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This study examines the socio-economic impact of the Calabar Free Trade Zone (CFTZ) on Nigeria’s development between 1992 and 2025. Established as one of the country’s earliest Free Trade Zones, the CFTZ was designed to diversify the national economy by attracting foreign direct investment (FDI), promoting export-oriented industrialisation, generating employment, and facilitating technology transfer. Using qualitative historical methodology and drawing on primary and secondary sources, including government reports, investor records, and scholarly literature, the study evaluates key indicators, including industrial output, employment generation, FDI inflows, local content participation, infrastructure expansion, and human capital development, in Calabar and Cross River State. Anchored in economic growth theory, particularly the Solow–Swan model, the analysis explores how the Zone stimulates growth through capital accumulation, labour absorption, and technological advancement. The findings show that the CFTZ has contributed to job creation, export growth, infrastructure improvement, and skills development. However, its performance has been uneven and below potential due to persistent structural and institutional constraints, including bureaucratic bottlenecks, regulatory inconsistencies, unreliable power supply, shallow port draft, insecurity, weak industrial linkages, and limited integration into global markets. The study concludes that while the CFTZ remains a strategic instrument for economic diversification and regional development, its long-term contribution to sustainable growth has been constrained by policy instability and infrastructural deficits. It recommends comprehensive reforms, infrastructural upgrades, improved port efficiency, and stronger stakeholder collaboration to reposition the Zone as a catalyst for inclusive and sustainable socio-economic development in Nigeria.

Calabar Free Trade Zone, Socio-economic Development, Foreign Direct Investment,