“THE CHINESE MUST GO” was the chorus of the protesters at Aspanda market in Lagos earlier ths week. The demonstrators, mostly traders from the sprawling Lagos International Trade Fair Complex, deal in imported garments, shoes and household goods, much of it sourced from China.
On September 14th they marched through the complex’s ASPMDA section carrying placards and chanting for Chinese merchants to leave. Their complaint was not that Chinese goods exist. It was that Chinese sellers were no longer content to supply the market. They wanted to run it.
The protest was contained within hours. Local government officials, police and market leaders intervened, and by the next day the association representing traders at the complex said it had already been investigating complaints before the demonstration broke out.
But the episode captured a tension that has been building quietly for years, not just in Lagos Nigeria but across much of the developing world, as Chinese firms move from supplying foreign markets to selling directly inside them.
From workshop of the world to shopkeeper of the world
China’s manufacturers have spent two decades building the scale, the ports and the supply chains to make almost anything cheaply. Now, with domestic demand weak and competition among Chinese firms brutal, more of them are chasing buyers abroad rather than selling only to importers who resell at a markup. The pattern shows up in Africa, Brazil and Indonesia alike, where Chinese retailers and manufacturers increasingly deal with consumers directly instead of working only through local middlemen.
One prominent chronicler of the trend put it plainly: Chinese companies now combine engineering skill, dense supplier networks and efficient logistics with products that are both cheaper and better than a decade ago, a combination that makes selling abroad increasingly attractive as competition squeezes margins at home.
In Nigeria the shift is visible well beyond textiles. Chinese firms and individual traders now sell electric cars, solar panels and household utensils straight to Nigerian consumers, cutting out the wholesalers and retailers who once stood between factory and shopper.
The numbers behind this shift are striking. China’s exports to Nigeria hit a record $24.9 billion in 2025, according to data from China’s National Bureau of Statistics, up from $18.9 billion the year before and nearly three times the $9.72 billion recorded in 2016.
Nigeria’s own exports to China remain a fraction of that, dominated by crude oil and gas rather than finished goods, leaving a trade gap that has widened steadily even as overall trade volume climbs.
Most Nigerian retailers still depend on China to stock their shelves. What has changed is who does the selling once the goods land.
The leader of the Aspanda protesters described the shift in a video that circulated widely after the demonstration, alleging that Chinese sellers “even go as far as going to where we do waybill, collect our customers’ numbers” and extend credit directly to Nigerian buyers who once relied on local shopkeepers. The traders say they welcome Chinese manufacturers and wholesalers. What they object to is Chinese nationals retailing goods in the same stalls, at the same prices Nigerian traders pay wholesale, a practice they argue makes fair competition impossible.
A manufacturing base too weak to compete
Nigeria’s own capacity to make the things it imports has been shrinking for years, which is part of why so much of the country’s commerce runs through importers rather than factories.
The Manufacturers Association of Nigeria (MAN) said 767 companies shut down in 2023 alone, with a further 335 becoming financially distressed, as capacity utilisation across the sector slid to 56%. Electricity remains the biggest culprit.
A steep tariff hike in 2024 was blamed for the closure of more than 300 companies and the loss of roughly 380,000 jobs within a year. Manufacturers that stayed open spent N1.34 trillion ($870 million) generating their own power in 2025 alone, a bill up 21% from the year before, as the national grid continued to fail them.
Add to that scarce credit, high interest rates and a currency that has lost much of its value over the past three years, and the arithmetic becomes brutal. Building a garment factory in Nigeria means paying for diesel generators around the clock, borrowing at rates few businesses can sustain and still competing against Chinese goods shipped in at a fraction of the cost. It is little wonder most Nigerian entrepreneurs never try.
That gap has produced a deeply entrenched middleman model, in which importing finished goods is treated as the safer, more rational choice than manufacturing them locally.
Abisola Adams, a pan-African trade and investment expert, explained the logic. “Most Nigerian business owners still rely heavily on Chinese import because on net it’s cheaper than manufacturing here,” she told Businessfront, adding that importers accept the risk of duties, insurance costs and lost shipments because the alternative, building a factory in Nigeria’s hostile business climate, is far-fetched by comparison.
Her point is echoed by trade unionists on the ground. Habib Onifade, based in Abuja, put the blame less on Beijing than on Lagos and Abuja. “I don’t think the problem is the Chinese though,” he said, before pivoting to his real target. “It’s the cost of doing business in Nigeria. Until the fundamentals are fixed, it’s impossible for any Nigerian retail traders to compete with foreigners given the scale and capital of the latter.”
Between two frustrations
Nigeria’s traders are caught between two forces they cannot easily control. One is a manufacturing sector too starved of power, capital and stability to give them a domestic alternative to imported goods. The other is a Chinese export machine so efficient, and increasingly so eager to sell directly, that it can undercut the very importers who once depended on it.
The protest at Aspanda was small and quickly defused, and Lagos state officials were at pains to describe it as the work of a limited group rather than evidence of any broader breakdown between Nigerian and Chinese traders.
Chinese business representatives at the complex said they were operating peacefully and had no wish to leave.
Yet the frustration voiced in Aspanda reflects something larger than one market dispute. Nigeria’s trade deficit with China has widened for years without any sign of reversing. Its manufacturing base keeps shrinking under the weight of unreliable power and expensive credit.
Chinese firms, squeezed at home, have every reason to keep pushing further down the value chain, from exporter to wholesaler to retailer.
Traders can protest the last step in that chain, the Chinese shopkeeper standing where a Nigerian one used to be. What they cannot easily protest is the twenty years of policy failure that made Chinese goods, and increasingly Chinese sellers, so hard to compete with in the first place.
