Nigeria is among five other countries with significant growth expectations in the construction industry, which is expected to expand in the coming years from $179 billion in 2024 to $337 billion in 2034.

In its African Construction Industry Outlook for 2025, Afreximbank Research’s Trade Intelligence Solutions arm revealed that the robust growth of the region’s construction market will provide significant project opportunities across a wide range of markets, including Algeria, Egypt, Nigeria, Tanzania and Ethiopia.

This report explores the outlook for Africa’s construction industry, considering both key long-term trends underway as well as important factors set to impact the region, particularly in 2025.

It assesses both the opportunities facing investors and stakeholders in Africa’s construction market, as well as the challenges and risks, and provides assessments of these factors for each of the region’s four principal sub-regions: East Africa, West Africa, North Africa and Southern Africa.

Each regional analysis provides an overview and then delves into the local construction industry growth drivers and supply chain opportunities. Detailed Industry Profiles across Africa’s 12 major industries, providing regional overviews, key drivers, and supply chain opportunities across all the major regions

The report also highlights the importance of scaling up Engineering, Procurement, and Construction (EPC) models to meet Africa’s infrastructure and trade ambitions. The report indicates that the African construction industry is expected to experience growth in the coming years.

The report highlights that in the short term, growth in the construction industry will pick up moderately, with the value of Africa’s construction industry set to grow in real terms by 4.7 per cent in 2025 and 5 per cent in 2026, up from an estimated growth of 4.2 per cent in 2024. This will be driven by loosening monetary policies in many markets and an improving macroeconomic environment.

Several fast-growth markets in East and North Africa are set to lead the region’s construction industry growth by 2025. Over the long term, construction industry growth in African countries will be driven by factors including strong population expansion, accelerating urbanisation, commodity investment, and government-backed industrialisation policies.

Resource sectors in Africa will also drive significant construction activity, however, it’s expected that energy prices will underperform their 2022 peak over the short term, hence, stagger construction activity attributed to the energy sector.

Over the long term, energy prices are expected to remain high relative to the 2015-2020 period, and this will benefit investments in oil and natural gas projects, notably refineries in Angola, upstream oil production in Nigeria and liquefied natural gas (LNG) infrastructure in Mozambique.

Downstream oil refineries and petrochemical plants will contribute significantly to construction growth in economies such as Angola, Algeria and Egypt. The mining sector will also require significant construction activity, particularly iron ore mining in West Africa and battery mineral production in Central and Southern Africa.