The World Bank’s approval of a fresh $1.25bn loan for Nigeria, part of a new six-year Country Partnership Framework, has sharpened the focus on whether recent macroeconomic reforms can deliver tangible improvements in living standards. The financing, announced alongside a strategy to unlock private-sector-led growth and create jobs, arrives as manufacturers in Lagos warn that policy unpredictability, multiple taxation and regulatory friction are raising production costs and driving investment away. Viewed from Abuja, the government frames the loan as backing for capital-market deepening, power-sector reform and trade-barrier reduction, yet the immediate effect is to test the credibility of a reform agenda that has so far struggled to translate stabilisation gains into broad-based relief.

That credibility gap is widening on the labour front. The Academic Staff Union of Universities has threatened fresh strikes in Lagos, Gombe and Plateau states over the non-implementation of a 2025 salary agreement, while civil servants’ representatives, meeting in Osun State, have declared they will take “appropriate hard steps” against states that have not applied consequential adjustments from the N70,000 minimum wage. The discontent is compounded by a striking paradox in the financial system: a new report shows that although 64% of Nigerian adults are now financially included, only 6% access credit through formal institutions. Private-sector credit stands at just 13.1% of GDP, well below peers such as Kenya and South Africa, pushing businesses towards private-debt structures and, increasingly, towards dollar-backed digital assets as a store of value and means of payment outside conventional banking channels.

Across the continent, governments are turning to digital infrastructure to formalise grey economies and widen the tax base. Tanzania’s 2026/27 budget mandates digital payments for asset transfers and key sectors, rolls out a biometric national ID, and uses a receipt lottery to boost electronic fiscal device uptake—a model that analysts in Dar es Salaam say could lift budget revenue by hundreds of millions of dollars. In Bangladesh, the central bank has made the interoperable ‘Bangla QR’ code compulsory, unifying payment systems across banks and mobile financial services to cut cash use and increase transparency. Mastercard, meanwhile, is deploying hardware-lite QR solutions in Nigeria to close the merchant acceptance gap, with 1.8 million SMEs and gig workers now able to accept digital payments at zero hardware cost.

These experiments in digital formalisation sit alongside urgent calls for fiscal discipline in fragile states. A World Bank review of the Central African Republic finds domestic revenue below 10% of GDP and a wage bill absorbing up to 73% of public resources, leaving almost no space for investment in health and education. The report urges modernised tax administration and better management of forestry and mining revenues. The next milestone to watch is Nigeria’s push towards its $1trn economy target, with the Bank of Industry’s development partners’ roundtable signalling that public funds alone cannot finance the plan—a reality that will test whether the new World Bank framework can catalyse the private capital that ministers in Abuja acknowledge is essential.