The President of Dangote Group, Alhaji Aliko Dangote has disclosed that the conglomerate will invest $16 billion across various sectors of the African economy over the next 4 years.
“We are investing $4.7 billion to finish our projects in cement in about 18 countries, including Nigeria. We are also spending about $2.3 billion on agriculture, which is sugar and rice.” “We are very, very optimistic for 2014 — we are expecting average growth of 30 percent groupwide,” Africa’s richest man said in an interview.
Dangote Cement plans to expand its output to 55 million metric tonnes a year as new plants come onstream in Cameroon, Zambia and South Africa. Dangote is already Africa’s biggest cement manufacturer.
“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 three to four years.”
“The only new investment we are looking at is upstream — to look for gas to secure our future businesses,” Dangote said.
“We want to step in and make gas available, and this will translate into more stable power in the country.”
Dangote Industries agreed a $3.3 billion loan with 12 local and international banks to help fund construction of a $9 billion petroleum oil refinery and petrochemical and fertilizer complex in Nigeria, Standard Chartered Plc, the global coordinator of the deal, said September 4.
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