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Paper short abstract

BRI impact in Nigeria depends less on what China does than on what Nigeria can do. This paper shows how bureaucratic fragmentation and governance deficits, not Chinese strategy shapes development outcomes, foregrounding African agency in great-power competition.

Paper long abstract

China's Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) has become central to Africa's contemporary development landscape, generating intense debate over whether it represents neo-colonial dependency or an alternative development partnership. Much of this debate focuses on external intent while underplaying the role of domestic governance and agency within African states. This paper examines Nigeria's engagement with the BRI to assess how internal political and institutional dynamics shape development outcomes under conditions of increasing geopolitical competition.

Drawing on systematic documentary analysis of Nigerian policy documents, BRI project agreements (including the Lagos-Ibadan and Abuja-Kaduna railway projects), official statements, development finance reports, and academic literature, the paper evaluates the governance practices underpinning major Chinese-financed infrastructure initiatives. The analysis focuses on transparency, bureaucratic coordination, debt management, and local actor inclusion in project implementation.

The findings reveal that domestic institutional capacity shapes BRI development outcomes more significantly than China's strategic intentions. Bureaucratic fragmentation, limited oversight, and governance deficits have constrained Nigeria's ability to leverage Chinese finance for sustainable development, resulting in uneven economic benefits and heightened debt sustainability concerns. Significantly, China's approach interacts with these domestic conditions by reshaping incentives for governance reform rather than directly determining outcomes.

By foregrounding Nigerian agency within a shifting multi-polar development order, this paper contributes to debates on how African states navigate great-power competition. It argues that meaningful development gains from emerging geopolitical rivalries depend critically on domestic institutional capacity to strategically manage, negotiate, and govern such relationships, not merely on securing external partners.