Dangote appoints MTN Group CEO Ralph Mupita onto fertiliser board

Dangote Industries has appointed MTN Group Chief Executive Officer Ralph Mupita to the board of Dangote Fertiliser Limited, a move seen as part of the company’s push toward expansion and a planned stock market listing in Nigeria.

The appointment was confirmed by Dangote Fertiliser Managing Director Vishwajit Sinha in an emailed response to questions, according to reports carried by Bloomberg and published by Nigerian outlets on Wednesday.

Dangote Fertiliser is one of the flagship industrial bets built by Aliko Dangote, Africa’s richest man, as he tries to deepen the continent’s agricultural value chain and pull long term institutional capital into his businesses. Adding Mupita gives the board an executive who has worked across telecoms, finance and governance, at a time when investors tend to scrutinize leadership depth as closely as production numbers.

Mupita is best known in Nigeria for his role in MTN Nigeria’s market debut. He spearheaded the company’s listing on the Nigerian Exchange in 2019, a deal widely viewed as a milestone for local capital markets. Since then, MTN Nigeria’s revenue has more than quadrupled, and the company has grown into one of the exchange’s most valuable stocks, with an estimated market value of about $8.6 billion.

At MTN Group, Mupita has led the continent’s largest wireless carrier by subscriber base for more than five years. He joined the group in 2017 as chief financial officer and later took the top job, bringing an engineer’s training to a business that often has to build its own infrastructure to grow.

Dangote Fertiliser already sits on a scale that few African industrial projects can match. The company produces about 3 million metric tonnes of granulated urea each year from a $2.5 billion complex in Lagos, and Dangote has said the goal is to become the world’s largest fertiliser producer by 2028. Plans include expanding the Lagos facility and starting construction of a new plant in Ethiopia this year.

The timing is hard to miss. Demand for agricultural inputs is rising as Africa’s population grows and food systems strain to keep up. Development lenders and analysts have repeatedly pointed to fertiliser supply and pricing as major constraints on yields in many parts of the continent, where smallholder farmers still struggle to access inputs at the right time and in the right quantities.

Within Nigeria, urea production has become a policy and trade story as well as an industrial one. Local supply can help reduce import dependence and stabilize costs, while exports bring in foreign currency at a time when businesses are closely watching the naira and the availability of dollars for equipment, parts and raw materials.

Board changes rarely grab public attention, but they can matter when a company is trying to convince investors it is ready for the next stage. Public market investors tend to look for directors with experience in listings, disclosure culture and stakeholder management, especially in sectors where pricing, logistics and regulation can swing results.

Dangote has previously said the group is preparing to list its refinery business too, with planned offerings expected to raise fresh cash, broaden ownership and increase transparency. If the fertiliser IPO goes ahead, it could become one of the most closely watched listings in Nigeria this year, especially among global funds searching for exposure to African manufacturing beyond oil and gas.