Nigeria’s Year in the Driver’s Seat for Electric Vehicles

The report describes Nigeria's emerging electric vehicle (EV) ecosystem, highlighting the convergence of private sector innovation, strategic financing, and a pending national policy framework designed to transform the country into an African EV manufacturing hub.

• Nigeria's transportation sector currently emits approximately 60 million metric tons of CO₂ equivalent annually, with projections that emissions could increase by 50% by 2035 and more than double by 2050 due to economic and population growth.
• The Electric Vehicle Transition and Green Mobility Bill, which passed its second reading in the Senate in late 2025, aims to use the EV transition as an industrial policy. It includes tax holidays, import duty waivers, and road tax exemptions, but focuses heavily on domestic manufacturing by requiring that all EVs sold in Nigeria have 30% locally sourced components by 2030.
• Electric motorcycles in Nigeria currently provide a lower total cost of ownership (TCO) than internal combustion engine (ICE) two-wheelers, and this gap is expected to widen, with the TCO of EVs projected to be half that of ICE vehicles by 2040.
• Private sector activity is scaling rapidly, exemplified by Spiro opening a 100,000-unit capacity plant in Ogun State and the Ministry of Industry, Trade, and Investment signing a memorandum of understanding with South Korea’s Asian Economic Development Committee to build a 300,000-vehicle annual capacity assembly plant in Kano.
• Innovative financing and infrastructure models are addressing grid instability and high upfront costs. This includes a $100 million financing facility created by Lagos State, United Bank for Africa, and LagRide, as well as solar-powered battery-swapping stations and fintech-enabled solar charging platforms like SunFi.

APA

RMI (2026). Nigeria’s Year in the Driver’s Seat for Electric Vehicles. https://rmi.org/resources/nigerias-year-in-the-drivers-seat-for-electric-vehicles/

Chicago

RMI. Nigeria’s Year in the Driver’s Seat for Electric Vehicles. 2026. https://rmi.org/resources/nigerias-year-in-the-drivers-seat-for-electric-vehicles/.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |author=RMI |title=Nigeria’s Year in the Driver’s Seat for Electric Vehicles |date=7 April 2026 |url=https://rmi.org/resources/nigerias-year-in-the-drivers-seat-for-electric-vehicles/ |access-date=17 August 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{rmi2026nigerias, author = {{RMI}}, title = {{Nigeria’s Year in the Driver’s Seat for Electric Vehicles}}, institution = {RMI}, year = {2026}, month = apr, url = {https://rmi.org/resources/nigerias-year-in-the-drivers-seat-for-electric-vehicles/}, urldate = {2026-08-17}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }