Senegalese chicken billionaire Babacar Ngom to build $35 million poultry complex in Congo

Sedima, the giant Senegalese poultry group founded by businessman Babacar Ngom, plans to invest 20.47 billion CFA francs, or about $35 million, in an integrated farming and poultry complex at Nkouo in the Pool department of the Republic of Congo.

The project will be modeled on Sedima's operations in Senegal, according to business newspaper EcoMatin. It will cover the entire production chain, from growing the corn and soybeans used for animal feed to slaughtering and packaging chicken.

The investment is being carried out by the group's local subsidiary, Sedima Congo SA. It will be financed through a mix of equity and loans from regional banks, including BGFIBank and the Development Bank of Central African States, known by its French acronym BDEAC.

Once fully running, the complex is designed to produce 10,800 tonnes of corn, 6,600 tonnes of soybeans and 2,200 tonnes of broiler chicken a year. The plans include crop farms, a hatchery, poultry farms and a slaughterhouse.

A decade in the making

The project is the result of a push into Congo that Sedima began more than 10 years ago. In February 2015, the group's executives met poultry farmers in Pointe-Noire, Congo's commercial capital, to discuss producing and selling day-old chicks in the country.

When presenting the plan to Congolese authorities, Ngom said the company had found partners in the country with whom it was firmly committed to investing.

Congo, like much of Central Africa, imports a large share of the chicken and animal feed it consumes. Sedima's model of growing its own feed grains and controlling each stage of production is designed to compete with those imports on price and to supply local demand.

From 120 chicks to a regional group

Ngom started the business in 1976, at the age of 21, raising 120 broiler chicks on a budget of 60,000 CFA francs. He has often told the story in public. "I started with 120 chicks and a budget of 60,000 CFA francs," he said in one account.

The business became a formal company in the late 1980s and grew into Senegal's leading poultry group. It produces and sells day-old chicks, poultry and livestock feed and eggs, and it has expanded into wheat milling, grain farming, real estate and finance.

Sedima generated about 60 billion CFA francs in revenue in 2022, according to Jeune Afrique, with the vast majority of its business in Senegal. It also operates in Mali and Congo.

Ngom has kept tight control of the group. A 2019-era disclosure by Belgian development lender BIO, which has financed Sedima's feed mill and wheat mill, described him as the company's founder and main shareholder, with 98% of the shares.

Since 2016, the company has been run by his daughter, Anta Babacar Ngom Diack, who joined Sedima in 2009 after studying in Canada and France. She stepped into national politics in 2023, founding the Alternative for New Citizens party and running in Senegal's 2024 presidential election.

The Congo project is Sedima's largest foreign investment to date and the clearest sign yet that the family wants to export the integrated model it built in Senegal to other African markets.