onshoring
Onshoring means a company moves the making of its goods or the running of its services back to its home country instead of abroad.
In plain English
A textile factory in Kano used to send its designs to a company in Bangladesh for stitching because the labour there was cheaper, then ship the finished shirts back to Lagos to sell.
Another Nigerian company, tired of the shipping delays and the currency headaches of paying suppliers abroad, decided to build its own stitching unit in Kaduna instead, hiring local tailors and machinists to do the work at home.
That second company just did onshoring. It brought the production process back inside its own country's borders instead of relying on another country to do the work cheaper.
Governments push this too. When the United Kingdom worried that its medical supplies during the pandemic were stuck in factories in China, it started encouraging British firms to manufacture masks and ventilators on British soil, so the next crisis would not leave the country stranded.
For everyday Nigerians, this matters because onshoring can mean more local jobs, less dependence on the dollar for imported goods, and steadier supply when the naira is under pressure. But it can also mean higher prices at first, since local production is not always cheaper, at least not immediately.
Someone in the diaspora sending money home might notice this in a calm way, through the growing number of made in Nigeria labels replacing imported ones, a small sign that the economy is trying to build more of what it consumes.
A Nigerian shoe brand that used to import finished shoes from Guangzhou for ₦12,000 a pair decides to open a small factory in Aba instead. The shoes now cost ₦15,000 to make locally at first, but the owner keeps the jobs, the profit, and the naira within Nigeria's economy rather than sending it abroad.
Questions people ask
Is onshoring the same as reshoring?
They are close cousins. Reshoring specifically means bringing back work that had already moved abroad, while onshoring is the broader habit of keeping or building production at home in the first place.
Does onshoring always make goods more expensive?
Often at first, yes, because local wages, equipment costs, or smaller scale can raise prices. Over time, as local factories improve and grow, costs can fall, especially if the government supports the industry with better roads, power, or tax breaks.
Why would a country like Nigeria want more onshoring?
It reduces reliance on imported goods that need dollars to buy, protects jobs from being shipped abroad, and builds local skills and industries that can survive even when the naira is weak or global shipping gets expensive.
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