Dangote Industries has appointed MTN Group Chief Executive Officer, Ralph Mupita, to the board of Dangote Fertiliser Limited, as the company prepares for expansion and a potential listing on the Nigerian Exchange (NGX).
The appointment was confirmed by the Managing Director of Dangote Fertiliser, Vishwajit Sinha, in an email response to enquiries from Bloomberg.
The move is widely viewed as a strategic step ahead of the company’s planned initial public offering (IPO), expected later this year.
Dangote Fertiliser currently produces about three million metric tonnes of granulated urea annually from its $2.5 billion production complex in Lagos. The company has ambitious expansion plans aimed at becoming the world’s largest fertiliser producer by 2028.
Mupita’s addition to the board brings deep capital markets and corporate governance expertise at a time when the company is preparing to open its ownership structure to public investors. He is widely credited with leading the landmark listing of MTN Nigeria on the NGX in 2019, one of the most significant capital market transactions in Nigeria’s recent history.
Since that listing, MTN Nigeria’s revenues have more than quadrupled, and the company has grown into one of the exchange’s most valuable stocks. With an estimated market capitalisation of about $8.6 billion, MTN Nigeria is currently the NGX’s second-largest listed company, behind BUA Foods.
Mupita has led MTN Group, Africa’s largest telecommunications operator by subscriber base, for more than five years, having joined the company in 2017 as Chief Financial Officer. Before MTN, he held senior leadership roles at South Africa-based financial services group Old Mutual. An engineer by training, his background aligns closely with the industrial scale and technical complexity of Dangote’s operations.
As part of its growth strategy, Dangote Fertiliser plans to expand its Lagos facility and commence construction of a new fertiliser plant in Ethiopia this year, further strengthening the group’s footprint across Africa.
Beyond fertiliser, the Dangote Group is also preparing to list its refinery business, according to earlier statements by group chairman Aliko Dangote.
The planned IPOs are expected to help the group raise fresh capital, enhance transparency, and broaden ownership to include domestic and international institutional investors.
Mupita’s appointment comes amid rising demand for agricultural inputs across Africa. The continent has the world’s fastest-growing population, and the African Development Bank estimates that agriculture could become a more than $1 trillion market by 2030.
However, productivity remains constrained by low fertiliser usage, limited access to finance, and weak infrastructure, challenges that present significant opportunities for large-scale producers such as Dangote Fertiliser.
