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Before the missiles started flying over Iran, Dangote Fertilizer Ltd. was just another industrial success story on a continent trying to feed itself. Now, with the Strait of Hormuz effectively shut to commercial shipping and global fertilizer markets in disarray, the company's massive Lagos plant has become one of the most strategically important fertilizer facilities on the planet.
Orders have been flooding in.
"Demand has increased significantly because of shortages in the international market," said Devakumar Edwin, vice president at Dangote Industries Ltd., in an interview with Bloomberg. The remark was brief, almost matter-of-fact. But it captures something significant about how fast the world has changed since the U.S. and Israel launched strikes on Iran on Feb. 28.
A chokepoint that chokes more than oil
Most people know the Strait of Hormuz as the narrow waterway through which roughly a fifth of the world's oil flows every day. Fewer know it also handles a substantial portion of global fertilizer shipments, particularly urea and ammonia produced in Iran and the broader Gulf region.
About a third of global fertilizer supply passes through the strait, while natural gas from the region is critical to the production of nutrients for global agriculture. When Iranian retaliation effectively halted commercial traffic through the corridor, that third of global supply vanished almost overnight.
Granular urea prices in Egypt surged by $60 per metric ton almost immediately after the strait's effective closure. In New Orleans, the price of March barges for urea, the most widely used nitrogen fertilizer and a staple of U.S. corn production, rose $60 to $80 higher compared with prices seen just days before, with traders warning of "potentially hundreds of dollars per ton increases in the coming days."
Dangote's moment
The Dangote fertilizer plant in Lagos is Africa's largest granulated urea facility, with an annual capacity of roughly 3 million tonnes of urea and ammonia. The company exports about 37% of its output, with the United States among its primary markets. Aliko Dangote, Africa's richest man, has said the company aims to become the world's largest urea exporter within four years.
That ambition looks considerably more achievable today than it did a week ago.
Fertilizer can make up as much as 50% of farmers' production costs, according to agricultural economist Corne Louw of GrainSA, the body representing South African farmers. With Iran and Qatar among the biggest suppliers now effectively sidelined, buyers who previously had other options are scrambling for alternatives.
Dangote happens to be one of the few large producers sitting outside the conflict zone, producing at scale, and already export-ready.
Africa's deeper problem
The irony here cuts in multiple directions. Africa, the continent most in need of affordable fertilizer to lift agricultural productivity, currently imports more than 6 million metric tons of fertilizer every year. That dependence has always left farmers exposed to global price swings and supply disruptions. Now the same disruption that is sending order inquiries toward Dangote's Lagos facility is threatening to push up input costs for African farmers who rely on imports.
Disruptions to fertilizer production and transport would further constrain agricultural output, potentially raising global food price risks and amplifying social and political pressures in vulnerable regions.
In June last year, Aliko Dangote unveiled plans to expand the $2.5 billion fertilizer plant. The expansion is intended to significantly increase production capacity and reduce Africa's dependence on imported crop nutrients. Dangote said at the time that the continent could achieve self-sufficiency in fertilizer production within 40 months.
The Middle East conflict, paradoxically, makes that case more urgently than any boardroom presentation ever could.
The broader food security warning
Analysts warn that if the supply shock lasts more than a few weeks, prices could return to the highs seen in 2022 when the Russia-Ukraine war began. That year, fertilizer prices hit record levels, devastating smallholder farmers across Africa and Asia who had no buffer against the shock.
China is also likely to expand fertilizer export controls in response to the conflict, according to two agricultural analysts, though the restrictions may not be formally announced and could instead be communicated quietly to major producers and customs officials. That would tighten an already strained global supply picture even further.
Natural gas, the primary feedstock in nitrogen fertilizer production, has also spiked sharply since the conflict began. European natural gas prices nearly doubled after Iranian drones attacked Qatari gas facilities on March 2, followed by QatarEnergy announcing a halt to all gas production in the country. Higher gas costs mean higher production costs everywhere, narrowing the margin advantage even for producers like Dangote that sit outside the conflict zone.
A test of readiness
What the conflict has done, in a compressed and brutal way, is expose how thin the world's fertilizer supply buffers actually are. A single waterway. A handful of major producing countries. And a planting season that will not wait for geopolitics to sort itself out.
Dangote Fertilizer's Lagos plant is already fielding those calls. Whether it can ramp up fast enough, and at prices farmers can absorb, will matter well beyond Nigeria's borders. The next few weeks will be a real test of whether Africa's biggest fertilizer bet can deliver when the world needs it most.
