Africa Finance Corporation Commits $600 Million to Dangote Fertiliser Expansion That Could Triple Nigeria’s Urea Output

The Africa Finance Corporation has approved the AFC $600 million Dangote fertiliser expansion facility for Greenview Fertiliser Corp., the fertiliser holding company of the Dangote Group that will triple Nigeria’s urea fertiliser production capacity and establish a new manufacturing plant in Ethiopia. The funding forms part of a broader $7 billion programme that ranks among the most consequential agricultural infrastructure investments on the continent and positions Dangote as the cornerstone of a new African fertiliser supply chain. The AFC Dangote $7 billion fertiliser expansion Nigeria Ethiopia urea programme targets two simultaneous outcomes: scaling Nigeria’s urea fertiliser production from 3 million tonnes per annum to 9 million tonnes and constructing an entirely new 3 million tonnes per annum urea plant in Ethiopia. Combined, the two projects would give Africa a domestically owned fertiliser platform of a scale the continent has never had, reducing the import dependency that has long made African farmers vulnerable to global commodity price swings. The transaction deepens a relationship between AFC and the Dangote Group that has already demonstrated its commercial credibility. AFC’s previous $300 million senior term loan to the Dangote Refinery was fully repaid, giving both parties a proven track record on which to anchor a facility nearly twice the size. Aliko Dangote, President and Chief Executive of Dangote Industries Limited, framed the expansion as both a commercial and continental obligation. “Expanding our fertiliser production capacity in Nigeria and developing a new plant in Ethiopia will strengthen Africa’s food security, support agricultural productivity, and deepen the continent’s industrial base,” he said, describing the AFC commitment as another milestone in a partnership he expects to define the next phase of Dangote Fertiliser’s growth. For AFC, the investment is an answer to what its leadership considers the defining question facing the continent. Samaila Zubairu, President and CEO of AFC, said the arithmetic of Africa’s population growth makes fertiliser infrastructure not a sector bet but a structural necessity. “The question before Africa is simple: how will we feed 2.5 billion people by 2050?” he said. “This is not just an investment in fertiliser production. It is evidence of the Africa we are building.” READ ALSO:

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That framing connects the Dangote Group Greenview Fertiliser Corp. Africa currently imports a significant share of the fertiliser its farmers use, a structural vulnerability that drives up input costs, suppresses yields, and undermines the agricultural productivity gains that could otherwise lift rural incomes at scale. A domestically controlled urea platform of 12 million tonnes per annum across Nigeria and Ethiopia would fundamentally alter that dynamic. The Africa food security investment 2026 context matters here too. With climate variability increasing pressure on rain-fed agriculture across Sub-Saharan Africa and the Sahel, the availability of affordable, locally produced fertiliser is increasingly a food sovereignty question as much as an agricultural one. AFC’s decision to back the expansion at this scale reflects a calculation that the infrastructure gap is wide enough, and the demographic pressure urgent enough, that waiting is the greater risk. For Nigeria, the expansion reinforces the country’s ambition to become a net exporter of agricultural inputs rather than a net importer. For Ethiopia, the new plant represents an anchor investment in industrial capacity that could catalyse downstream agricultural development across East Africa.