Founder and Executive Chairman of BUA Group, Abdul Samad Rabiu CFR CON, has known as for a decisive shift in Africa’s improvement technique, urging governments, financiers, and the personal sector to maneuver the continent from uncooked materials extraction to massive scale industrial processing and worth addition.
Rabiu made the remarks as Special Guest of Honour at an Africa Finance Corporation discussion board throughout Mining Indaba 2026, the place African leaders, policymakers, financiers, and business executives gathered to debate the way forward for mining, industrialisation, and actual sector improvement on the continent.
Commending AFC for its function in mobilising long run capital for Africa’s industrial sectors, Rabiu famous that the establishment’s management and up to date S&P Global score with a optimistic outlook underscored the significance of sturdy improvement finance establishments in shaping Africa’s progress trajectory.
Drawing from BUA Group’s expertise, he recounted the corporate’s resolution over sixteen years in the past to transition from cement importation to native manufacturing in Nigeria, regardless of the capital depth and lengthy gestation durations related to mining and heavy business.
“At the time, Nigeria was importing cement despite being richly endowed with limestone,” Rabiu mentioned. “We were spending more time chasing foreign exchange than selling cement. The real question was not whether the resources existed, but whether there was enough conviction to stop importing and start producing locally.”
Today, he famous, BUA mines and processes about forty thousand tonnes of limestone each day, producing roughly a million tonnes of cement each month. That shift has helped Nigeria transfer from being a cement importer to a web exporter, saving the nation billions of {dollars} in overseas trade yearly.
Rabiu careworn that such transformation wouldn’t have been doable with out affected person, long run financing from DFIs, notably the Africa Finance Corporation, which has supported BUA’s cement and industrial operations with over 4 hundred million {dollars} in financing.
He added that a good portion of these services has already been repaid, demonstrating that effectively structured African industrial tasks aren’t solely developmental but in addition commercially viable and recyclable.
Turning to the broader continental image, Rabiu highlighted what he described as a structural paradox: Africa stays one of many world’s most useful resource wealthy areas, but exports the majority of its minerals and agricultural produce in uncooked or minimally processed kind.
He cited examples throughout gold, cobalt, copper, iron ore, diamonds, and cocoa, noting that whereas Africa provides a lot of the world’s uncooked inputs, it captures solely a fraction of the worth created downstream.
