Africa’s expanding cement industry is becoming an increasingly important indicator of the continent’s infrastructure ambitions, urban growth and future industrial energy requirements. New capacity is being developed across several regions, reflecting demand for housing, transport infrastructure, industrial facilities and other physical assets required as African economies urbanise and deepen their productive capacity.
The scale of this expansion also raises a more complex question: how can African countries increase access to infrastructure and industrial capacity while avoiding the energy and emissions trajectory associated with earlier phases of industrialisation elsewhere?
The latest data from Global Energy Monitor’s Global Cement and Concrete Tracker show that Africa’s cement capacity in development increased by 14% to approximately 60 million tonnes per annum in 2025. The tracker’s July 2026 release covers 3,884 cement plants worldwide and more than 6.1 billion tonnes of annual cement capacity. It identifies 209.2 million tonnes of cement capacity under development globally, concentrated particularly in India and Africa.
These figures need to be interpreted carefully. Cement capacity represents the theoretical maximum output of plants rather than the volume of cement actually produced. Projects classified as being in development also occupy different stages, ranging from announced facilities to plants already under construction. Consequently, the existence of a large project pipeline does not necessarily mean that all the planned capacity will be completed or operate at full utilisation.
Nevertheless, the direction of investment is significant. Cement is a foundational material for urban development, and its expansion can provide an indication of where economies anticipate future construction activity. The 2025 Africa’s Urbanisation Dynamics report published through the OECD/Sahel and West Africa Club estimates that Africa’s urban population increased from 248 million to 717 million between 2000 and 2020, with 54% of the continent’s population living in urban areas. The report projects continued urban expansion across the continent through 2050.
That expansion is not occurring according to a single continental model. African cities differ considerably in their population growth, infrastructure deficits, industrial structures, access to finance and energy systems. Cement demand therefore reflects a combination of factors, including housing shortages, public infrastructure programmes, private construction, industrial investment and regional trade.
This distinction matters when assessing what the cement build-out means for energy demand.
Cement production is energy-intensive, particularly during the manufacture of clinker, the intermediate material produced by heating limestone and other materials in a kiln. Global Energy Monitor notes that clinker production requires temperatures of around 1,500°C and has traditionally depended heavily on carbon-intensive fuels. The International Energy Agency identifies cement as a difficult-to-decarbonise industrial sector because emissions arise both from fuel combustion and from the chemical process involved in converting limestone into clinker.
The implications for Africa are therefore broader than the electricity consumed directly by cement plants. New factories require reliable electricity networks, transport infrastructure, raw-material supply chains, ports, roads and, in some markets, additional fuel-import and storage infrastructure. Where electricity systems are already constrained, industrial expansion can expose weaknesses in generation and transmission capacity.
Yet it would be misleading to assume that greater cement production necessarily translates into a uniformly fossil-fuel-dependent African industrial economy.
Africa’s energy systems are highly diverse. Countries such as Ethiopia and Zambia have substantial hydropower resources, while solar resources are abundant across much of the continent. Other economies rely heavily on natural gas, coal, oil or imported electricity. Industrial energy strategies consequently vary according to domestic resources, infrastructure, financing conditions and national development priorities.
The cement industry itself is also changing. Global Energy Monitor’s 2026 tracker records the growing use of technologies including waste-heat recovery, alternative fuels, clinker substitution and clay calcination. Across the global cement fleet tracked by GEM, waste-heat recovery is present at 33.6% of plants, while 27.8% of plants with kilns use alternative fuels alongside or instead of conventional fuels. The figures demonstrate that efficiency and emissions-reduction technologies are no longer confined to a theoretical discussion, although their deployment remains uneven.
For Africa, this creates an opportunity to avoid simply reproducing the technological pathways followed during earlier industrialisation elsewhere. New plants can potentially incorporate more efficient kiln designs, waste-heat recovery, alternative fuels, lower-clinker cement formulations and renewable electricity from the outset.
The opportunity is particularly relevant because cement facilities are long-lived industrial assets. Global Energy Monitor notes that cement kilns typically operate for 40 years or more. Decisions made during the current investment cycle can therefore influence industrial energy consumption and emissions for decades.
The International Energy Agency’s analysis points in a similar direction. Its 2025 Breakthrough Agenda assessment says global cement-sector emissions remain above 2015 levels and identifies improved material efficiency, alternative fuels, supplementary cementitious materials and carbon capture among the measures required to reduce emissions. It also notes that near-zero-emissions cement produced using carbon capture currently carries substantially higher costs than conventional production, illustrating one of the financial barriers facing emerging markets.
This cost dimension is particularly important in Africa, where industrial policy is often balancing several objectives simultaneously: increasing infrastructure provision, creating employment, reducing import dependence, improving energy access and maintaining affordable construction costs.
For many African governments and businesses, the immediate challenge is not simply how to decarbonise cement but how to expand cement and other basic industries sufficiently to support economic development while ensuring that new capacity is efficient and economically viable.
Nigeria illustrates the scale of this industrial transition. Its cement sector includes major domestic producers and a substantial regional footprint. Dangote Cement, for example, reported installed production capacity of 55 million tonnes per annum across its African operations following the commissioning of additional capacity in Côte d’Ivoire in 2025. The company has operations in 11 African countries.
Elsewhere, new capacity is emerging in markets where cement production is closely connected to reconstruction, infrastructure development and regional economic integration. Global Energy Monitor’s plant-level database, for example, records a 4-million-tonne-per-year cement project under construction in Misrata, Libya.
Such developments underline the geographical breadth of Africa’s industrialisation. The story is not confined to the continent’s largest economies. Cement investment is increasingly linked to regional markets, with producers seeking to supply neighbouring countries where transport costs, infrastructure development and growing construction activity create commercial opportunities.
There is also a wider economic significance. Cement plants can support domestic value chains involving limestone extraction, logistics, engineering, equipment maintenance, construction and professional services. Where local production replaces imports, countries can potentially retain more value within their economies and reduce exposure to external supply disruptions.
At the same time, expansion can generate environmental and social pressures around quarrying, land use, water consumption, transport, air quality and local communities. A genuinely sustainable industrialisation strategy therefore requires more than installing efficient kilns. It also requires effective environmental regulation, transparent permitting, responsible resource management and meaningful engagement with communities located near industrial facilities.
The central question for Africa is consequently not whether the continent should industrialise. For many countries, industrialisation remains closely connected to the broader objectives of employment creation, infrastructure provision, productivity and higher living standards. The more consequential question is what form that industrialisation takes.
The current cement investment cycle provides an opportunity to address that question early. Africa is building infrastructure at a time when the technologies available to new industrial facilities are considerably more efficient than those deployed during earlier periods of rapid industrialisation elsewhere.
That does not eliminate the trade-offs. Cleaner technologies can require greater upfront capital, reliable electricity systems and access to specialised equipment and finance. Carbon capture remains expensive, while some lower-carbon cement technologies depend on the availability of suitable supplementary materials and supporting infrastructure.
But Africa’s development trajectory need not be understood solely through the lens of its future emissions. Cement expansion also reflects a continent addressing longstanding infrastructure gaps and responding to rapid demographic and urban change.
The emerging industrial landscape therefore presents both a development opportunity and an energy-planning challenge. If the new cement capacity is accompanied by investment in reliable and increasingly low-carbon electricity, efficient transport networks, circular use of industrial materials and modern production technologies, the continent could expand its physical infrastructure without simply replicating every element of older industrial models.
Africa’s cement expansion is consequently more than a story about construction materials. It is a window into the continent’s evolving economic geography, the infrastructure required to support its cities and industries, and the choices that governments, companies and financiers will make about the energy systems underpinning that growth.
Those choices will help determine not only how much cement Africa produces, but also how efficiently the continent builds the homes, roads, ports, factories and power infrastructure required by its next phase of economic development.
