Nigerian businesses must look beyond the country’s borders and turn the challenges they solve at home into products, services and brands capable of competing across Africa and the global market, Senior Special Assistant to President Bola Tinubu on Digital Engagement and New Media and President of the Advertisers Association of Nigeria (ADVAN), O’tega Ogra, has said.
Ogra made the call while delivering the keynote address at The Industry Newspaper’s Top 50 Nigerian Companies of Impact 2026 Awards, held at Lagos Oriental Hotel, Victoria Island, under the theme, ‘Building Resilience, Driving Growth: Nigerian Companies Shaping the Next Decade.’
He cited the experience of Bergmans Security Consultant and Supplies Limited, which has emerged as a key player in the $3.1 billion AfCFTA customs modernisation project, as an example of how solutions developed in Nigeria can gain relevance across the continent.
Ogra said Bergmans, through its subsidiaries AfriTrade CMP Limited and Trade Modernisation Project Limited, secured the continental assignment after demonstrating its capabilities through Nigeria’s ports.
‘A few days ago, Wamkele Mene, Secretary-General of AfCFTA, arrived at Nigeria Customs and saw B’Odogwu, our Unified Customs Management System, already running,’ Ogra said.
‘The Secretariat had options. Companies from outside Africa wanted the work too. It chose an African company. A Nigerian company.’
According to him, the achievement demonstrates the value of Nigeria’s challenging business environment as a testing ground for innovation.
‘The Nigerian market became its proving ground. The expertise developed here is now being taken to the continent,’ he said. ‘Companies that learn to build functioning systems in difficult conditions acquire experience that travels.’
Ogra, however, stressed that resilience should not simply mean surviving Nigeria’s economic difficulties. He argued that businesses and government must create conditions that allow companies to redirect more resources towards innovation, expansion and competitiveness.
‘There is ingenuity in a manufacturer generating his own electricity. There is ingenuity in an SME rebuilding its model every time costs change. But there is also a lot of productive energy being consumed by those problems,’ he said.
He pointed to the banking, fintech, entertainment and music industries as examples of sectors that have transformed local challenges into competitive advantages.
‘Nigeria gives our companies something many businesses elsewhere would envy: a huge domestic market in which to learn. The question is what we do with it,’ he said.
As ADVAN President, Ogra also challenged Nigerian brands to leverage the country’s cultural influence.
‘Our culture already travels extraordinarily well. Our businesses should travel with them,’ he said, urging companies to build brands for which ‘Lagos is the beginning of the story, not the limit of the market.’
Ogra further identified trust, technology and productivity as critical drivers of business success over the next decade. He said artificial intelligence should be viewed less as a futuristic concept and more as a tool for solving practical business problems and improving productivity.
‘The useful question is what happens when a task that took three days can be done in an afternoon,’ he said, adding that companies that apply technology rapidly to real-world challenges would be better positioned to shape the future.
Defining the significance of the Companies of Impact recognition, Ogra said the true measure of a company should be what becomes possible because it exists – from creating jobs and growing local suppliers to improving productivity and developing solutions with continental relevance.
Congratulating the 2026 honourees, he urged them to see the recognition not only as an achievement but also as a responsibility to raise their ambitions.
‘Ten years from now, I hope people routinely come here to study Nigerian companies, Nigerian technology, Nigerian manufacturing and Nigerian brands because something built here has become the reference point elsewhere,’ he said.
The annual Top 50 Nigerian Companies of Impact recognises businesses contributing to national development through job creation, innovation, good governance and measurable social impact.