Indian billionaire Raj Gupta's African Industries gets 500 hectares to build Nigeria's largest solar-powered steel plant

Niger State has handed 500 hectares of land to a subsidiary of Raj Gupta's African Industries Group to build what the steel magnate says will be sub-Saharan Africa's largest solar-powered steel operation, alongside an industrial park.

Governor Mohammed Bago handed the land to Abuja Steel Mills Limited at a groundbreaking ceremony in Sabon Wuse, in the Tafa area of the north-central state, in late June. Attended by government officials, investors and industry figures, the event was billed by the governor as a landmark investment meant to reshape the state's industrial base and pull in fresh capital.

The site will host a large solar farm and the AIG Industrial Park. Gupta, group chairman of African Industries, called the allocation historic and said the plant could become the largest solar power installation in Nigeria, and possibly in West Africa or the wider sub-Saharan region.

Gupta framed the investment as more than an industrial expansion. He said the purpose ran to development, upliftment and the empowerment of people, and argued that a company that grows while the people around it do not has failed the next generation. He said the project would put Nigeria on both the global steel map and the world's renewable energy map.

The land sits in a state that is positioning itself as an industrial hub. Bago said Niger would gazette a further 200,000 hectares stretching toward the border with Kaduna State to open more room for factories, drawing on the Ajaokuta-Kaduna-Kano gas pipeline, the state's solar potential and its hydropower dams at Kainji, Jebba, Zungeru and Shiroro.

Federal officials used the ceremony to press their industrial agenda. Power Minister Joseph Tegbe called the handover an act of industrial statesmanship and said the government was working to fix the electricity shortfalls that have long frustrated manufacturers. He said investments of that scale would outlast any single administration.

Steel Development Minister Shuaibu Audu praised the state for allocating the land and credited African Industries with growing from a small operation into one of the largest steel producers in Nigeria and West Africa, employing what officials put at some 10,000 workers. He linked the project to President Bola Tinubu's goal of building a $1 trillion economy by 2030 through steel, power and other industries.

John Enoh, the minister of state for industry, trade and investment, said the private sector would have to carry the country's new industrial policy. He said the government could not deliver productivity without projects of that kind and that the plant would cut Nigeria's import bill while creating jobs.

The scale of the land drew repeated comment. Officials noted that 500 hectares is a substantial grant and said the solar farm and park would anchor manufacturing in the region for years. Bago urged the host community around Dikko to support the development and pressed the company to give priority to local hiring.

African Industries has deep roots in Nigeria. The group traces its history back more than five decades, to the early 1970s, and has grown into a diversified conglomerate spanning steel, mining, chemicals, glass and real estate, with around 31 plants across the country and thousands of workers on its payroll. It is widely described as the largest steel producer in Nigeria and West Africa.

Abuja Steel Mills, the unit receiving the land, is one of the group's steel businesses. Its manufacturing base has expanded sharply over the past two decades, and the move into large-scale solar marks a push to power heavy industry with renewable energy rather than the diesel and grid supply that many Nigerian factories rely on.

Raj Gupta chairs the group, while his brother Alok Gupta serves as managing director, running a business the family built up under the guidance of their father. Raj Gupta, long known in Nigerian industry as a steel magnate, has cast the solar-steel plan as the group's most ambitious project yet.

Power remains the central challenge. Nigeria's grid is unreliable and expensive, and manufacturers often run costly private generators, a drag that has pushed several large industrial users toward building their own supply. A dedicated solar plant of the size Gupta describes would give the group a measure of independence from the national grid.

Construction timelines, the plant's capacity and the cost of the investment were not disclosed at the ceremony. What was clear is the ambition: a single site in Niger meant to tie together steel, solar power and an industrial park, and to test whether Nigeria can build heavy industry on its own sunlight.