If you’re based in Nigeria, then you have to find ways to save and invest in Dollars. It’s not like you have a choice, well you do, but if you choose to save your Naira in your bank account or you invest in Naira only, then it seems you love to see the wealth you worked hard to gather, depreciate in value.
We all witnessed how the value of the Naira was depreciating rapidly against the United States Dollar on a daily basis. In January of 2024, the naira was trading at around #1,200 per dollar, fast-forward to the ending of February, the Naira depreciated to #1800 per dollar. Although, it seems to be showing strength currently but for how long? What I know is, there was a time when 1 Dollar = 1 Naira, now look at where it is today.
Inflation is the killer of wealth, it makes goods and services expensive and it reduces the purchasing power of people. This is why it’s important to save or invest in assets that are considered to be able to hedge against inflation.
If you’re a Nigerian, the safest asset to save or invest is the USD. Thankfully, it’s a lot easier to save or invest in Dollars in Nigeria today. If you want to save and invest in dollars, there are few ways to go about that. Although they’re not without risks but here are the ways to save and invest in dollars in Nigeria.
1. Buy Physical Dollars from BDCs
Basically, a B.D.C (Bureau De Change) agent buy and sell dollars in the unofficial market, also known as the Black Market in Nigeria. They have districts and zones allover the country. So if you want to save in dollars, you have to buy from the BDC agents but you can’t just save it in a bank. To do so, you’d need a domiciliary account.
This means you’d either have to save your dollars by opening a domiciliary account in the bank or you save it at home in a safe or anywhere private.
Saving your dollars at home means you risk loosing your money to thieves or it gets destroyed by fire, damaged by water or eaten by rats. Which is why saving it in the bank is a lot safer.
2. Buy USDT
USDT is a stablecoin meaning it’s value is pegged to the dollar. I don’t recommend this at all because USDT is a token issued by a shady firm called Bitfinex/Tether. A lot of Nigerians don’t know this but USDT is literally banned in the US. It may be called a stablecoin but that doesn’t mean it’s stability is assured. Besides, there’s no assurance that each USDT issued by Tether is backed by USD because Tether has repeatedly refused to get audited by a reputable auditing firm.
But if you wish to buy USDT in Nigeria , then you’d need a crypto exchange that offers P2P services, e.g Kucoin, Gate.io, etc. Binance was the best crypto exchange that offers P2P services to Nigerians but was unfortunately banned by the govt of Nigeria.
3. Invest in Cowrywise Dollar Mutual Funds
Investing in Mutual Funds offered by Cowrywise, is one of the safest ways to invest in dollars as a Nigerian. Cowrywise is a duly registered fund manager with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) of Nigeria.
With Cowrywise, you can invest or save your hard-earned money without worry and as stated earlier, you could also invest in dollars by buying the dollar mutual funds offered via the firm through different legit firms in Nigeria. I suggest you DYOR and more details about Cowrywise can be found here.
4. Invest in US Stocks with the Bamboo App
Bamboo is one of the few firms that offers US stocks to Nigerians. You don’t have to worry about investing with Bamboo because Bamboo is duly licensed by the Nigerian Securities Exchange Commission (SEC) as a digital sub-broker. They have also partnered with registered brokerage firms that provide the securities on their platform.
Bamboo makes it easy to invest in US stocks and ETFs, all that is required from you is to register by providing your valid details including your BVN and National ID and you’d be good to go.
Bamboo offers stocks from many popular US companies including Microsoft, Google, Amazon, Tesla, etc and popular ETFs such as the S&P 500, QQQ, VOO, VTI, etc. So investing using the Bamboo App is one of the ways to invest in dollars as a Nigerian. More details about Bamboo can be found here.
Conclusion
So these are some of the few ways to save or invest dollars in Nigeria. I recommend that you do your own research before choosing which of the options is best for you. Of course, there are other ways and methods of investing and saving in Dollars as a Nigerian but the options mentioned are among the easiest ways to get, save or invest the greenback.