By Dr Said Alkali Kori
The Sahel Cargo Airline. The Lake Chad Airline. The Yobe Agro-Food Industrial Export Hub. These three names — unfamiliar to many today — will, if the plans laid in Makkah and Jeddah this July come to fruition, redefine the economy of northern Nigeria and the wider Lake Chad Basin within this decade. This is the story of how a Nigerian state governor, a determined delegation, and the Saudi-Nigeria Business Council came together to design a new economic corridor — one built on halal meat, sesame, and direct flights.
The Lake Chad Basin is home to over 45 million people. It holds one of Africa’s largest concentrations of livestock, with Nigeria alone raising more than 20 million cattle, alongside vast production of sesame, gum arabic, sorghum, and other high-value commodities. It sits within striking distance of the Gulf, a region that imports over $15 billion in food annually and is actively searching for secure, halal-compliant supply chains. And yet, until now, not a single integrated agro-industrial facility existed to process any of this produce for export. Not a single dedicated cargo airline operated out of any airport in northern Nigeria. Not a single scheduled flight connected the major cities of the Lake Chad Basin — Damaturu, Maiduguri, N’Djamena, Maroua — despite them lying within a 200-kilometre radius of one another. The paradox has been brutal: abundance surrounded by isolation.
This is the reality that His Excellency Governor Mai Mala Buni has worked to change — not only as the Executive Governor of Yobe State, but also in his capacity as Chairman of the Lake Chad Basin Governors Forum, where he has championed regional integration, cross-border trade, and economic revitalisation as the most durable answers to the challenges facing the Basin. It was under his leadership and clear mandate that a delegation from Yobe State sat across the table from the Saudi-Nigeria Business Council over two days — the 19th and 20th of July 2026 — in Makkah and Jeddah, to present a fully prepared investment agenda and to seek the partnerships that will turn this paradox into prosperity.
The delegation was led by Mohammed Goje, Acting Secretary to the State Government, with full authority on behalf of the Governor. I had the honour of serving as Lead Negotiator, but more importantly, I had the privilege of presenting projects that are not theoretical — they are designed, costed, and ready. We were joined by Alhaji Buba Kallawa, Member of the Yobe State House of Assembly; Alhaji Liman Ibrahim; Professor Sheriff Almuhajir , who served as Financial Advisor to the degelation, and presented the layered guarantee framework that underpins the entire investment proposition. Technical leads from the delivery consortia for the Hub Dr Babagana Mohammed Adam and the airlines Mr Abubakar Bello also accompanied us, ensuring that every question could be answered with precision.
The first project we laid before the Saudi-Nigeria Business Council, chaired by Sultan bin Mahdi Al-Qahtani, was the Yobe Agro-Food Industrial Export Hub — a $200 million halal-certified industrial park anchored to the Muhammadu Buhari International Cargo Airport in Damaturu. The Hub will house a modern meat processing factory, grain milling facilities, alfalfa pellet production, and cold-chain storage. At full capacity, it will process and export 105,000 tonnes of halal meat, alfalfa, sesame, gum arabic, and sorghum annually, primarily to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. This is not a farm. It is not a collection point. It is a factory designed to capture value at source — processing what our farmers and herders produce, certifying it to global halal standards, and exporting it directly from our own airport. The State Government, under Governor Buni’s direction, has already committed the land, funded the feasibility studies, built the airport, and raised a $35 million bond. The delivery consortium is in place. What we sought in Makkah and Jeddah were offtake guarantees and financing partners, and the Saudi side engaged with serious intent.
But a hub without logistics is a warehouse with a runway. That is why the second pillar of our presentation was aviation. We proposed two airlines, each with a distinct and urgent mandate. Sahel Cargo Airline will be northern Nigeria’s first dedicated cargo carrier, connecting Damaturu directly to Jeddah and Riyadh. Its primary customer, at least initially, will be the Agro-Food Hub itself, but it will also serve other exporters across the region. Lake Chad Airline will be the region’s first scheduled passenger and cargo airline, linking the eight states of the Basin. For the first time, a trader in Maiduguri will be able to meet a buyer in N’Djamena, conclude business, and return the same day. A pilgrim from Diffa will connect through Damaturu to the Holy Land without a multi-day road journey. A humanitarian worker will deploy without waiting for an unreliable UN flight. Both airlines — Sahel Cargo and Lake Chad — are designed to meet NCAA regulatory requirements, with minimum start-up fleets of four aircraft each. We are in discussions with Saudi carriers regarding the provision of used aircraft being retired from their fleets, and we presented a layered guarantee framework — with guaranteed offtake and revenue as the first security, private equity and corporate guarantees as the second, and state-backed support as the third — to make the financing bankable for international lenders.
The third pillar was institutional: the proposed Saudi-Lake Chad Business Council, a sub-national investment platform that would operate directly under the eight governors of the Lake Chad Basin Governors Forum — a body that Governor Buni chairs with distinction. This Council would serve as a permanent, focused window for Saudi investment into the region, insulated from the layers of federal bureaucracy that can slow progress. With 95% of the Basin’s population being Muslim, and with the region’s vast agricultural and mineral potential, the alignment is natural. We proposed that it can be established within one month of Saudi endorsement.
Beyond these three pillars, the two-day engagement also opened new avenues. Both parties agreed to explore the Saudi Fund for Development to finance a utility-scale solar park in Yobe State, taking advantage of Nigeria’s new Electricity Act which empowers states to generate and distribute power. Discussions were held on a Build-Operate-Transfer model for the Trans-Saharan Road linkage through Yobe State. And across every conversation, the commitment to skills development and training — in halal certification, cold-chain logistics, aviation maintenance, and agro-processing — was reaffirmed as essential to long-term success.
What does all this mean? For Yobe State, it means a transition from a civil service economy dependent on federal allocations to a production and export economy with its own revenue, its own jobs, and its own international trade relationships. For the Lake Chad Basin, it means connectivity — the kind that enables commerce, reduces isolation, and builds interdependence among communities that share borders, cultures, and families. For Saudi Arabia, it means a dedicated, traceable, halal food corridor anchored in a region with deep religious and cultural ties to the Kingdom. And for investors, it means projects that have been prepared with rigour, backed by a government that has already put its own resources on the table.
The poster accompanying this article depicts two aircraft — Sahel Cargo Airline and Lake Chad Airline — parked at the Muhammadu Buhari International Cargo Airport, with the Yobe Agro-Food Industrial Export Hub adjacent, and the portrait of Governor Mai Mala Buni, in his dual role as Governor of Yobe State and Chairman of the Lake Chad Basin Governors Forum, overseeing the entire scene. Today, it is an artist’s rendering. Our task, and the task of the Joint Technical Working Groups now being formed, is to make it a photograph within two years.
We did not go to Makkah and Jeddah with dreams. We went with designs, costings, environmental studies, and a delegation empowered to negotiate. We returned with a clear roadmap. The work of turning rendering into reality has already begun.
Dr. Sa’id Alkali Kori is the Honorary Special Adviser on International Relations and Investment to the Governor of Yobe State, Technical Advisor to the Lake Chad Basin Governors Forum, and served as Lead Negotiator at the Saudi-Yobe State High-Level Business Roundtable in Makkah and Jeddah, 19th–20th July 2026.