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Aliko Dangote has pulled in fresh capital to steady a business that has been bleeding money. Dangote Sugar Refinery, Nigeria's largest sugar producer, has raised about $356 million (₦486 billion) through an oversubscribed rights issue, using the proceeds to cut debt and fund a long-delayed push to grow more of its own sugar at home.
The company sold roughly 8.1 billion new shares at ₦60 each, offering existing holders two new shares for every three they owned, in one of the largest capital raises seen on the Nigerian Exchange. Shareholders approved the plan in April and the offer opened in late May. Its full take-up is a vote of confidence at a moment when the company badly needed one.
The raise follows a rough stretch. Dangote Sugar sank into three straight years of losses that eroded its balance sheet, before swinging back to a profit in the first half of this year. Management intends to use much of the new money to pay down borrowings, a step that would sharply reduce finance costs and free up earnings the company can redirect toward growth.
That growth hinges on a plan Dangote has been chasing for years. The company wants to lift the share of sugar it produces from Nigerian-grown cane rather than imported raw sugar, targeting 700,000 tonnes of local output within five years and 1.5 million tonnes a year over the longer term. It has said the wider program could create more than 75,000 jobs across cultivation, processing and supporting infrastructure.
The economics behind the strategy are stark. Nigeria consumes around 1.7 million tonnes of sugar a year and still imports most of the raw product it refines, spending roughly ₦954 billion, close to $650 million, on raw-sugar imports in the year to June 2025. Cutting that bill is the prize, both for Dangote Sugar and for a government keen to reduce the country's reliance on foreign supply.
The capital raise fits a familiar pattern for Africa's richest man, who has spent the year tapping equity and debt markets across his empire, from the refinery to cement and fertilizer, to fund an expansion he has branded Vision 2030. The immediate task for the sugar business is simpler: repair the balance sheet first, then build the local supply chain that has eluded it for more than a decade.
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