The National Sugar Development Council (NSDC) has mobilised over a $1 billion investment pipeline to boost local sugar production and reduce Nigeria’s dependence on imports, which currently account for most of the country’s annual consumption of about 1.8 million metric tonnes.

The pipeline includes a $1 billion engineering, procurement and construction (EPC)-plus-finance partnership with China’s SINOMACH and a N10 billion Sugar Project Acceleration Fund established with the Bank of Industry (BoI) to prepare greenfield sugar estates for investment under the Backward Integration Programme (BIP).

The Executive Secretary of the NSDC, Kamar Bakrin, in a statement, disclosed this when he received the Abuja Chapter of the Chartered Institute of Directors (CIoD) at the council’s headquarters.

Bakrin said the Nigeria Sugar Master Plan (NSMP) 2.0 targets local production of about two million tonnes yearly, a level that would exceed current domestic demand.

He emphasised that the major challenge facing the industry was not a lack of policies but poor implementation. On enforcement, Bakrin said the council had restructured its Backward Integration Programme around four principles: qualify, reward, verify and enforce.

He said companies seeking import quotas must demonstrate their commitment to backward integration, while major sugar refiners are required to submit audited production targets linked to their quotas.

According to him, the council is also deploying satellite imagery alongside physical inspections to verify activities on sugar estates, reducing its reliance on self-reporting by companies.

Beyond sugar production, Bakrin said the council was positioning sugarcane as the foundation of a wider bio-industrial value chain involving ethanol, animal feed and power generation, revealing that the NSDC was partnering with Afreximbank and the Nigeria Governors’ Forum to accelerate the development of sugar estates across states.

Under the Sugarcane Outgrower Development Programme (SODP), he said, each estate would be required to allocate land to smallholder farmers and commit part of its investment to host communities.

Bakrin cited Brazil’s sugar industry as an example of how strong institutions and consistent execution could drive sectoral development, saying the country’s success was not based solely on agricultural advantages.

Responding, the leader of the CIoD delegation, Fatima Nana Mede, commended the council’s reforms and expressed the institute’s readiness to collaborate with the NSDC, particularly in strengthening corporate governance across sugar estates, mills and outgrower companies.

The proposed investment pipeline and production target, however, will depend on the ability of the SINOMACH partnership and the BoI fund to translate into operational sugar estates, as well as sustained enforcement of the backward integration requirements for companies with import quota privileges.