Nigeria is losing an estimated $1.1 billion every year to medical tourism, a figure that is significantly draining the country’s foreign exchange reserves and stalling investment in local healthcare infrastructure.
This alarming statistic was disclosed by the African Export-Import Bank (Afreximbank) during its 32nd Annual Meetings held on Thursday in Abuja.
Mrs. Oluranti Doherty, Afreximbank’s Managing Director for Export Development, delivered a keynote address where she described medical tourism as a “significant drain” on Nigeria’s foreign exchange and a major impediment to building a robust and reliable local healthcare system.
“We had our member countries losing a lot of foreign exchange to medical tourism,” Doherty explained.
“We just talked about Nigeria, where our medical tourism annually is about $1.1 billion. The entire continent is about $7 billion just because we can’t help ourselves when we come up with chronic diseases. That’s money going to other economies, building their institutions.”
Doherty emphasized that Nigeria’s continued reliance on foreign hospitals signals not only a health crisis but also a strategic economic failure.
Vital funds that could be channeled into strengthening domestic healthcare infrastructure are instead flowing abroad, enriching other economies.
Beyond the financial drain, Doherty also highlighted the mass exodus of skilled health professionals from the continent as another critical issue.
“The best of talents in the health sector were going out of the continent, working in places such as India, Asia, the Middle East, America,” she noted, describing it as a persistent problem.
In a proactive response to these growing challenges, Afreximbank launched its Health and Medical Tourism Programme in 2012.
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This initiative aims to strategically link healthcare provision with broader economic development across Africa. A flagship project under this program is the Africa Medical Center of Excellence (AMCE), currently under construction in Abuja.
“The AMCE is a 170-bed facility equipped with world-class technology,” Doherty proudly stated, detailing its cutting-edge features, including an 18 MeV cyclotron, a three-Tesla MRI, and a 20-bed intensive care unit.
Afreximbank has committed over $450 million to this ambitious project.
“Afreximbank had to go where no one has gone before. We are the innovative financier, the innovative investor,” she affirmed.
The AMCE’s overarching goal is to provide healthcare services that meet not just African, but global standards, embodying the principle of “Africans coming up with solutions to African challenges.”
Doherty concluded with a powerful call for renewed efforts to rebuild trust in domestic healthcare systems across Nigeria and the entire continent.
She advocated for bold policy reforms that ensure high-quality, accessible care is available locally.
Only through such concerted investment and commitment, she argued, can African countries effectively stem the tide of medical tourism and genuinely invest in their own people and institutions.