Long before Nigeria’s return to civilian rule in 1999, the country’s leather sector stood among its most formidable export earners, a status now largely forgotten. Kano, the ancient commercial hub of the north, anchored this trade for over a century. Its tanneries, some dating to the 15th century, processed goat and sheep skins using traditional pit-tanning methods that produced the internationally prized “Moroccan leather”, despite the name, sourced almost entirely from Sokoto red goatskin and Kano’s own herds.
By the colonial period, hides and skins ranked among Nigeria’s top non-agricultural exports, shipped through Kano’s rail link to Lagos and onward to tanneries in Europe. The trade complemented the groundnut pyramids that defined the north’s export economy, giving the region a diversified commodity base beyond peanuts alone.
The immediate post-independence decades sustained this momentum. Kano’s Bompai and Sharada industrial zones housed tanneries and finished-leather factories supplying footwear, bags, and upholstery both domestically and for export to Europe and the Gulf. Nigerian-made leather goods, including the famed Hausa-crafted sandals and pouches, carried genuine international cachet.
The decline set in through the 1970s oil boom. As petrodollars flooded government revenue, agriculture and allied industries, leather included, lost policy priority and investment. Neglect of livestock infrastructure, poor veterinary services, and disease reduced skin quality, while currency appreciation from oil wealth made Nigerian leather less competitive abroad. The Structural Adjustment Programme of the mid-1980s briefly revived exports through naira devaluation, but chronic power shortages, weak effluent treatment infrastructure, and the informal, fragmented nature of tannery operations prevented Kano from reclaiming its earlier scale.
By the time military rule ended, Nigeria’s leather sector had shifted from finished-goods exporter to a supplier of raw and semi-processed hides — a lower-value position it has struggled to escape ever since, even as global demand for African leather has grown.
