* 243 mln Dangote Cement shares sold to ICD for $300 mln-brokers

* ICD diversifying portfolio into West Africa - analyst

* Dangote plans Africa expansion

(Adds details of share sale, analyst comment)

By Chijioke Ohuocha and Praveen Menon

LAGOS/DUBAI, Sept 8 (Reuters) - Sovereign fund Investment Corp of Dubai (ICD) has bought a 1.4 percent stake in Dangote Cement DANGCEM.LG , Nigeria's biggest company by market capitalisation, for $300 million, a Dangote spokesman said on Monday.

Dangote Cement spokesman Carl Franklin confirmed the sale, but provided no further details.

Stockbrokers in Lagos told Reuters 243 million shares of Dangote Cement were transferred to ICD, which holds stakes in some of the emirate's top companies, at 200 naira each, a 12 percent premium to Dangote Cement's price of around 223 naira on Monday.

"ICD is diversifying its portfolio ... into the West African market through a minority stake in Dangote Cement. We believe this bodes well for future investments into Nigeria from the Middle East," Akinbamidele Akintola, an Africa equity sales executive at Renaissance Capital, said.

Dangote Cement, owned by Africa's richest man Aliko Dangote, is expanding and plans to roll out cement plants across Africa to reach an annual 62 million tonnes capacity by 2017, up from a projected 42 million tonnes this year.

It reported pretax profit of 107.1 billion naira ($659.4 million) in the first half, down 0.57 percent from a year ago, on revenues of 208.9 billion naira. ID:nL6N0QL1NV

Shares in Dangote cement, which make up a third of Nigeria's stock market and hit a record high of 250 naira in July, traded flat at 223 naira on Monday, valuing Nigeria's biggest company at about 3.97 trillion naira ($24.5 billion).

Dangote Cement faces competition in Africa from French cement maker Lafarge LAFP.PA which is combining its Nigerian and South African businesses to accelerate growth on the continent. ID:nL6N0OK4TM

Last year, Dangote Industries sold a 1.5 percent of its 95 percent stake in Africa's biggest cement producer to South Africa's Public Investment Corporation (PIC) for $289.3 million. ID:nL5N0EM2ZP

Middle East companies are expanding in Africa. Last week, Qatar National Bank (QNB) QNBK.QA bought a 12.5 percent stake in pan-African lender Ecobank ETI.LG for about $200 million. ID:nL5N0R52SN (1 US dollar = 162.10 naira)

(Editing by Andrew Torchia and Susan Thomas) ((andrew.torchia@thomsonreuters.com; +9715 6681 7277; Reuters Messaging: andrew.torchia.thomsonreuters.com@reuters.net))

Keywords: DANGOTE CEMENT DUBAI/INVESTMENT