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ILLEGAL IMPORTS
By our African Marketing Confederation News Team | 2024
Weakness against other regional currencies creates a significant price gap, making Nigerian goods ‘incredibly cheap’ for neighbouring countries.
Clandestine traders are exploiting Nigeria’s currency woes to buy consumer goods cheaply in that country and then smuggle them across West Africa’s porous borders for resale in neighbouring states.
The currency disparity caused by the struggling naira is such that these ‘entrepreneurs’ are smuggling everything from laundry detergent to noodles.
A market in Anaynui, Ghana. Smuggled goods from Nigeria are finding ready buyers.
Photo: Gina Gleeson, Wikimedia Commons
“Maverick Research’s source of origin analysis of the leading fast-moving consumer goods brands, and feedback from our field teams, indicate a surge in grey products of popular fast-moving brands from Nigeria into Ghana and Cameroon,” says Ato Micah, CEO of Ghanian-based Maverick.
“Imagine buying a box of detergent off a Lagos shelf and selling it for double the price in Accra.”
Micah explains that the unauthorised importers are capitalising on three factors:
Implications of smuggling from Nigeria are wide ranging
The implications are wide ranging. Citing the example of the soaps and detergents sector in Nigeria, Micah says Nigeria’s ban on importing finished soaps and detergents forces local manufacturers to rely on exports to neighbouring countries under the ECOWAS Trade Liberalization Scheme (ETLS). This scheme allows them to access the foreign currency (USD) needed for raw-material purchases.
However, the influx of smuggled detergents disrupts this strategy, as it erodes the profit margins of authorised distributors in countries such as Ghana, making them less willing to import products from Nigeria.
Nigeria’s weak currency is also incentivising other forms of cross-border smuggling. For example, Business Day Nigeria reported in February this year that petrol is being smuggled across the border into neighbouring countries.
The newspaper quoted Aisha Mohammed, an energy analyst at the Lagos-based Center for Development Studies, as saying: “The weakening naira is definitely making petrol smuggling more attractive.”
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