Nigeria returns to JP Morgan’s global bond index after 11 years

JP Morgan has included Federal Government of Nigeria (FGN) bonds in its freshly launched Government Bond Index–Emerging Markets Edge (GBI-EM Edge), relaunching the country into the bank’s bond benchmark after 11 years.

The development came days before FTSE Russell’s reclassification of Nigeria from Unclassified to Frontier market status, effective September 21, 2026, after the index provider concluded that the West African country had met the required market-accessibility criteria.

FGN bonds were first included in the J.P. Morgan GBI-EM in 2012, and attracted substantial foreign investment into the domestic securities market. But the country exited the GBI-EM Global Diversified Index in 2015 amid foreign exchange liquidity squeeze.

The global investment banking giant announced Nigeria’s re-entry into the bond market via its Global Index Research report yesterday.

JP Morgan’s GBI-EM Edge is a benchmark which, tracks local-currency government debt across 26 frontier emerging markets. Nigeria entered the index with a 7.40 per cent weighting, one of the highest among participating countries and close to J.P. Morgan’s maximum country weighting of eight per cent.

The benchmark includes $17.47 billion worth of eligible Nigerian government bonds across 16 instruments, with the securities recording an average yield to maturity of 17.1 per cent, an average duration of 3.38 years and a B- Sovereign credit rating. GeographicReference

The Nigerian allocation is among the larger country weights in the GBI-EM Edge. Countries like Vietnam, Egypt, Morocco, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Kazakhstan attracted the maximum eight per cent weighting, while Sri Lanka weighted 7.5 per cent.

Kenya has a 6.91 per cent weighting, followed by Tunisia at 5.32 per cent, and Uganda at 4.84 per cent. Frontier African markets collectively account for 44.5 per cent of the index, compared with 31.5 per cent for Asian markets.

Overall, the GBI-EM Edge tracks about $328 billion in local-currency government debt across 425 instruments, 26 markets and 24 currencies.

JP Morgan said the expansion of the benchmark reflected the growing importance of frontier local-currency debt markets, as well as improvements in bond issuance, auction processes, post-trade infrastructure, and access for foreign investors.

Nigeria’s inclusion in global bond index is expected to attract about $17.5 billion into the country’s debt market and lower bond yields by up to 200 basis points.

Welcoming the new development, the Federal Ministry of Finance, in a statement, said Nigeria’s inclusion was a reflection of growing investor confidence in Nigeria’s economic reforms, particularly the stabilisation of the naira, clearance of the foreign exchange backlog, stronger growth in gross domestic product (GDP), and easing inflation. 

The ministry stated that Nigeria met the index’s eligibility criteria on two major fronts: liquidity, with FGN bonds actively traded under a Two-Way Quote System, and issuance size, with outstanding bond volumes exceeding the minimum threshold of $250 million per tenor.