Africa Finance Corporation lends Dangote Group $600 million to triple its fertiliser production capacity

Africa Finance Corporation has signed a $600 million loan agreement with Dangote Group to fund the expansion of its fertiliser production capacity in Nigeria and the construction of a new plant in Ethiopia, in the largest single financing commitment to African fertiliser production in recent memory.

The facility was extended to GreenView Fertilizer Corporation, the Dangote Fertilizer holding company, and forms part of a broader $7 billion fertiliser expansion programme that Dangote Group is executing across the continent. The Nigerian component will increase the Dangote Fertilizer Plant's urea production capacity from 3 million metric tonnes per annum to 9 million metric tonnes, tripling current output at the Ibeju-Lekki, Lagos State facility, which is already one of the largest granulated urea fertiliser complexes in the world. The Ethiopian component will fund the development of a new 3 million metric tonne urea plant, giving Dangote a second major production base in East Africa.

Aliko Dangote, President of Dangote Group and Africa's richest man with a net worth of approximately $37 billion, said the expansion would generate more than $4 billion annually in fertiliser export earnings for Nigeria within three years.

"What he's actually given us this money for is a company where by the next three years we'll be able to have an export of over $4 billion worth of urea fertilizer, and I think it is a big contribution to the foreign exchange income of the country," Dangote said. "You can continue to count on us. When we say that we want to grow our group to $100 billion by 2030, it doesn't mean that we want to grow alone, we want to grow together, especially with African Finance Corporation among other notable institutions in Africa."

Samaila Zubairu, President and Chief Executive of Africa Finance Corporation, described the transaction as a demonstration of AFC's capital recycling model. The corporation had previously invested in Dangote Industries Limited and received full repayment. The $600 million facility represents a redeployment and doubling of that recycled capital into the group's next growth phase.

"This transaction demonstrates AFC's capital recycling model in action," Zubairu said. "Following the successful repayment of our earlier investment in Dangote Industries Limited, we are redeploying and doubling that capital into Dangote Group's next phase of growth. By supporting the expansion of Dangote Fertilizer, AFC is backing a proven African industrial champion whose investments will strengthen food security, reduce import dependence, and create long-term economic value across the continent."

The Dangote Fertilizer Plant at Ibeju-Lekki is Nigeria's flagship industrial asset outside the oil and gas sector. It began commercial production in 2022, supplying urea fertiliser to Nigerian farmers and exporting to markets across Africa, Europe and the Americas. Nigeria had historically imported the majority of its fertiliser requirements, creating a persistent drain on foreign exchange reserves and making agricultural input costs vulnerable to global commodity price movements and shipping disruptions. The plant was designed to reverse that dependency. The expansion is designed to eliminate it entirely and convert Nigeria into a major global fertiliser exporter.

Africa's dependence on imported fertiliser has been one of the structural vulnerabilities in the continent's food security framework. The continent imports approximately 50 percent of its fertiliser requirements from global suppliers, predominantly from Russia, China and the Middle East. The Russia-Ukraine war's disruption to global fertiliser supply chains in 2022 exposed the severity of that dependence when prices spiked and supply tightened simultaneously, threatening agricultural output across sub-Saharan Africa. A 12 million metric tonne per annum combined Dangote capacity across Nigeria and Ethiopia would give the continent a domestically produced supply buffer of significant scale.

The expansion is expected to generate manufacturing jobs, strengthen Nigeria's foreign exchange earnings, reduce the country's agricultural input import bill and improve fertiliser availability and affordability for smallholder farmers across Africa, who represent the majority of the continent's agricultural workforce and currently face fertiliser application rates that are among the lowest in the world, constraining yields significantly below potential levels.