Nigeria arrives at MI26 with momentum: a refreshed institutional architecture, an active licensing “sanitisation” drive that has returned dormant titles to the market, high-profile push into critical-minerals processing, and headline figures the government is using to signal progress and attract capital.

That said, gaps remain across predictable regulation, downstream processing capacity, infrastructure, investor confidence on governance and security, and the supply-chain readiness needed to convert exploration interest into bankable projects.

How effectively Nigeria translates reforms into verifiable, investible pipelines and how it frames that story at Indaba 26 will determine whether it moves from headline promise to near-term deals.

Why MI26 matters for Nigeria now

Mining Indaba is the continent’s premier mining investment platform; MI26’s theme is:

“Stronger together-Progress through partnerships”, foregrounds partnership, value chains and downstreaming.

For Nigeria, which has historically under-exploited its mineral base while depending on oil revenues, MI26 is a chance to reset external perceptions and to anchor inbound capital into projects that support jobs, import substitution, and critical-minerals supply chains for the energy transition.

Attending MI26 is not merely a marketing exercise; it’s a place to surface concrete projects, forge offtake and processing partnerships, and secure technical and finance partners for industrialisation.

What Nigeria brings to the table- recent, verifiable progress

1. Regulatory sanitisation and title clean-up. The federal government has revoked large numbers of dormant or non-compliant mineral titles and strengthened the cadastre process to reduce licence racketeering, a move intended to improve the investment climate a