By Olu Adegbite

In mid-2026, a wave of anti-immigrant violence swept through parts of Johannesburg and Pretoria, the latest in a pattern stretching back to 2008. Nigerian shops were looted, logistics companies shuttered, and bilateral diplomacy between Africa’s two largest economies once again stalled. The immediate damage was visible, but the longer-term damage, as always, was quieter and more corrosive.

A July 2026 study published by the Social Science Research Network found that xenophobic violence in South Africa generates “substantial economic costs through business destruction, supply-chain disruption, reduced foreign direct investment, tourism losses and declining investor confidence.”

Writing in Business Report around the same time, researcher Boitshoko Shoke put the finding in plainer terms: such violence “destroys productive economic activity in places that need more investment, not less.” The pattern is familiar. Countries that make investors feel unwelcome tend to discover, a few years later, that fewer investors arrive.
Nigeria has watched this pattern play out from the other side. Nigerian entrepreneurs and professionals in South Africa have borne the brunt of repeated attacks, and Nigeria has spent diplomatic capital seeking redress.

But there is a version of this dynamic, subtler and less violent, that periodically surfaces within Nigeria itself: a narrative that frames certain established companies as foreign entities whose presence should be questioned on the basis of where their parent companies are headquartered, rather than on the basis of what they have built, spent and employed in-country. This matters because Nigeria is actively courting the very kind of capital it sometimes questions.

At the Africa CEO Forum in Kigali in May 2026, President Bola Tinubu told delegates: “This year alone, I can beat my chest that Nigeria is attracting close to $20 billion in foreign direct investment.” In September, he reinforced the message at the Nigerian Bottling Company’s 75th anniversary, saying that Nigeria “is open for business” and that his administration is “working to make the business environment more predictable, more competitive and more supportive of investment.”

The administration has backed these statements with action: production tax credits, special economic zones, the Startup Act, recapitalised banks and a more orderly foreign exchange market.

These signals are real, and they are being heard. But an investor evaluating Nigeria does not separate the welcoming signal from Abuja and the hostile one circulating on social media or in op-ed columns. They see a single risk profile and price accordingly. The courting and the questioning cannot coexist indefinitely without one undermining the other.

The numbers at stake are structural, embedded in physical assets and contractual obligations. The telecommunications sector contributes approximately 9.2 per cent of GDP. Its largest operator deployed N1.62 trillion in capital expenditure between January 2025 and June 2026, paid over N600 billion in taxes and regulatory levies in a single half-year, and sustains an estimated two million jobs. These figures describe an enterprise that has functionally become part of Nigeria’s economic infrastructure.

But the willingness to sustain that level of commitment is a decision, renewed quarterly, based on a calculus that includes policy stability, regulatory predictability and the social environment in which the company operates. No board approves a trillion-naira annual capital programme in a market where the operating environment feels hostile.
The adjustment, when it comes, is gradual: marginal capital redirected to markets where the reception is warmer, expansion plans deferred, timelines stretched. The change shows up two or three years later in network congestion, coverage gaps and the things that did not get built.

Nigeria has a strong hand. A young, digitally fluent population of over 200 million. Growing smartphone penetration. A services economy that increasingly runs on connectivity. Flutterwave processes transactions across 35 African countries from Lagos. Dangote Cement operates in more than ten African markets from its Nigerian base. Nigerian enterprise is both an importer and an exporter of capital, and the principle of welcoming productive investment works in every direction.

The precedent from other markets is consistent. Larry Hodes, a board member of the Franchise Association of South Africa, warned in Forbes Africa in July 2026 that “recurring anti-immigrant violence sends a message that South Africa may not be able to protect people, businesses and investment when tensions rise.” South Africa’s experience is a cautionary one precisely because it shows how quickly reputational damage accumulates and how slowly it repairs.

Nigeria does not have to learn from others’ examples. The country already understands, at the policy level, that productive capital should be welcomed, supported and retained. The question is whether public discourse will align with that understanding, or quietly work against it. The story a country tells investors about itself tends, over time, to become the one investors believe.

*Olu Adegbite, a tourism entrepreneur, writes from Lagos.