Dangote Industries has appointed MTN Group CEO Ralph Mupita to the board of Dangote Fertiliser Limited, as the company pushes ahead with expansion plans and prepares to list the business on the Nigerian Exchange (NGX).

The appointment was confirmed by Dangote Fertiliser Managing Director, Vishwajit Sinha, in an email response to enquiries.

The timing is not accidental. The move is widely seen as a boardroom signal ahead of a proposed initial public offering (IPO) expected later this year. Bringing in a sitting chief executive with deep experience in public markets strengthens the company’s governance profile at the exact moment it plans to open up ownership to public investors.

Dangote Fertiliser is one of Africa’s biggest industrial projects and a major part of Aliko Dangote’s strategy to deepen the continent’s agricultural value chain. It also fits a bigger capital strategy: positioning the group to attract long-term institutional funding by combining large-scale production capacity with stronger transparency and investor-ready structures.

Mupita’s selection is tied closely to capital market execution. He is credited with leading the landmark listing of MTN Nigeria on the NGX in 2019, one of the most significant transactions in Nigeria’s recent capital market 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 ranked as the NGX’s second-largest listed company, behind BUA Foods.

Mupita has led MTN Group for over five years and joined the company in 2017 as Chief Financial Officer. Before MTN, he held senior roles at South Africa’s Old Mutual. He is also an engineer by training, a detail that aligns with the scale and technical demands of Dangote’s heavy industrial operations.

Dangote Fertiliser currently produces about 3 million metric tonnes of granulated urea annually from its $2.5 billion production complex in Lagos. The company says it has ambitious expansion plans aimed at becoming the world’s largest fertiliser producer by 2028.

As part of that push, Dangote has disclosed plans to expand its Lagos facility and begin construction of a new fertiliser plant in Ethiopia this year, extending its footprint beyond Nigeria and targeting a larger share of Africa’s growing market for agricultural inputs.

That demand is rising fast. Africa has the world’s fastest-growing population, and the African Development Bank projects the agricultural sector could become a market worth more than $1 trillion by 2030. Yet farm productivity remains held back by low fertiliser use, weak infrastructure, and limited access to finance, gaps that create space for large-scale producers with the ability to supply at volume.

The fertiliser listing is also part of a wider plan inside the Dangote Group. Beyond fertiliser, the group is preparing to list its refinery business as well, based on earlier statements by Aliko Dangote. The planned IPOs are expected to raise new capital, deepen transparency, and broaden ownership to include both domestic and international institutional investors.