By Adekeye Adebajo

Nigeria and South Africa account for about a quarter of Africa’s economic might, and led much of its post-Cold War peacemaking and peacekeeping initiatives until recently, when internal fragility has forced both powers to focus disproportionately on deploying soldiers to maintain domestic security. Abuja and Pretoria have typically accounted for more than 60 per cent of the economy of their respective sub-regions.

The success of region-building efforts in Africa thus rests heavily on the cooperation of these two powers that have both collaborated and competed in a complex relationship that is Africa’s most indispensable. An estimated 500,000 Nigerians live in South Africa, while 120 South African companies operate in Nigeria. While Nigerian citizens tend to be the target of South African violence, South African companies tend to bear the brunt of Nigerian retaliation. The recent recurrence of xenophobic attacks on Nigerian citizens and businesses in South Africa seriously  threatens the future of this critical relationship.

Between 1994 and 2018, the African Centre for Migration and Society (ACMS) at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg recorded 529 xenophobic violence incidents in South Africa that resulted in 309 deaths, 901 physical assaults, 2,193 looted shops, and over 100,000 people displaced.

Between 2022 and 2025, 406 verified xenophobic incidents resulted in a further 75 deaths. The victims of these attacks have often been Zimbabweans, Mozambicans, and Malawians, but also Nigerians and nationals of other African countries, as well as Chinese and Pakistani shopkeepers.

The most recent xenophobic attacks flared up in May, mobilised by vigilante groups like March and March and Operation Dudula, resulting in the looting and burning of Nigerian shops.  Three Nigerian citizens also died under suspicious circumstances, having been arrested by the South African security forces on allegations of drug-trafficking. Abuja accused Pretoria of complicity through “apartheid-style” policing, noting that Emmanuel Chidiebere Amaramiro, Nnaemeka Ekpeyong, and Emeka Iroegbu, died as a result of alleged abuses by South African security forces. Another Nigerian, Musa Yunana Joe, was shot dead in front of his shop by a suspected criminal in Mpumalanga.

Nigeria’s assertive foreign minister, Bianca Odumegwu-Ojukwu, strongly condemned these attacks, accusing South Africans of “harassing” even legal Nigerian residents, and berating Pretoria for not having dealt firmly with these attacks. She further noted that the South African police had failed to protect Nigerian citizens under attack from vigilante mobs. Odumegwu-Ojukwu did not rule out retaliating against South African companies (which some Nigerian legislators continue forcefully to advocate), while MTN and Multichoice took the precaution of temporarily closing their branches in Nigeria.

Abuja has evacuated 1,459 of its citizens from South Africa (including 586 deemed by Pretoria to have been residing in the country illegally), with Nigeria complaining that a South African government spokesperson had publicly asked its departing  migrants to show them where their illegal drugs had been hidden. Ghana, Mozambique, Zambia, Kenya, and Uganda also evacuated some of their embattled nationals from South Africa.  Pretoria, for its part, accused Nigeria, and particularly Ghana, of launching a campaign to isolate South Africa within the continent, with presidential spokesperson, Vincent Magwenya, accusing Abuja and Accra of spreading fake news about xenophobia.

These attacks have formed part of a similar pattern over the last decade. Nigerian shops and properties were destroyed in Johannesburg’s Soweto and Yeoville districts in July 2021. Seven shops were looted and burned down in Yeoville. Abuja again blamed the South African police for not investigating these crimes thoroughly, while Pretoria complained that it was not being provided with concrete evidence. In September 2019, xenophobic attacks against Nigerian businesses also led to about 600 of its citizens (many of them professionals) being evacuated back home. A reported 12 foreigners were killed during these attacks.

In March 2017, South African vigilantes burned and looted scores of homes and businesses belonging to Nigerians in Rosettenville, Mamelodi, and Atteridgeville which they alleged were drug dens and brothels. Abuja again accused the South African police of having turned a blind eye to some of these attacks, while   noting the failure of the country’s criminal justice system to convict perpetrators of xenophobic attacks. Ordinary Nigerians reacted to the recurring attacks on their citizens with seething anger, with mobs attacking South African businesses in Nigeria such as Shoprite, Pep Stores, and MTN, forcing some of these businesses to suspend their operations.

Though the binational commission between both countries celebrated its 25th anniversary in 2024, this bilateral relationship is clearly in the dumps. Abuja had earlier imposed a hefty fine (eventually negotiated down to $1.7 billion by 2016) on South African telecommunications giant, MTN, for failing to disconnect illicit SIM cards in Nigeria, which its officials complained were being used by jihadist terrorists in the country’s Northeast. After Pretoria barred 125 Nigerian citizens from entering South Africa in 2012, Abuja retaliated by expelling 84 South Africans seeking entry into Nigeria.

Yet, there is much to gain from this strategic relationship. Bilateral trade increased massively in the 2000s, with Nigeria becoming South Africa’s largest trading partner in Africa: a relationship worth $2.4 billion by 2016, with South Africa importing $2 billion from Nigeria and exporting just $438 million. After 1994, South African telecommunications giants, MTN and M-Net/SuperSport, blazed the trail into Africa’s largest market. By 2003–2004, MTN Nigeria’s post-tax profit of $414 million had surpassed MTN South Africa’s $392 million profit. Other prestigious companies followed: Stanbic, Rand Merchant Bank, Alexander Forbes, Protea hotel, Chicken Licken, the Debonairs pizza chain, and Shoprite.  South African–dominated malls are now ubiquitous in Nigeria’s megalopolis and main commercial hub of Lagos, as well as in major cities like Ibadan.

Despite these successes, many Nigerians remain deeply resentful that the relationship, in their view, disproportionately favours South Africa, arguing that the South African market remains closed to Nigerian companies, while over 90 per cent of their own exports to South Africa consists of oil. Bilateral trade stood at $2.16 billion by 2025, with South African exports to Nigeria worth $468.48 million, and Nigerian exports worth $1.69 billion, resulting in a $1.22 billion deficit in favour of Abuja.

In further set-backs to the bilateral relationship between Africa’s two giants, Shoprite sold its supermarket chain in Nigeria to local buyers in June 2021, while the Southern Sun hotel group announced a similar winding up of its interests in the country a year later. Like MTN, both Shoprite and Southern Sun complained about Nigeria’s erratic regulatory environment, with Shoprite struggling to have its products cleared at the country’s ports. Satellite television provider, Multichoice, similarly complained about these regulations, and South African companies have felt that they were being selectively and unfairly targeted by Nigerian regulators.

About 50,000 Nigerians annually visit South Africa. Visa issues, however, remain a major bone of contention, with Abuja responding to restrictions by Pretoria by tightening entry requirements for South Africans. The South African consulate in Lagos claimed that the vast majority of the 1,000 monthly visa applications it was receiving in 2022, were fraudulent.  Africa has much to lose if this critical bilateral relationship continues to sour.

Professor Adebajo is a senior research fellow at the University of Pretoria’s Centre for the Advancement of Scholarship in South Africa.