In Huaxin, Dangote and BUA face a rival powered by Hong Kong capital

When Huaxin completed its $1bn purchase of Holcim’s stake in Lafarge Africa last August, the deal was widely read in Lagos as a domestic fight: a third force entering to challenge the duopoly of Aliko Dangote and Abdul Samad Rabiu. Twelve months on, it looks like something bigger.

Nigeria has become the anchor asset in a Chinese group’s bid to build a listed global building-materials multinational – and the contest for Africa’s largest cement market is now being shaped as much in Hong Kong as in Abuja.

The clues came quickly; two days after closing the Nigerian deal, Huaxin — which is listed on the Hong Kong Stock exchange — announced plans to consolidate all its overseas assets into a new subsidiary intended for an overseas stock-market listing, part of its stated ambition to become a “globally leading multinational” in building materials. The group has since renamed itself Huaxin Building Materials, and its Nigerian unit followed suit.

In April, shareholders voted to rebrand Lafarge Africa, a name associated with Nigerian construction for six decades, as HBM Nigeria.

Market verdict

The market has delivered its verdict. The HBM Nigeria stock, trading around ₦68 before the deal was announced in December 2024, has since climbed past ₦300, making it one of the best performers on the NGX according to BusinessDay. Nigeria’s Senate, which had earlier warned of “excessive foreign control” in a strategically sensitive sector, approved the transaction in July after finding no legal impediment.

The playbook is familiar from Huaxin’s decade-long march across the continent: buy existing plants rather than build, then modernise quickly. Tanzania in 2020, Zambia and Malawi in 2021, South Africa and Mozambique in 2023 – and now four Nigerian plants with 10m tonnes of capacity, taking the group close to 30m tonnes across Africa. What is new is the speed.

HBM Nigeria says expansions at Sagamu and Ashaka will add 4.5m tonnes by January 2027, a build of just over a year, whereas three is standard, because the parent company manufactures its own equipment.

‘The Chinese are the best’

Nigeria’s incumbents profess calm. “We are not new to each other,” Dangote Cement chief executive Arvind Pathak told investors in March, noting the two groups already compete in Zambia, Tanzania and South Africa – and insisting Huaxin’s arrival had, so far, left no mark on his business. Dangote is racing ahead regardless, targeting 80m tonnes of capacity by 2030 and a rapidly growing clinker-export trade.

Rabiu, for his part, offers the most disarming assessment of the newcomer. “The Chinese are the best,” the BUA chairman told The Africa Reportearlier this year, recalling how much faster and cheaper Chinese-built lines proved than European alternatives. His own $240m Sokoto expansion is being built by China’s CBMI.

Stress test for sovereignty

It also highlights the irony of the sovereignty debate that shadowed this deal through Nigeria’s courts and Senate. The protectionist policy of the Obasanjo era succeeded precisely because it forced the creation of world-class capacity – much of it Chinese-engineered.

The arrival of a Chinese owner-operator, capitalised offshore and answerable to global investors, is less a threat to that model than a stress test for it. If Dangote, BUA and HBM now fight it out with new kilns rather than protected margins, Nigerian consumers – still paying over ₦10,000 a bag, according to Q1 2026 market surveys – may finally see what competition looks like. The next 18 months, from Sagamu’s commissioning to Huaxin’s mooted international listing, will tell whether Nigeria is the prize in this contest or merely the platform. (The Africa Report)