The National Sugar Development Council (NSDC) has signed agreements with four operators to develop greenfield sugar projects that will produce 400,000 tones yearly.
The agreement was signed on Tuesday at NSDC’s Abuja headquarters and represented a major scaling of Nigeria’s sugar development ambitions.
The four operators will each develop 100,000-tonne facilities across the nation’s rural belt: Brent Sugar in Oyo State, Niger Foods in Niger State, Legacy Sugar in Adamawa State, and UMZA in Bauchi State.
Under the terms, the council will provide project development support and cover service costs to enable the ventures achieve commercial viability.
Also, the NSDC recently signed a memorandum of understanding with a Chinese firm for engineering, procurement, construction and financing (EPC-F) services to build up to five sugar estates, representing a collective investment of $1 billion.
This Chinese partnership underscored the country’s willingness to leverage foreign expertise and capital to swiftly develop domestic capacity.
News Edited by Favour Owonibi