Investment De-risking and the Renewed Quest for Nigeria’s Industrialization

The quest to industrialize Nigeria with a view to shaping her economic destiny towards an all-inclusive prosperity and in-country value addition has been a perennial one since independence. Nigeria’s industrial sector is plagued by high political and regulatory risk, financial market gaps and lack of capital, infrastructure and operational constraint and insecurity.
The objective of the study is aimed at critically reviewing the role of investment de-risking mechanisms in catalyzing Nigeria’s renewed industrialization agenda. The study investigated that with Nigeria’s large domestic market, abundant natural resources, and youthful population, industrialization has remained shallow and uneven.
The paper explored how persistent investment risks: macroeconomic instability, policy uncertainty, weak institutions, infrastructural gaps, and security challenges continue to deter long term productive investment. Employing a literature-based methodology and grounded in structural transformation, the infant industry argument and the development state frameworks, the work draws from diverse scholarly works that signal a renewed commitment to industrialization.
Findings reveal that while Nigeria adopted internationally recognized derisking investment models such as development finance institutions, special economic zones and sovereign guarantees, their impact had been constrained by weak institutional coordination and limited policy credibility.
The study concluded that lack of mechanisms to mitigate these risks had consequently led to capital flight, deferred investments and stagnation in manufacturing growth.