Ivory Coast has become Nigeria’s biggest trade partner in Africa, with crude oil imports worth N2.05 trillion in the first half of 2024.
Gatekeepers News reports that this is according to the foreign trade report for Q2, 2024 published by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS).
The report shows that Nigeria’s crude oil exports to Ivory Coast have been steadily increasing since 2020, with a significant spike in the first half of 2024. In the second quarter of 2024, Ivory Coast imported goods from Nigeria worth N1.305 trillion, with crude oil exports accounting for N1.34 trillion.
This represents a 549.78% increase in export trade between Nigeria and Ivory Coast from N322.44 billion in 2020 to N2.09 trillion by the end of the first half of 2024. The surge in exports is mainly driven by crude oil sales to Ivory Coast, which accounted for 9.20% of Nigeria’s total crude oil sales in the second quarter of 2024.
Ivory Coast’s crude oil refining capacity has played a significant role in the increase in trade between the two countries.
The country’s SIR refinery has the capacity to process up to 80 thousand barrels of crude oil daily, which it supplies to regional counterparts such as Mali, Burkina Faso, Togo, Benin Republic, and Nigeria.
In July, the refinery announced plans to increase its annual output by 25% to 5 million tonnes of refined products yearly, driven by increasing oil exports from Nigeria.
