Business
Dangote still on track to investing $16 billion in Nigeria and Africa in the next 4 years
Aliko Dangote, Founder, President and CEO of the Dangote Group. PHOTO/Mike Hutchings/Reuters
The Dangote Group, the Nigerian company founded and run by Aliko Dangote, plans to invest about US$16 billion in cement, petrochemicals and agriculture over the next 4 years to boost expansion.
“We are investing US$4.7 billion to finish our projects in cement in about 18 countries, including Nigeria,” Dangote said in an interview. “We are also spending about US$2.3 billion on agriculture, with an emphasis on sugar and rice.”
The investment will help the Lagos-based company grow by almost a third in 2014, said Dangote, who is worth US$22.1 billion according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, making him the world’s 34th richest man – (the richest black man). “We are very, very optimistic for 2014 – we are expecting average growth of 30 percent groupwide,” he said.
Dangote Cement Plc., Africa’s biggest producer of the building material, said in April it plans to double annual total cement output to 55 million metric tons by 2015, boosted by new production in Cameroon, South Africa and Zambia.
Dangote Sugar Refinery Plc., which plans to start exports to Liberia, Mauritania and Senegal next year, aims to almost double refining capacity to 2.75 million tons by 2017 and increase sugar crop production, company executive Abdullahi Sule said in August.
“We are going to do a backward integration for rice” by growing the crop as well as distributing it, Dangote said. “We think Nigeria can be self sufficient in rice in the next 3 to 4 years.”
Dangote plans to invest in a natural gas power plant to help provide electricity to Africa’s most populous nation. Nigeria, Africa’s biggest producer of crude oil, relies on motor fuel imports to meet more than 70 percent of its needs.
