Lagos has emerged as the most expensive city in Africa for premium office fit-outs, according to Turner and Townsend's Global Office Fit-Out Cost Guide 2026. High-specification office developments in Lagos now cost around $2,718 per square metre, placing the city ahead of Nairobi at approximately $2,081 per square metre and Johannesburg at approximately $2,026 per square metre in nominal dollar terms. The figures reflect rising demand for Grade A workspaces in Lagos, limited contractor availability, and supply constraints across the commercial real estate sector.

Why Lagos Leads

Several structural factors are pushing Lagos office costs to the top of the African market. Nigeria's reliance on imported building materials means that construction costs are directly exposed to currency volatility and logistics challenges in ways that South African or Kenyan markets, with stronger local manufacturing bases, are less vulnerable to. The concentration of multinational and regional corporate headquarters in Lagos also sustains demand for premium space even as construction costs rise, creating a market where developers can push prices upward without losing occupiers.

The report notes that while Nairobi ranks highest on the comparative fit-out cost index, which adjusts figures for economic comparability across markets, Lagos leads in actual dollar terms. The distinction matters for understanding what the figures reveal: Lagos is genuinely the most expensive place on the continent to build a premium office in real money, even if Nairobi looks relatively more expensive when adjusted for its economic context.



The Flight to Quality

Across Africa, Turner and Townsend's report identifies a growing shift toward what it describes as a flight to quality, with companies increasingly willing to invest in modern, technology-enabled office spaces designed to improve productivity and employee experience. This trend is reshaping commercial real estate priorities across the continent's major business hubs, where multinational firms are consolidating operations into fewer but higher-quality locations rather than maintaining large footprints in older, lower-specification buildings.

For Lagos specifically, that trend reinforces the premium end of the market while leaving older office stock increasingly difficult to let at competitive rates. The city's position at the top of the African cost table is a signal of both its economic importance as a business hub and the structural challenges that make building anything there more expensive than it should be.