Nigeria’s stock market that once regularly notched $100 million a day in trading value some 20 years ago, now struggles to hit $15 million on a good day in 2025, a sign of the urgent reforms needed to boost innovation at the 65-year-old exchange, one of Africa’s oldest.
The Nigerian Stock Exchange (NSE) now known as the NGX was established in 1960 and has an equity market capitalization of $57 billion.
The average daily trading value of the NGX is approximately $9 million or N14 billion (Nigerian Naira), based on 2024 and early 2025 data.
The Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE), in South Africa trades an average daily value of about ZAR 22 billion (South African Rand), which converts to roughly $1.24 billion USD per day in 2025.
The Nairobi Securities Exchange (NSE) Kenya, has a daily market turnover value near KES 389 million (Kenyan Shilling) on specific recent days, roughly equivalent to around $3.4 million USD daily, based on trading data from mid-2025.
In Q1 2025, the Ghana Stock Exchange’s (GSE) average daily trading value rose to about GH¢7.89 million (Ghanaian Cedi), approximately $1.2 to $1.3 million USD.
Trading volumes and value dwindled following a 2008 stock market crash and have never recovered and now analysts and investors say the NGX must shake of its lethargy of the past 17 plus years since the market crash to introduce new innovation, or else be left behind by a financial world being remade by Artificial intelligence, Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs), Derivatives and Crypto.
Foreign Investors have mostly fled the Nigerian equity market and the recent decision to downgrade the market to standalone from frontier on MSCI will likely make the situation worse without significant reforms.
Foreign portfolio investment (FPI) flows on the NGX fell to 8.04% in July 2025, compared to 91.96% for domestic investors. On a year-to-date basis foreign flows were equivalent to 21.33%, compared to 78.67% for domestic flows.
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