Nigeria has moved to make sugar a priority sector for industrial investment, as regulators seek to revive domestic production and reduce the country’s heavy reliance on imports after years of falling short of self-sufficiency targets.
The National Sugar Development Council (NSDC) said it has partnered with the Nigeria Governors’ Forum (NGF) to attract both domestic and foreign investment into the sugar industry. The NGF is a consultative body representing the governors of Nigeria’s 36 states.
NSDC Executive Director Kamar Bakrin said the agreement would see sugar projects prioritised in discussions between state governments and development partners, both within Nigeria and internationally.
“This will be done within and outside the country, while partnering with the NSDC to support states in preparing and positioning investor-ready sugar projects,” Bakrin was quoted as saying by local daily Vanguard. He added that the initiative would also focus on improving coordination around critical enablers such as access to land, infrastructure provision and incentive frameworks.
The partnership reflects renewed efforts by authorities to improve the investment climate in Nigeria’s sugar industry and accelerate its industrial development after more than a decade of limited progress.
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Nigeria remains one of Africa’s largest consumers of sugar but continues to depend heavily on imports to meet domestic demand. Efforts to reverse this trend date back to the launch of the National Sugar Master Plan (NSMP) in 2012, which set out a roadmap for achieving sugar self-sufficiency through backward integration into sugarcane farming and local processing.
However, the first phase of the plan, which ran from 2012 to 2020, delivered disappointing results. During that period, Nigeria produced only about 70,000 tonnes of raw sugar, far below the target of 1.79 million tonnes, according to official data.
Industry players have long cited structural constraints as key obstacles to growth. These include poor transport and power infrastructure, high production costs, limited access to long-term financing, low farm yields and inadequate research into high-yield sugarcane varieties. Insecurity in some sugar-producing regions has also discouraged large-scale investment.
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In a 2021 assessment, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) said policy implementation had been slowed by administrative bottlenecks and weak coordination among institutions. The report also noted that some refiners with vested interests preferred importing raw sugar rather than investing in domestic production.
Against this backdrop, the government launched the second 10-year phase of the NSMP in 2023, renewing its push for self-sufficiency with a stronger focus on industrial scale projects, public-private partnerships and improved policy coordination.
Since then, the sector has begun to attract renewed investor interest. In August 2025, the NSDC signed agreements with four Nigerian sugar companies to develop projects in Oyo, Niger, Adamawa and Bauchi states. Each project is expected to produce about 100,000 tonnes of sugar annually, bringing combined output to roughly 400,000 tonnes.
Earlier in April 2025, the council signed a memorandum of understanding with Chinese conglomerate SINOMACH to develop a large sugar complex. The project, valued at about $1 billion, is expected to produce 100,000 tonnes of sugar per year in its first phase, with plans to scale up to 1 million tonnes annually.
At the state level, Niger State signed agreements in November 2024 with four local and foreign firms to build six sugar mills. Four of the mills are planned for the Shiroro–Minna corridor, covering about 148,000 hectares scheduled for development by 2027.
Authorities say the new partnership between the NSDC and the Governors’ Forum could help accelerate such projects by improving coordination between federal and state governments and reducing barriers faced by investors.
Beyond the states already hosting projects, seven others – Kwara, Nasarawa, Kaduna, Kano, Gombe, Jigawa and Taraba – have been identified as priority areas for sugar investment due to the availability of suitable land.
The USDA estimates Nigeria has more than 800,000 hectares of land potentially suitable for sugarcane cultivation. Currently, only about 130,000 hectares are under cultivation, roughly 16 percent of that potential.
Despite ongoing projects, Nigeria continues to rely heavily on imports. Data from the National Bureau of Statistics show the country imported about 915 billion naira ($655.8 million) worth of sugar in 2024, underlining the scale of the challenge facing the domestic industry.
Whether the latest initiative translates into sustained production growth will depend on execution, analysts say, as Nigeria seeks to turn long-standing ambitions into industrial reality.
