Aliko Dangote, Africa’s richest person, is looking to buy cargo vessels to move industrial goods across the continent as high cross-border road taxes eat into regional trade profits. Dangote Industries has long depended on highway transit to supply buyers across West and Central Africa, but regional tariffs and border bottlenecks are pushing the conglomerate toward the sea.

“We are moving forward towards getting our own ships in order to do this business,” said Sada Ladan-Baki, head of international trade export at Dangote Cement Plc, speaking at an export seminar in Lagos. The push to buy vessels comes as the group scales up factory output.

Dangote Cement, which started exporting 16 years ago, now produces 50 million metric tons annually. The group also produced 1.1 billion metric tons of fertilizer by June, nearly matching its entire output for 2025, which accounted for more than 8 percent of Nigeria’s non-oil exports.

Moving those volumes across land borders has proved expensive. To serve markets in the Economic Community of West African States and Central African nations like Cameroon, Dangote built assembly plants that turned out 7,000 delivery trucks. Even with that fleet, transit taxes pile up quickly along West African trade corridors.

Regional tariffs curb West African exports

“If we are going to export our cement from here to Ghana, we have to pay value-added tax of 18 percent in Benin. We pay in Togo. We pay another 18 percent if we are going to Ivory Coast,” Ladan-Baki said. “So by the time the trucks get to these places, the taxes these countries charge us have already made us dead on arrival. How can Nigerian companies become competitive with all these barriers?”

Coastal shipping offers a cheaper way out, but regional maritime options are scarce. “As of today, you cannot get a ship that will take your goods from here to Ghana. None,” Ladan-Baki said. “And that is for 1,000 metric tons, what the small traders and the business people can do.”

Nigeria has lacked a strong domestic commercial fleet since the state-owned Nigerian National Shipping Line collapsed in 1995. That absence costs the country roughly $6 billion each year in freight revenue, which goes almost entirely to foreign shipping lines.

Dangote targets cabotage fleet financing

Dangote already runs private port terminals at Apapa and Onne, and built a dedicated jetty at Lekki in Lagos to handle shipments from its $20 billion oil refinery. Securing more bulk-cargo vessels, however, will require broader financing. Ladan-Baki urged authorities to release money from the 23-year-old Cabotage Vessel Financing Fund, an idle $700 million state pool set up to help local operators buy ships.

The federal government opened an online portal for fund applications in January, pledging payouts within 90 days. Seven months later, local shipowners have yet to receive any money. Ladan-Baki said commercial lenders and regional development banks like the African Export-Import Bank must step in to back fleet purchases, especially as companies try to trade under the African Continental Free Trade Area.