Dangote Industries has appointed the Chief Executive Officer of MTN Group, Ralph Mupita, to the board of Dangote Fertiliser Limited.
This is as the conglomerate accelerates plans to expand the business and list it on the Nigerian Exchange (NGX).
The appointment was confirmed by the Managing Director of Dangote Fertiliser, Vishwajit Sinha, in an email response to enquiries from Bloomberg.
The move is widely seen as a strategic step ahead of the company’s proposed initial public offering (IPO), which is expected to take place later this year.
Dangote Fertiliser, one of Africa’s largest industrial projects, is a core part of billionaire Aliko Dangote’s push to deepen the continent’s agricultural value chain while positioning the group to attract long-term institutional capital.
Bringing Mupita onto the board adds deep capital markets and corporate governance experience at a time when the company is preparing to open its ownership structure to public investors.
Mupita is credited with spearheading the landmark listing of MTN Nigeria on the Nigerian Exchange in 2019, one of the most significant capital market transactions in the country’s recent history.
Since the listing, MTN Nigeria’s revenues have more than quadrupled, and the company has grown into one of the NGX’s most valuable stocks. With an estimated market capitalisation of about $8.6 billion, MTN Nigeria currently ranks as the exchange’s second-largest listed company, behind BUA Foods.
Mupita has led MTN Group, Africa’s largest telecommunications operator by subscriber base, for over five years, having joined the company in 2017 as Chief Financial Officer.
Prior to MTN, he held senior leadership roles at South Africa-based financial services group Old Mutual. He is also an engineer by training, a background that aligns with the industrial scale and technical complexity of Dangote’s operations.
