Executive Summary

This report provides a brief overview of six economic zones in Nigeria, and discusses the main findings with respect to the zones: development goals and the anticipated benefits of the zone projects, key implementation challenges and preliminary proposals on enhancing the development/implementation process moving forward. The objective is toimprove the shared understandingof these six zone projects and toidentify opportunitieson how foreign investments in these six zones can provide the maximum possible benefits both for investing countries and the host country.

 Based on a preliminary assessment, it seems all six zones reviewed in this report have made some progress, albeit at different degrees. In terms of real development, the Lekki Free Zone and the OgunGuangdong Free Trade Zone have made the most significant progresses, with some on-site infrastructure already built or committed and several firms already operating in the zones. The zones in Abuja and Delta State are mostly in the early stages, but they seem to have strong government ownership and backing and each got several potential partners or anchor firms interested for investing. 

All the zones face some common challenges, at varying degrees, in the areas of legal and institutional framework, resettlement, infrastructure, environment, zone management & operational know-how, and host government ownership. Given these challenges, a set of action plans are proposed for moving forward, including: hands-on technical assistance to the zone developers and regulators through WB projects; knowledge sharing and capacity building; additional analytical TAs for business plan or master plan; financing or credit enhancing schemes through the equity investment of IFC or the risk guarantee programs of MIGA; and assistance on investment promotion.