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Aliko Dangote is mounting his biggest push yet into sugar, raising N500 billion from shareholders and building a new processing plant as Nigeria scrambles to close an import gap that still accounts for more than two thirds of the country's annual consumption.
Dangote Sugar Refinery shareholders recently approved the rights issue to strengthen the company's balance sheet and accelerate backward integration projects that span roughly 45,000 hectares of sugarcane plantation across Adamawa and Nasarawa states. The centerpiece is a new 6,000-tonne-per-day factory at the group's Numan complex in Adamawa, where construction is now at an advanced stage.
The expansion comes as the federal government presses Dangote to hit 600,000 metric tonnes of annual output by 2030. John Enoh, the minister of state for industry, issued the target during an inspection of the Numan site alongside the executive secretary of the National Sugar Development Council, calling the company the most consequential player in the sector.
"DSR is a very big player in the industry, one of the three major operators. Our circumstances in this sector will continue to depend on what DSR does," Enoh said.
Nigeria consumes approximately 1.8 million metric tonnes of sugar each year, but domestic production covers only a fraction of that demand, leaving the country dependent on imports that drain foreign exchange reserves. Reaching 600,000 tonnes would make Dangote Sugar the single largest contributor to closing that deficit.
Financing has been the persistent bottleneck. Enoh acknowledged that affordable long-term capital remains scarce for agricultural processors and said the government is exploring support mechanisms. The N500 billion rights issue gives Dangote Sugar a war chest that few competitors in the sector can match, underscoring Africa's richest man's willingness to deploy patient capital into a business where returns are measured in harvest cycles rather than quarterly earnings.
Olakunle Alake, vice president of the Dangote Group, told the minister that additional investments beyond the rights issue would be deployed to meet the 2030 deadline, reinforcing a diversification strategy that now stretches across petroleum, cement, fertilizer and sugar.
