Nigeria is Africa’s largest sugar importer. Estimated imports of 1.34m MT in marketing year 2013/14 are slightly higher up from 1.32 million tons for MY 2012/13. Post expects sugar consumption to continue to grow steadily, driven by rising disposable incomes and growth of the urban population (which tends to consume more sugar than rural communities). Although the bold targets laid out in the Nigerian Sugar Master Plan are unlikely to be met in their entirety, the government’s backward integration programme is enhancing the establishment of domestic processing capacity in Nigeria. If production reaches a forecast 1.7mn MT by 2020, the country could be in a position to export as much as 275,000 MT of raw sugar to the nearby countries.
