FMN Group, Nigeria’s largest integrated food and agro-allied conglomerate, has appointed Akbar Ali Shah as Managing Director, a role in which he will lead one of the Group’s strategic business verticals.
Shah announced the appointment in a statement he shared personally, describing it as a new chapter in his career and thanking the company’s Chairman and Board for the opportunity. He said he was looking forward to working with the FMN team and contributing to the Group’s continued growth.
Shah brings more than two decades of experience in the FMCG sector to the role. He previously held senior positions at Reckitt, the British consumer goods multinational behind brands such as Dettol and Harpic, where he served as General Manager for Reckitt’s Sub-Saharan Africa cluster and as Chief Executive Officer of Reckitt Nigeria, overseeing the company’s business across Nigeria, Ghana, Ivory Coast, Kenya, Uganda, and Tanzania.
At FMN, his responsibilities are expected to include strengthening the Group’s core grain milling operations, expanding its value-added food processing capacity, and optimising backward integration across its agricultural supply chain, areas that build directly on his consumer goods leadership background.
Founded in 1960 and headquartered in Lagos, FMN has grown from a single commodity trading company into a diversified agribusiness spanning food, sugar, agro-allied products, and feed milling, backed by its own port operations, logistics, packaging, and real estate infrastructure built around a vertically integrated supply chain. The company employs more than 12,000 people and has ambitions to become the largest FMCG player across Africa. It currently operates the largest feed mill in Sub-Saharan Africa, making it one of the biggest flour milling companies in the world.
The appointment comes as FMN continues to expand its footprint across Nigeria’s food and agricultural value chains, at a time when the country’s food industry is under pressure to scale up local production, tighten supply-chain efficiency, and meet rising demand for essential food products.
FMN has not yet issued a separate public statement detailing the full scope of Shah’s mandate within the Group’s leadership structure.
