Nigeria failed to place any company among Africa’s ten most valuable firms in the Africa’s Top 250 Companies 2025 ranking, due to the impact of currency devaluation and weak market confidence on the continent’s largest consumer economy.
South Africa and Morocco dominated the upper tier of the list released by African Business, with South African firms taking eight of the top 10 slots and Moroccan companies filling the remaining two. Nigeria’s top entry, Airtel Africa, ranked 17, well outside the elite group.
The London-based media attributes the shift partly to global risk aversion and sharp movements in African currencies. “The fluctuating value of African currencies is partly to blame, as is the retreat of international investors from frontier markets because of uncertainty stemming first from the Covid-19 pandemic, then from the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and now the ongoing trade war,” it reported.