• Dangote Group is backing a new 32-ton/hour rice mill in Niger State, Nigeria.

• The mill is part of the Niger Foods Initiative, a public-private agriculture program.

• Nigeria is projected to import 3M tons of rice in 2024/25, 37% of total demand.

In Nigeria, Niger State is set to host a new rice mill on a 30-hectare site in Wushishi. Fatima Wali Abdurrahman, the senior special adviser to the president of Dangote Group, disclosed this last week, noting that the construction work had made significant progress.

The plant will house processing capabilities of 32 tons per hour for paddy rice—as large as the Imota rice mill, considered Africa's largest. The cost of this industrial project, part of the Niger Foods Initiative, has not been disclosed. The initiative is an agricultural development program implemented by the Niger State government to encourage private sector participation in agriculture through public-private partnerships.

Overall, the operations of this mill should boost paddy processing capacity to meet the demand for milled rice in the Nigerian market, which is still reliant on imports. According to the latest projections from the US Department of Agriculture (USDA), Nigeria is expected to import 3 million tons of milled rice in 2024/2025, making up 37% of its consumption needs.

By providing an additional outlet for farmers, this unit, once operational, should boost paddy production. This investment comes at a time when local paddy production has strengthened over the last few years.

Based on data compiled by the Ministry of Agriculture, average annual growth has been 2.95%, rising from 8.1 million tons in 2020 to 9.1 million tons in 2024. Niger State, the country's top rice-growing region, has increased its paddy harvest by 84,000 tons over that period, reaching 707,000 tons in 2024.