Nigeria’s dollar millionaires reduce by 53% in 10 years

Friday, September 12, 2025 - Nigeria’s millionaire population has shrunk by more than half over the past decade as macroeconomic instability, capital flight, naira devaluation, and weak financial markets eroded the country’s wealth base.

Once home to one of Africa’s fastest-growing pools of high-net-worth individuals (HNWIs), Africa’s fourth-largest economy is now struggling to retain and grow its affluent class even as smaller peers forge ahead.

In 2014, Nigeria was estimated to have about $15,000 millionaires. By 2025, that number had fallen to around 7,200–a 53 percent decline. The collapse of the naira is central to this story.

The currency has depreciated from about N160 to the U.S. dollar in 2014 to around N1,530 today, a loss of almost 90 percent. For individuals whose wealth was held in naira terms, every devaluation stripped value in dollar terms, effectively pushing many out of the millionaire bracket.

As local wealth eroded, capital flight intensified. Affluent Nigerians increasingly shifted assets abroad, channelling funds into havens such as Dubai, London, and Mauritius. This was often accompanied by residency or citizenship moves designed to safeguard assets from domestic volatility.

From several billion dollars in the mid-2010s, inflows dwindled to less than $400 million in 2023, reflecting both domestic economic headwinds and a loss of investor confidence. With fewer inflows and limited domestic wealth creation opportunities, Nigeria’s millionaire pool thinned while other markets attracted fresh capital.

The weakness of local capital markets compounded the decline. The Nigerian Exchange, though more active since 2024, remains shallow compared with Johannesburg or Cairo.

Wealth management services lag global standards, offering few viable options to preserve and grow assets. Double-digit inflation and persistently high interest rates have further discouraged long-term investment at home, pushing many investors into hard assets or offshore vehicles.

The consequences extend beyond the wealthy themselves. High-net-worth individuals provide a critical layer of capital for domestic markets, often seeding businesses, financing infrastructure, and sustaining demand for luxury property, financial services, and high-end consumption. Their retreat reduces liquidity, dampens entrepreneurship, and deprives the economy of patient capital that could otherwise accelerate development.

The offshoring of wealth effectively locks Nigeria into a cycle where wealth is generated locally but retained abroad, leaving the domestic economy undercapitalised.

Across Africa, the contrast is stark. South Africa remains the continent’s leader with about 41,100 millionaires, while Egypt has consolidated its position with 14,800, buoyed by large-scale infrastructure spending and reform-driven inflows.

Morocco has built Casablanca into a regional financial hub, drawing capital from across North and West Africa. Even smaller economies are outperforming. Mauritius is projected to see 95 percent growth in millionaires by 2033, supported by political stability and investment-friendly policies.

Rwanda’s steady services-led expansion is also creating new wealth, while Seychelles, despite its size, now boasts the highest millionaire density in Africa, with 0.51 percent of adults classified as millionaires.

Nigeria, by contrast, has become an outlier: the continent’s most populous nation, yet one of the weakest in wealth retention. Its millionaire decline is not just a story of currency collapse but of systemic fragility in financial infrastructure, policy inconsistency, and investor confidence.

The outlook remains cautious. Without exchange rate stability, deeper capital markets, and reforms that incentivise local wealth retention, Nigeria is unlikely to reverse the trend. Projections suggest the country will continue to lag, even as peers consolidate their positions as continental wealth hubs.

Yet Nigeria’s fundamentals — a large population, entrepreneurial energy, and a fast-growing services sector — still provide the raw materials for wealth creation. If macroeconomic stability is restored and confidence rebuilt, the country could begin to regenerate its high-net-worth ecosystem.