How Aliko Dangote is plotting a comeback in Nigerian flour milling

The Nigerian billionaire, who recently launched Africa’s biggest IPO, is piling money into oil and fertiliser. That is not stopping him from making a fresh push into the flour market, where he will face giants including Olam, FMN and BUA Foods.

Aliko Dangote shows no sign of running out of projects. Having just launched the stock market listing of his giant Lekki refinery, and while pressing ahead with plans to build the Lamu refinery in Kenya, the president and CEO of the Dangote Group is organising a major return to flour milling in Nigeria.

The Africa Report has learned that the billionaire has placed an order with Bühler, the Swiss maker of mills and production lines and one of the world’s leading suppliers in the sector, for a flour plant with a capacity of at least 5,000 tonnes a day. The move promises to shake up Nigeria’s milling industry.

Historically focused on cement and edible oil, the Dangote Group — which did not respond to requests for comment — has diversified widely in recent years, investing in oil and fertiliser as well as sugar, rice and tomato paste. The new project confirms its determination to expand its footprint in food processing, in line with Nigeria’s aim of reducing its dependence on imported consumer goods. The West African giant, home to more than 230 million people, spends more than $10bn a year on food imports, according to the agriculture ministry.

Shaking up FMN, Olam and BUA

With this investment, Dangote — whose push into oil and fertiliser has been boosted since the start of the year by the crisis caused by the closure of the Strait of Hormuz — is making a notable return to a sector he knows well.

Dangote Flour Mills (DFM), which started operating in the late 1990s as a subsidiary of Dangote Industries and later became a standalone company, established itself as one of the sector’s leaders despite a turbulent history. Taken over by South Africa’s Tiger Brands in 2012, DFM was bought back by Dangote in 2016.

But it stayed in the Nigerian group’s hands for only a short time. Dangote eventually sold it to the Singaporean giant Olam in 2019 for $360m. The deal doubled the production capacity of Olam, which operated through Crown Flour Mill (CFM), giving it five flour and pasta plants in Apapa, Ikorodu, Ilorin, Kano and Calabar.

Today, CFM and the country’s other long-established miller, Flour Mills of Nigeria (FMN), chaired by John Coumantaros, dominate the market. CFM, which does not publish its results, has nine plants across the country, producing flour, pasta and semolina.

FMN, founded in 1960 and listed on the Lagos stock exchange, is an agro-industrial giant able to produce more than 9,000 tonnes of flour a day. It had revenue of 2.3trn naira (about $1.5bn) in 2024.

Securing wheat supplies

For the two market leaders, Dangote’s return — even though the new plant is not expected to be up and running for at least two years — means stiffer competition. It comes just as Nigeria’s other industrial champion, Abdul Samad Rabiu, head of the BUA Group, is strengthening his own position in the sector.

BUA, which is active in cement, sugar, edible oil, flour and pasta, aims to become the country’s leading food producer through its flagship, BUA Foods, which had revenue of 1.7trn naira (about $1.2bn) in 2025.

In July, BUA said it wanted to double its flour production capacity to 2m tonnes a year. It also plans to invest in a noodle factory, an edible oil refinery and an animal feed plant. Speaking to The Africa Report in late 2024, Rabiu said he was aiming for flour capacity of 10,000 tonnes a day and a total of 20 pasta production lines by the end of 2026.

A flour war is therefore brewing in Nigeria, a market with strong growth in demand but average purchasing power that remains limited. With flour consumption rising steadily, driven by population growth and urbanisation, the key challenge for every operator is securing enough wheat to keep its mills running.

Nigeria’s wheat consumption is expected to reach 6.8m tonnes in the 2026-27 season, up 6% year on year, with imports estimated at 7.2m tonnes and domestic production of just 140,000 tonnes, according to a March note from the US Department of Agriculture.