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Cement is not glamorous, but it is the one product you can almost use to read a country’s ambition. You see it in new highways, ports, airports, housing estates, and the quiet spread of block-making yards at the edge of town. Across Africa, that appetite is now big enough to support a serious money story. Industry trackers estimate Africa’s cement market at about $8.1 billion in 2024, rising to $8.7 billion in 2025, with projections pushing it toward $11.7 billion by 2029.
Yet the continent’s cement reality has long been a contradiction: high prices, thin competition, and demand that still trails other regions. A World Bank working paper using internationally comparable price data found the average price in Africa was $252 per tonne in 2011, while consumption was the lowest of any continent in that dataset. It also noted the typical African economy had low installed capacity of about 3 megatons per year in 2011, and cement spend averaged about 1.3 percent of GDP, roughly 13.5 percent of construction investment.
That gap between need and supply is exactly where fortunes are made. What is changing now is ownership. Multinationals still loom large, but the most aggressive growth stories are increasingly local: greenfield plants financed by regional capital, and a new wave of acquisitions where African groups buy assets the globals are shedding. Holcim’s deals in East Africa, selling its Uganda unit to Sarrai Group and its Tanzania stake to Amsons, became a neat symbol of that shift.
Below are the homegrown names to know, the moguls and billionaire builders turning limestone into balance sheets.
Aliko Dangote, Nigeria
Company: Dangote Cement
Where it operates: Nigeria plus a pan African footprint spanning 10 African countries
Annual output or capacity: about 52 million tonnes per year across Africa
Dangote is the reference point because he industrialised cement at scale and then exported the playbook. Dangote Cement describes itself as Sub Saharan Africa’s leading cement producer, with capacity of 52.0 million tonnes per year across ten countries. In practical terms, that scale makes Dangote both a manufacturer and a market maker: when he adds a line, prices move; when he exports clinker, neighbors feel it.
What makes his cement fortune distinct is geography. Dangote’s footprint spans multiple markets including Cameroon, Congo, Ethiopia, Ghana, Senegal, Sierra Leone, South Africa, Tanzania and Zambia, built around a vertically integrated model that runs from quarry to customer.
Abdulsamad Rabiu, Nigeria
Company: BUA Cement
Where it operates: Nigeria, with plants in Sokoto and Edo and new builds underway
Annual output or capacity: 17 million tonnes per annum installed capacity
Rabiu’s cement story is a sprint compared to Dangote’s marathon. The company has described 2024 as a landmark year after commissioning new lines that lifted installed capacity to 17 million tonnes per annum, with another 3 million tonne plant under construction.
The Rabiu angle is competition. Nigeria is the continent’s biggest private battlefield for cement capital, and BUA has positioned itself as the credible counterweight, pushing utilisation, distribution reach, and pricing power in a market where infrastructure and housing demand never really goes away.
Anas Sefrioui, Morocco
Company: CIMAF
Where it operates: 10 African countries through grinding plants, plus Morocco via integrated plants
Annual output or capacity: about 12 million tonnes a year; 13 grinding plants in 10 African countries
Sefrioui is better known globally for property, but CIMAF is one of the most quietly expansive African cement stories of the past decade. The group has been described as producing about 12 million tons a year, with 13 grinding plants in 10 African countries spanning West and Central Africa.
CIMAF’s model leans into speed. Grinding plants are faster to deploy than integrated kilns, and they let the group chase demand pockets across borders without waiting years for full clinker capacity.
Mohammed Al Amoudi, Ethiopia
Company: Derba MIDROC Cement
Where it operates: Ethiopia
Annual output or capacity: about 2.5 million tonnes per year
Derba is one of the plants that helped reset Ethiopia’s cement equation. Public project documentation has cited around 2.5 million tonnes per year at full capacity.
In a country where industrial policy and construction cycles collide, cement is strategic. Al Amoudi’s cement footprint sits inside a wider set of bets, but Derba remains the iconic kiln that anchored his industrial presence at home.
Narendra Raval, Kenya
Company: Devki Group, National Cement and Simba Cement
Where it operates: Kenya, with a regional export posture
Annual output or capacity: 7.5 million tonnes per year cement capacity
In East Africa, Raval is the name contractors mention when they complain about price wars, and then admit they love the steady supply. The group has been reported as among the largest clinker producers in the region, with 7.5 million tonnes a year of cement capacity.
His competitive edge is industrial discipline: limestone, power, logistics, distribution. The result is a Kenyan cement champion built with the same instincts that made Dangote dominant in West Africa.
Edha Nahdi, Tanzania
Company: Amsons Group
Where it operates: Tanzania and Kenya, with ambitions across East Africa
Annual output or capacity: Mbeya 1.1 million tonnes a year; Camel 0.85 million tonnes a year; Bamburi expansion targets about 3.4 million tonnes a year cement in Kenya
Amsons is acting like a regional consolidator, not a domestic producer. It has been named as the buyer in deals involving major cement assets in Tanzania, and it has also built a Kenyan platform through its Bamburi ambitions. Its Tanzania portfolio is often described as Mbeya Cement at around 1.1 million tonnes a year and Camel Cement at around 0.85 million tonnes a year. In Kenya, published plans around Bamburi’s new clinker line suggest capacity could rise materially, with cement production projected to move from about 1.8 million tonnes to about 3.4 million tonnes annually once completed.
Ibrahim Mahama, Ghana
Company: Dzata Cement
Where it operates: Ghana
Annual output or capacity: projected 2 million tonnes a year, with public talk of up to 3 million tonnes as it scales
Ghana’s cement scene is crowded, but Dzata is a clear example of local capital pushing into a space long shaped by foreign brands. The company has publicly put its projected production capacity at 2 million tonnes a year, while local reporting has carried management projections of up to 3 million tonnes annually as it scales.
