Nigeria’s greatest challenges and one of its biggest investment opportunities.
According to him, “Once this is addressed, just imagine what businesses that are surviving and doing great today can do with stable, cheaper, cleaner power.
“This is exactly one of the areas where we would love to help support the government and the regulators in creating the right environment, the right policies, and maybe bring some of our experiences elsewhere and adapt them to the local market.”