Nigeria on Monday signed the host country agreement for the 2027 edition of the Intra-African Trade Fair (IATF), positioning itself to drive new trade and investment deals under the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA).
The event, scheduled to be held in Lagos in 2027, is expected to attract thousands of businesses, investors, and policymakers across the continent, with Nigeria aiming to surpass the $48.3 billion in transactions recorded at the 2025 edition in Algeria.
Since its launch in 2018, the trade fair has facilitated more than $167 billion in trade and investment deals across four editions, making it one of the continent’s largest marketplaces for intra-African commerce.
“We fully intend not only to exceed the level of transactions recorded at previous editions,” said Jumoke Oduwole, minister of industry, trade, and investment, at the signing ceremony in Lagos.
“Beyond transactions, we envision IATF 2027 as a marketplace that aggregates ideas, relationships, capital, and skills across Africa,” she said
The ceremony was held at the Wole Soyinka Centre in Lagos, a venue that also hosted key moments in Africa’s integration history, including the signing of the ECOWAS treaty in 1975 and the FESTAC ’77 cultural festival.
Oduwole said Nigeria has begun implementing several initiatives aimed at improving intra-African trade ahead of the fair. These include the AfCFTA Air Cargo Export Corridor launched with Uganda Airlines to reduce logistics costs for exports to East and Southern Africa.
The Nigeria Customs Service is also leading the Customs Partnership for African Cooperation in Trade (C-PACT), a continental initiative aimed at harmonising customs procedures and facilitating cross-border trade among participating countries.
According to the minister, Nigeria became the first AfCFTA state party to complete its five-year implementation review in 2025, a milestone that provides a clearer roadmap for reforms needed to fully implement the trade pact.
Digital trade is also expected to feature prominently at the fair. Nigeria currently serves as co-champion of the AfCFTA protocol on digital trade and has launched pilot initiatives with Egypt, Ghana, Kenya, Rwanda, and South Africa to enable seamless cross-border digital services.
The event will also spotlight Africa’s creative economy through the Creative Africa Nexus (CANEX) programme, which will begin with a CANEX Weekend scheduled for November 5, 2026.
Africa’s creative sector contributed about $310 billion to GDP in 2022 and employs nearly 12 million people, more than half of them under the age of 35, according to industry estimates.
Nigeria’s creative economy was valued at about $25 billion in 2025. The federal government has set a target to expand the sector to $100 billion and create two million jobs by 2030 through exports in music, film, fashion, and other creative industries.
The advisory council for IATF 2027 is chaired by former president Olusegun Obasanjo, while the African Export-Import Bank and the AfCFTA Secretariat are lead partners for the event.
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