When Spotify launched in Nigeria in February 2021, it did more than add another app to Nigerian smartphones. It plugged the country’s most exportable cultural product, Afrobeats, directly into a global distribution system. Nigerian artists earned over ₦60 billion in royalties on the platform in 2025 from 30.3 billion streams, and the number of Nigerian artists on Spotify has risen by 158% in just five years.

According to the platform’s own data, nearly 58% of that money went to independent artists and labels, which is the detail that matters most. It means that streaming income is spreading through a domestic ecosystem of producers, sound engineers, managers, videographers, and promoters, rather than concentrating at the top. This is what well-targeted foreign direct investment looks like: capital that connects rather than extracts.

MultiChoice, backed by South Africa’s Naspers and now folded into France’s Canal+ following the 2025 acquisition, tells a similar story with more visible strain. Through Africa Magic and its commissioning of original Nigerian content, the company built a pay-TV market around local storytelling and professionalised production, creating thousands of jobs for writers, actors, and crew.

Under the new ownership structure, MultiChoice has committed close to R21 billion (roughly $1.1 billion) over three years to local film and television production as a condition of the Canal+ deal, and Canal+’s first-half 2026 results showed group revenue up 40%, largely driven by MultiChoice’s consolidation.

That pledge sits within an operating environment where currency volatility, unreliable power, and shifting regulations have forced every foreign media and telecoms player to recalculate its Nigeria math more than once in the last five years.

Broadly, the picture has been far from rosy. Netflix, which committed $175 million to African content and invested over $23 million in Nigerian productions, has scaled back its commissioning of Nigerian originals, and Amazon Prime Video similarly retreated after an initial push.

These pullbacks are instructive. They show that foreign capital follows sustainable economics, and that Nigeria must build local financing and distribution capacity rather than depend indefinitely on the strategies of global platforms. Even so, the infrastructure, skills, and global exposure those investments created remain in the country, which is often a more durable legacy than the platform itself.

Set against that mixture of continuing commitment and outright retreat, MTN’s story stands apart. The telecoms giant’s entry into Nigeria in 2001 remains one of the most consequential foreign investments in the country’s history. Over almost three decades, MTN Nigeria has since invested billions of dollars in network infrastructure, including 4G and 5G rollout, and serves tens of millions of subscribers.

A 2024 study by Liverpool John Moores University found that Nigerian consumers directly credit MTN’s investment with improved access to telecommunications, innovation, and economic opportunity. Crucially, telecoms investment built the digital rails on which everything else now runs. The connectivity provided by MTN and other telcos made the streaming boom, the Afrobeats explosion, and digital Nollywood possible.

The broader economic case remains compelling. Nigeria’s creative economy is projected to generate approximately $4.9 billion in revenue in 2026 and contribute ₦1.97 trillion to GDP, employing over 4.2 million Nigerians, with another 2 million jobs projected soon.

Nollywood produces over 2,500 films annually, the world’s second-largest output by volume. In 2025, the Federal Government outlined a roadmap targeting a $100 billion contribution to GDP from the creative economy and tourism by 2030, alongside the creation of over three million jobs; an ambition that only makes sense if the last decade’s pattern of foreign capital continues to compound.

Since taking office in May 2023, President Bola Ahmed Tinubu has made attracting foreign investment a centrepiece of his Renewed Hope agenda, pairing market reforms such as fuel subsidy removal and foreign exchange liberalisation with an active investment promotion drive. His administration has courted investors on trips to Europe, the Middle East, and Asia, and has framed the creative and digital sectors as priority destinations for capital.

The flagship expression of this is the $617 million Investment in Digital and Creative Enterprises programme (iDICE), backed by the African Development Bank, the Agence Française de Développement, and the Islamic Development Bank. The programme has moved from announcement to actual capital deployment, closing the first round of its startup funding in 2026 and securing $64 million in investor commitments.

iDICE has also committed to launching two additional vehicles this year: a creative sector fund that invests directly in film, fashion, music, and entertainment startups, and a fund-of-funds that supports smaller venture vehicles across both technology and the creative economy. Sixty-four million dollars against a $617 million target, three years after launch, is real but partial progress, and a meaningfully different claim than a programme that exists only on paper.

The lesson of the last decade is that FDI works best as a sequence. Telecoms built the infrastructure, streaming platforms built the distribution, and media conglomerates built production capacity; however unevenly. Each layer attracted the next, even where individual investors wavered or withdrew.

The task for policymakers is to keep the environment predictable enough in terms of power, foreign exchange, and regulation for that sequence to continue. Because the sequence has never depended on any single investor staying the course, it has depended on the country remaining worth committing to.

The oil wells will not run dry tomorrow. But thanks to a decade of strategic foreign investment, tested by real retreats and, in at least one case, validated by independent research, Nigeria’s future no longer depends on them.

Segun Adeyemi is a financial commentator and journalist who writes from Abuja