Ivory Coast has emerged as Nigeria’s biggest trade partner in Africa after importing crude oil worth N2.05 trillion in the first half of the year.
This is according to the foreign trade report for Q2, 2024 published by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS).
According to the report, Nigeria’s crude oil exports in the first three months of 2024 stood at N717.49 billion. This figure nearly doubled to N1.34 trillion in the second quarter of the year.
In total, the West African nation imported goods from Nigeria worth N1.305 trillion in the second quarter of 2024.
It is important to note that Nigeria’s crude oil exports to Ivory Coast have been steadily increasing since 2020 pushing the country to become Nigeria’s sixth biggest trade partner by exports and largest in Africa dwarfing closest contender- South Africa by almost N830 billion in Q2, 2024.
Between the full year of 2020 and the first half of 2024, Nigeria’s export trade with Ivory Coast has increased by 549.78% from N322.44 billion in 2020 to N2.09 trillion by the end of the first half of 2024.
The spike in exports from Nigeria is mainly propelled by crude oil sales to the country. In the quarter under review, the total value of crude oil sales stood at N14.55 trillion while crude oil sales to Ivory Coast alone stood at N1.34 trillion representing 9.20% of Nigeria’s total crude oil sales in the quarter.
Of the N30.03 trillion worth of crude oil exports by Nigeria in the first six months of 2024, exports to Ivory Coast constitute 6.97% of the total figure.
Ivory Coast’s crude oil refining capacity
Last year, the Ivory Coast’s ambassador to Nigeria stated that trade between the two countries has reached $1.5 billion as Nigeria has become responsible for supplying the country’s refineries with crude oil.
Barring the beginning of operations of the Dangote refinery, Ivory Coast is one of the largest crude oil refiners in West Africa as most of the refineries in Ghana and Nigeria are non-operational. The country’s SIR refinery has the capacity to process up to 80 thousand barrels of crude oil daily which it mostly supplies to its regional counterparts such as Mali, Burkina Faso, Togo, Benin Republic and some to Nigeria.
In July, the refinery announced plans to increase its annual output by 25% to 5 million tonnes of refined products yearly on the back of increasing oil exports from Nigeria.
